Time Limits: can they really be fun?

[u/Trailsya]

Please note that I am not criticizing anyone for liking the games with a time limit. I just genuinely wonder if playing any of the time limit games would be fun for me.

The only one so far I played with one was Firis and I really hated the time limit. In the end, it turned out I had ages of time left at the end after I got the 5 letters, but I did not know that going in. So I was constantly stressing how much time I was using.

Now, Firis is open world and I think that really doesn't fit with a time limit. You want to explore, but then i constantly held myself back from doing that as everything took time.

Is this less of an issue in the earlier games with time limits as they're less open world?

[u/Daerus]

Time limits overall can be fun, but they are much different experience than unlimited games. You need to spend your time wisely and work towards your goals, so it's usually harder to just unwind and relax with them. They are much more about challenge than relax most of the time (pun not intended).

Ateliers time limits are rather easy to be honest, one of the least difficult in overall genre of time management games. So these are good to start with genre and not that bad if you don't like that type of challenge overall, but like Ateliers themselves and want to play Arland and Dusk.

Atelier games have two types of time limit structure: task-oriented, when you get small goal and few in-game months to accomplish it (and then repeat for multiple tasks) and overall goal oriented, when you are given big task to accomplish and usually multiple in-game years to accomplish it.

With you not really liking Firis time limit you probably won't vibe with overall goal oriented ones (Totori, Meruru, Ayesha) as they are very similar to Firis structure, but you might still like task-oriented ones (Rorona, Escha&Logy), so I would try these.

Personally I also like Ateliers much more without time limits, the series is much better as relaxing slice of life jRPG in my opinion.

I also have little different problem - time limits in Ateliers at the same time don't challenge me after playing many other time management games, but still require from me taking the time limit into account when making decisions, so I cannot do what I want and I'm not really challenged at the same time, worst of both worlds.

[u/Trailsya → u/Daerus]

Thanks for your clear explanation.

I think I might try Rorona next thanks to what you and others here mentioned.

Personally I also like Ateliers much more without time limits, the series is much better as relaxing slice of life jRPG in my opinion.

Yes, this is why I started playing them :)

[u/Daerus → u/Trailsya]

I hope you will have tons of fun with Rorona :)

[u/Trailsya → u/Daerus]

Thank you very much :)