I have a very warped perception regarding time limits in games. They were no big deal before, more of a reason to push for even lower clear times to satisfy my ego, if anything. Timers and turn limits tend to be very lenient anyway to leave some breathing room for mistakes, so pushing for any second you can squeeze out always felt very satisfying to me. But ever since Covid nuked me 2 years ago I don't have the reaction time or mental capacity anymore to make and execute reasonable decisions under time pressure the way I used to for the past 20 years, and as such any game with a real time limit turned into a rather horrifying experience for me. Seeing a timer or turn limit count down without exactly knowing what's coming up ahead fills me with a feeling of anxiety I can't even begin to describe. I'm just unable to process the necessary information and make an informed decision on the spot anymore, so any action I take under a timer will waste unnecessary time already while being bound to be filled with mistakes on top of that. And while this circumstance is very much a problem specific to me, it made me realize that as long as you don't actually see the timer in question yourself in relation to your own gameplay, you won't even know how to evaluate that. 500 seconds for a Mario level are a lot of time, but if you've never touched a Mario platformer before, you can't even put that into perspective, so a new player might be discouraged before even trying it out. I heavily appreciate Unicorn Overlord pausing the timer in menus, I didn't even want to get the game initially until I learned about that in the demo.
When I was a kid, I was so averse to time limits that I asked my parents to get me the Donkey Kong Country ports for my GBA rather than Mario games, because the 2D Mario games had a visible timer on every level and I had no idea that it wasn't a core element of the game. The illusion of time pressure is often more powerful than time pressure itself!
This is quite true! Whether it's Super Smash Bros. or Unicorn Overlord, even an excessive timer takes the option of indefinite stalling off the table. You might never reach that timer, but that's because its presence alone made you set an actual pace.
Majora’s mask is my personal example of games where time pressure sucks the fun out of a game. Like I LOVE Ocarina of Time. Majora’s mask was immediately off-putting to me because of the inherent time gimmick.
The funny thing with UO is that there is already time based incentive to get moving. Reinforcements spawn from enemy held posts every so often and dealing with them for too long will drain a player's resources (Stamina, items, and Valor). If instead of random instant Game Over, the boss is able call in a swarm of bigger badder reinforcements, that would still generate the need to get moving to clear the map while not feeling absurdly detached from the story. Like, come on, Alain, it's been ten whole years of oppression, the people can wait 5 more seconds for my Gryphon unit to finish bonking the bad guys.
I’m gonna be honest. I tend to play Fire Emblem at a slow pace. In my brain, that was usually a neutral trait of mine, sometimes even a positive one since I’d found a reliable method for overcoming the games’ challenges entirely on my own, until I starting watching FE RUclips. The overwhelming opinion seems to be “playing fast is fun, skillful, and thrilling; playing slow is worthy of a derogatory term (turtling).” I’ve learned a lot, and picked up lots of advice that has made my FE experience more exciting. I would say I’m playing more quickly and aggressively than I did back in high school, but my natural inclination is still to take my time and approach cautiously. But now there’s a part of me that feels ashamed of my preferred playstyle.
No reason to feel ashamed, just because I find slower play less exciting doesn't mean you should! I think you'll find RUclipsrs aren't really representative of any community at large, just their own opinions.
@@actuallizard I understand, and I wasn’t trying to accuse you or anyone else specifically. It’s just something that’s been bothering me for a while. I’m sorry if I came off as inappropriately harsh or critical.
It's worth trying to play fast, just to see what it's like. That being said, there's definitely good play found in slow FE. The fast player may have a better turn count, but I'll bet your "slow" army is actually better built. Patience is a virtue, don't ever feel ashamed for it.
Hm, to me playing slow vs fast isn't necessarily tied to skill as much as it caters to different skillsets. Compare chess and bullet chess: both games that require skill and atrategy, with vastly different modes of play. There is some overlap between them, but being good at one doesn't necessarily translate well to the other. Since FE is a game, the most important metric is enjoyment. For some, that comes in the form of beating the game as fast as possible. Others want to see their characters develop bonds. Others want to see the story. Of course, there is a lot of overlap between groups. Instead of focusing on why others think the slow playstyle is boring, I suspect it'd be more worthwhile to contemplate what makes the way you play fun to you. Perhaps you'll find that the challenge is what's enticing, and you could try challenge runs or alternative strategies to get more enjoyment out of your game. Or maybe you like overcoming challenges on your own, without guides - and then you're doing fine as you are!
I am somewhat like you - I like finding safe and reliable strategies rather than try to min-max the way that FE influencers play. I also know that turtling is really boring. (Place armor knight at choke with a javelin, put a healer close by to heal when necessary, click end turn over and over) I think that time constraints are good to add variety because it forces people to expand their thought processes, but I worry that devs will use them and difficulty settings to basically force people to play a certain meta (Imagine being forced to use Wyverns in 3 Houses just to get to key locations in time... The Wyvern problem was already bad enough as is...), which kills the fun even more than turtling.
My favourite use of time in any game is the reaper in persona games. In persona 3 and 5 there are randomly generated dungeons that you revisit multiple times thorughout the game, those being tartarus and mementos respectively. Theoretically, you can take as long as you want to explore these floors, but in practice, if you take too long, that being five minutes in the more recent games, the reaper will spawn, which is essentially a superboss. He has access to all buffs and debuffs, elemental magic, instakills, almighty attacks, basically every strong skill a boss could have, the reaper has. The reaper is also imposing on a visual and audio level. It's a super imposing enemy with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, and whenever it spawns the screen crunches a bit, a slight red aura appears at the edges, and you can hear the subtle sound of chains rattling as it approaches you. This was enhanced even further in the recent remake of persona 3 where the reaper can actually follow you up floors if he's already spawned. Persona 4 kinda ruined him by hiding inside chests, but persona 3 and 5 did a great job of incentivizing you to quickly move through some areas that can otherwise feel tedious.
A game called Invisible Inc has an interesting take on the time as a scaling element. The game is a tactical rpg based around stealth where your agents are infiltrating an unknown facility. The game has an "security level" that steadily goes up by 1 every 5 turns but also goes up faster if you are spotted or make some other mistake. Every time it goes up a level, things get harder in various ways, from turning on more cameras, to adding more guards or better guards, to outright telling enemies exactly where you are. To finish the level, you just need to find and get to the exit elevator, but before leaving you'll want to get as much resources from the level as possible. In practice, you will be trying to stay in the level as long as you can get away with before just narrowly escaping.
Majora's mask feels like time is an unstoppable thing, even though realistically it's actually a very reasonable amount of time. It adds so much to the atmosphere and the stakes
I've been chunking away at a Bayonetta 2 full Pure Platinum save over the last year, and I really love the way time is used there. You're not really necessarily punished for playing slow. You won't game over, you won't miss out on any new items and equipment. The game instead rewards you by playing faster with better rankings in the game, with better rankings/trophies giving more currency. It doesn't punish you directly - it does so by giving you low level trophies to mark your inefficiency, which I think is an interesting way to prompt the player to get better. Not with FOMO, but almost by taunting the player, going "come on, you can do better than THIS."
I really love conquest chapter 16 in concept for this. You get teased with an enticing reward of 10,000g in the resource limited conquest campaign, and suddenly every turn you take, that reward goes down, encouraging you to rush, but on a blind playthrough you loterally dont know where the boss is and so you're also encouraged to divide and conquer, splitting about the map to deal with the enemies so that you can check for bosses more efficiently. I kinda wish the map would give a random seed to where you need to go each time though so it doesnt fall apart on repeat runs once you know where to go.
I disagree, shura always being the last one is a way that standardises the map and makes it more reliable and fun as if you're unlucky you just lose a bunch of gold and that doesn't feel fair at all. It's also worth mentioning that although resources are limited in conquest money is one of the less limited things and not as much of a problem as the game advertises
This discussion ends up sounding similar to a topic I bring up a lot. I find that higher difficulty pushes the player to engage with the game and its mechanics more, because players naturally start seeking advantages to make it easier. Difficulty options exist for a reason because people have different desires for their playtime, but it's the same idea with timers: pressure on the player coaxes more engagement out of them. While it has no diagetic explanation, Radiant Dawn's Bonus EXP is one of my favorite "timers." It rewards lots of extra Bonus EXP for reaching low turn counts, but it still rewards a normal amount for more relaxed paces, which means a new player who doesn’t know these objectives won't feel any pressure and won't even notice that they did something "slow." The entire system is balanced, postive reinforcement. Unicorn Overlord has also had great map pacing so far, but not due to each map's global timer. Instead, I find myself pushing forward constantly because I'm trying to interrupt the telegraphed reinforcements from enemy forts.
I'm not really into SRPGS besides Fire Emblem, but I'm really fascinated by time restrictions in video games in general. Persona 3's time limit ties directly into its themes of living your life to the fullest. Majora's Mask's timer also makes you confront the themes of mortality while also adding a great deal of tension, forcing planning and dividing progress into evenly split chunks. The timers in the Fear & Hunger series add to the horror and tension of the setting, making every moment you spend scavenging for supplies a trade off. Unsighted has you make difficult decisions on who to save with your limited time and resources. It's all really, really cool. I wish more games weren't afraid to play with time limits.
UO has pretty good time-design paired with the stamina mechanic. On harder modes, you have limited item uses, and you have forts and valor skills which are limited resources when you have that time limit. It's entirely necessary to the enjoyment of the game and makes the game flow better, which is good design.
Time sensitive I can think of is Gungnir. In that strategy rpg, there are weapons that can only be used during certain day/night cycle, and they do deal massive damage to back it up. Time is so powerful in that game to the point that poison(it ticks very quickly) is more crucial than dealing raw damage.
I'm surprised there was no mention of XCOM 2, a strategy RPG which fans famously disliked at launch for having turn limits on every map. It's definitely a motivator, but it's much more divisive than you'd think.
This video is mostly about smaller time limits on the scale of a map or match, but I really love longer-term time limits that force you to think of the entire game as a puzzle and make the best decisions to save time for the future, like the Persona games, earlier Atelier titles, or the first Pikmin.
I've only played P5R and I wonder, is there any reason to do a Palace before the time limit? I reached the one where you get the popecycle and never had a reason to quit a palace midrun to do stuff. Maybe buying supplies? One time I got really disappointed, there was a statue inside the palace and the party said there was some kind of secret to open something, and I thought I had to somehow get the answer in the real world, like stealing a note or looking for clues inside the bad guy's house, but no, it just was in another room inside the dungeon...
@@marcoasturias8520 In theory it's a risk/reward calculation. In the first palace, resource management feels tight enough that you might consider ducking out to come back with full SP, but this becomes less of a concern later, may be less pressing depending on your difficulty setting, and was made even easier in Royal compared to vanilla. There's still a lot of room for calendar optimization in the game, though. There's certainly time in Royal to finish every social link, but not everyone manages it.
Ah, I loved the first Pikmin! Managing the remaining days gives the player such natural way to set their difficulty, especially depending on how many total ship parts they're going for to get a particular ending.
I think some persona games have done this, as well as mystery dungeon games, but having a super boss that spawns when you stay on a map for too long is a simple way to motivate less prepared players to get a move on, and its a fun challenge to tackle when you are feeling strong enough or on repeat playthroughs. Probably the most interesting time mechanic ive seen in a game is in a metroidvania called UNSIGHTED - basically every npc has a clock that's ticking down until they die. Vendors, quest givers, random townsfolk, everyone. You can extend timers by giving them some of a finite consumable, but its very unlikely you'll finish your first playthrough without a few people dying. Really drives home the narrative stakes. Another cool one is a bullet hell boss rush called Godstrike, where time is both a currency and your health. Essentially before a boss, you spend part of your time limit to get passive buffs or active abilities. Then when you're fighting the boss, every hit drains from the time limit - but crucially you dont immediately die when it hits zero, instead it goes into sudden death where the next hit will result a game over. Leads to lots of clinch moments.
I like the time sensitivity of FTL quite a lot, myself - in each individual battle/node you can take as long as you want, but enemies are at their most powerful at the start of fights so you need to eclipse them ASAP. It can lead to a cascade failure if you lose your shields before disabling their weapons, for example. There is a more pressing timer for the map though, where you're chased to the exit by an advancing region of Rebels, and which turns all nodes into brutally difficult fights with little to no rewards. It forces you to navigate strategically at the higher level, and I really appreciate that both these systems exist in the game.
Shoutouts to the classic flash game Chronotron, a game about working with past versions of yourself so that your own actions become your natural timers for solving the rest of the puzzle The game uses it in interesting ways, with some of the puzzles being set up in such a way that you want to keep a close eye on the timer, and deliberately pick a point in time to take an action so that you know how much time you have before that action is taken
Man ch.4 Thracia 776 is also my favorite map in the whole Fire emblem series. The soldiers countlessly spawning in really makes you feel like your escaping without being unfair. Thracia really loves to push the player sometimes. Especially through the Galzus moments. Galzus is the prime example of HURRY UP OR DIE!!!!!
One potential fix that could combine FE and UO's approach into a more satisfying synthesis is that when the real timer reaches its end, some kind of profoundly negative consequence is triggered. Just spitballing as I haven't yet had time for UO yet but let's say adverse weather conditions kick in that make the map nigh-impossible to complete, or maybe extremely powerful enemy reinforcements arrive. I think making it so the consequences nearly guarantee imminent defeat but it's still possible to clinch it out at the last moment might be the ideal combination of both ideas.
ROR 2 MENTIONED LESS GOOOOOO Btw chapter 11A of FE6 is imo the best "standard" map in all of fire emblem in a big part because of the time pressure that the hero crest reward brings to the table
One other negative is, for lack of a better term, is I feel like it encourages "good" play to much at times. I once played FE6 and I was determined to use Roy and Sophia as frontline units. And I did it! It felt good in the final map to send them both out as actual fighters not just because. But the grinding...for levels and supports, and restarting the Arena more than once. It was purposefully bad play that I don't think I could have done well at all with a timer, which is a shame, even more so if you actually liked Sophia or just picked bad units for a game.
This video really got me thinking about how time affects how I play. Personally, I like the idea of time in Unicorn Overlord because it ties into the reward system at the end and gives you motivation to do things efficiently on what’s otherwise an open world-style map. But I also feel like too much tension leads to stress, so I appreciate how pauses work in UO. I feel like Fire Emblem has the balance okay for the most part, but I also play for strategic efficiency while taking my time to plan that out. I feel like UO would be too tedious without the idea of the time limit, while FE would be too stressful with a clock timer (I can go either way with turn count timers)
Yeah being able to pause it is essential in Unicorn Overlord, I wouldn't like it if it were just running all the time while you were thinking! I think Fire Emblem generally (depending on the game) does a good job of providing rewards for going fast without being too heavy handed (villages, recruitable character, etc)
I mean, Majora's Mask is a very obvious example of a game using time, there is a literal clock ticking down your doom, but also the entire map changes depending on what day/night of the three you're in. It's plenty of time to do things in, but it's still a threat you always have around. I mean, who didn't start panicking the first time the clock turned into a timer?
Hot take, but my favorite use of time in another video game series is the introduction of timers in most missions for XCOM2. It's not always the most diagetic situation- a hard time limit can struggle with this, but the basic idea of being on the clock when playing as a rebel force against an oppressive dictatorship makes sense. While timers were highly controversial, I think Fireaxis made a great call in deciding to add them, as they turn the game from a tense, but extremely gameable and sometimes boring turn-based shooter into a more dynamic system, where you really do need to push forward, but still have enough time that you generally don't have to go completely crazy in your dash to the objective. In both the prior game and XCOM2, that also works for Terror/Retaliation missions, where you're having to balance keeping your squad safe with putting an end to a threat to civilian life, but it was only an occasional thing in the first game.
This is a really insightful vid but I'd have mentioned Pikmin for sure. I love Pikmin 3's time system where you gain more time by building up your stock of fruit juice, which is your main objective. It quite literally rewards you for playing quickly by giving you more time
yoooo love to see travis/hodrik early game in the first seconds of this video. I did that too and it was really fun. Didn't use lex in the back but whatever. Excited to see someone else enjoying it.
After 60 hours of gameplay, I haven't run out of time on a map once yet. That being said, the timer makes me play in ways that sometimes feel less fun than I want to, like forcing myself to make my strongest squad rush the boss, because my other squads are too far away doing side objectives and collecting items. I wouldn't mind if some missions that feel like they should be timed were, but not all of them. I'm pretty sure the only reason they do it is because of the infinite reinforcements that give both exp and money, giving you infinite resources just by sitting a strong unit on your base and fast forwarding, which they could just have them stop giving anything after a certain time or number instead.
This topic have been on my mind lately. An example of a game that have turn limited in every chapter like Unicorn Overlord is Lost Eidolons. It faced some criticism for the hard turn. I personally think it should not be in EVERY chapter. If it makes sense for the scenario, go for it. It will make the scenario more immersive and impactful to the interactive media. However, it should not be used for every chapter as a game over condition. I feel like if the player lose to the condition, it feels awful and unjustly so. If it's incorporated into the story, then the player understands why the game over condition is there. Bonus points to showing a bad ending for taking too long.
I've never really had much of a run in with the timer in unicorn overlord. Generally I complete most maps in about 30 seconds of in game time at most. A large part of this is that even on expert (I still haven't beaten the game so I don't have the extra difficult mode) I am always at least a bit overlevelled because I do all of the content I can because I want to try to get access to the cool weapons/loot/units you can get access to from the side content. My units are basically just built to just kill my opponent before they kill me. For the most part my strategy is sending 3/4 of my units out, using haste II or a feather to double their speed, and having them each target a different objective on the map. If I run out of stamina I use an item (usually just some nuts bc at this point they're near a garrison to restore more stamina), if someone on a unit needs any flavor of healing I use an item or wait until they get to a garrison and deploy scarlet. With this strategy the time limit instead becomes when the boss killer arrives at the boss because the map will end and I try to achieve every map objective I can before then. But usually if I fail I just have the boss killer wait in front of the boss until I do everything else. I guess I'm already playing in the way the game wants? But I really hope that there is much reason to take the game slower in the hardest difficulty and use things like assists in order to win fights.
1:11 I agree that "fighting the enemies one at a time" is trivially easy in many FE maps, but good maps can make it interesting! The polar opposite of fighting the enemies one at a time would be Oswin playing Javelin Emblem against the entire enemy army in 2 enemy phases. If you don't have to fight the enemies one at a time, where's the strategy? I guess it's all in the matchups. Most early Shadow Dragon maps make "fighting the enemies one at a time" interesting by having the enemies make it difficult. You usually start with multiple enemies immediately rushing you from two fronts. So if you need to fight the enemies one at a time (and on merciless you pretty much always do), you have to proactively take space, separating units or forming them up so that you fight the enemies one at a time on your own terms, because if you don't, there will be no safe place left that can't be hit by multiple enemies. The pirates of Galder are especially brutal because if you let them close, they will water-walk around your frontline and start killing everything. Every defense map in the series is also inherently a turtling map, there's nowhere to go since you start right next to the throne, but many of these are still fun as long as the enemy is constantly pushing towards the throne. On the best defend maps, you need to move to the right terrain to block enemies from overwhelming you, and you need to shift your units around to keep favorable matchups available at every front. For most FE maps, the solution to the turtling problem isn't incentives. It's enemies that won't just stand there and let you do that. Thieves, reinforcements all work because they start moving as soon as they appear. And for the best FE maps, regular enemies do too.
One game you didn't mention that I think is worth noting is the XCom series. In Xcom 1 there were no time limits in missions, at all. This led to players "overwatch creeping" where you slowly move forwards while spamming the overwatch command, allowing you to hold your shot for when an enemy moved on their turn. It was really safe, but it was super boring and slow, but because the game had permadeath and it gave you a distinct advantage it became the meta. This was addressed in the expansion Xcom: Enemy Within where a resource called 'Meld' was added to maps. Much like villages in FE meld would only be available for a limited period of time before you lost it meaning you had to move to secure it; however, much like in FE once you secure it or if you don't care you can simply go back to overwatch creeping. Now we move to XCom 2. One of the biggest changes in XC2 is that most missions have a time pressure. In many missions there is a hard turn limit to complete the objective or you lose the mission, and also your soldiers. In others there is some objective, such as civilians to rescue or an objective the enemy is trying to destroy that forces you to move. The intent behind this was to force players to make more bold plays which has a higher risk but is arguably more interactive and engaging. According to one interview from the devs, you're more likely to remember a time where you barely had time to secure an objective and made a clutch save rather than moving at a snail's pace. This was not popular. There is a common mod for XCom 2 that flat out removes all mission timers, and an in game option that doubles them. Players hated being pushed out of their comfort zone.
_To be fair_ I would attribute the failure of xcom 2's timer more to the specific time allotted per mission being very arbitrary sometimes. For 70% of maps, everything went well and the timer would put just the right amount of pressure on you to get moving without getting in your way. 20% of the time, something went wrong and you had way more time than you could ever need, and then it just became a non-issue that took up UI space. And sometimes, something went _really_ wrong and a mission would generate with a nigh impossible timer, like 5 turns to cross an entire map while making a pit stop in the middle to rescue an NPC (an actual example that happened to me once). Doubling or outright removing the timer was preferred not because of the 90% cases being a problem, it was for those one in tens where the timer broke the game in half. They got to try their hand at a timer again in WOTC, with missions that have a timer you can extend by taking down mini-objectives along the path to the main one, and generally slowing down all timers by ~20% to completely eliminate the impossible timers. Sadly, while cool in theory, that made "unnecessary timers" the most frequent kind of timers. TL;DR: Don't blame the players, blame bad timer design.
@@PrincessFelicie having played both xcom2 and wotc, I haven't run across a timer I couldn't beat. Not sure if it's more common for higher difficulties. There were a few that came close, when I completed on last turn or 1 or 2 turns remaining, but it isn't that difficult to plan ahead to complete the objective even on a tight schedule. That said, with wotc there are definitely enough options to delay the timer that mods seem completely unnecessary. Resistance orders are op.
While I didn't usually mind the timers in XCOM 2 (because I found overwatch creeping to be boring) it often had issues setting what felt like a 'fair' time limit with the randomly generated nature of a lot of missions which arguably ended up creating an even bigger problem. Sure, you might remember the time when you barely managed to scrape out a win 1 turn from losing but you'll sure as hell remember even more when you have just 6 turns to raid a train on the other side of a huge map full of enemies and you already know on loading in that the mission's basically unwinnable.
My favorite time limit chapter in Fire Emblem is Path of Radiance Chapter 20: Defending Talrega. It's not the hardest chapter in an already pretty easy game. But it does have a really good story reason for the time limit. Basically just reducing the damage from the floodgates that Petrine forced Shiharam and his men to open. I think this is a really good way to organically implement a time limit into a Fire Emblem map. Chests and/or villages are always good too. But they're done so often that they don't stick out as much as this does. Plus they don't have a literal turn count limit. It's more about just getting to them before enemies destroy the village or steal the treasure and escape with it. As for other games, I was immediately reminded of the 3 day timer in Majora's Mask. While it's true you can reset the time loop at any time and even slow it down, it still requires you to really make the most of every second. You have to plan each run of the loop out in advance and any mistakes can completely derail your plans. I remember one time I was doing the Great Bay Temple and barely finished it in time. I had like an hour on the in game clock left by the time I beat the boss of the dungeon. I was really feeling the pressure then because I still wanted to take all 15 of the fairies to the Great Fairy Fountain so I could get the reward for that before resetting the time loop. Barely made it in time, but somehow I did it. I also think of Sonic games like Sonic Adventure 2 where you usually need to beat levels quickly in order to have any chance at getting a good rank. But you can't just blitz your way to the goal because you need a minimum score to get an A rank. So you have to balance going fast and getting a good time bonus with also scoring enough points within the stage itself. Some levels also inherently have a time limit. But those are usually pretty easy to finish in time. Except for Security Hall. That stage is always a pain even on the first mission.
When the lizard says my silly handle :) Kind of a silly comparison but I think the best maps in Fire emblem Heroes were the turn based ones. Kill the enemies in 5 turns basically meant you couldn't just enemy phase which back in year 1 was everyone's strategy. Those maps were challenging and there's been nothing like it since which is sad.
Personally, I hate time pressure, be it turn counts, timers, and it feels like a pressure to have to play optimally or else I'll miss out. I know it's not always the case, but games like Persona and Unicorn overlord are examples of games I know I don't HAVE TO be optimal but it spikes a sense of anxiety from times it's been far too strict in early gaming
Scaling maps, RoR2-style, are definitely something I was interested in working with. That was actually the main inspiration behind Rising Tides gameplay modifier from Gales of Nayeli!
One problem with Unicorn Overlord though is that haste 2 is completely broken and trivializes time. Like seriously, whose idea was it for it to only be 1 valor point. Vitalize 2 is also a bit problematic, but at least costing 2 Valor points and needing to be used after your units are already engaging in combat reduces its usefulness. The ability for Haste 2 to just be used at the very start of the map while your starting units are clumped and the fact that it lasts pretty much the entire map is insane
Damn. Thank you for informing me Unicorn Overload has timed gameplay,I was gonna pick up but I hate playing on a timer. Should've watched some reviews .
Honestly I wish less games insisted that their timers fit the narrative. While yes, in an ideal situation that would be nice, but I'd rather tactics games give the majority of maps a timer for no particular reason than have timers reserved for levels that it strictly makes diegetic sense for. I played this game called Dark Deity and every map will give you bonus gold the less turns you take to clear it. I can't think of a thematic justification for this, but I'd be dissapointed if that wasn't in the game.
I don't like games that tik down while I'm thinking. I want to make the best beat down possible. Though I do like the map ones where everyone is moving.
Yah I don't like it when the clock ticks while you think either! Fortunately in unicorn overlord the clock doesn't move until your units are moving, and you can pause it whenever you like
I kind of don’t want to buy Unicorn Overlord because of the timer. I hate timers in games because I need time to zone out and to do little things like take a swig of my drink or text my friends.
Fwiw in unicorn the timer is only ticking while your units are moving. It doesn't run during battles or when you are menuing or issuing orders, so you can spend an unlimited amount of real-life time on a map
On every fire emblem seize map, on turn 5, a 20/20 flying wyvern lord with perfect stats and a Vaida Spear should spawn at YOUR start position on turn 5 to make sure you don't fuck around too much
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I have a very warped perception regarding time limits in games. They were no big deal before, more of a reason to push for even lower clear times to satisfy my ego, if anything. Timers and turn limits tend to be very lenient anyway to leave some breathing room for mistakes, so pushing for any second you can squeeze out always felt very satisfying to me.
But ever since Covid nuked me 2 years ago I don't have the reaction time or mental capacity anymore to make and execute reasonable decisions under time pressure the way I used to for the past 20 years, and as such any game with a real time limit turned into a rather horrifying experience for me. Seeing a timer or turn limit count down without exactly knowing what's coming up ahead fills me with a feeling of anxiety I can't even begin to describe. I'm just unable to process the necessary information and make an informed decision on the spot anymore, so any action I take under a timer will waste unnecessary time already while being bound to be filled with mistakes on top of that.
And while this circumstance is very much a problem specific to me, it made me realize that as long as you don't actually see the timer in question yourself in relation to your own gameplay, you won't even know how to evaluate that. 500 seconds for a Mario level are a lot of time, but if you've never touched a Mario platformer before, you can't even put that into perspective, so a new player might be discouraged before even trying it out.
I heavily appreciate Unicorn Overlord pausing the timer in menus, I didn't even want to get the game initially until I learned about that in the demo.
When I was a kid, I was so averse to time limits that I asked my parents to get me the Donkey Kong Country ports for my GBA rather than Mario games, because the 2D Mario games had a visible timer on every level and I had no idea that it wasn't a core element of the game. The illusion of time pressure is often more powerful than time pressure itself!
This is quite true! Whether it's Super Smash Bros. or Unicorn Overlord, even an excessive timer takes the option of indefinite stalling off the table. You might never reach that timer, but that's because its presence alone made you set an actual pace.
Majora’s mask is my personal example of games where time pressure sucks the fun out of a game.
Like I LOVE Ocarina of Time. Majora’s mask was immediately off-putting to me because of the inherent time gimmick.
The funny thing with UO is that there is already time based incentive to get moving. Reinforcements spawn from enemy held posts every so often and dealing with them for too long will drain a player's resources (Stamina, items, and Valor). If instead of random instant Game Over, the boss is able call in a swarm of bigger badder reinforcements, that would still generate the need to get moving to clear the map while not feeling absurdly detached from the story. Like, come on, Alain, it's been ten whole years of oppression, the people can wait 5 more seconds for my Gryphon unit to finish bonking the bad guys.
I’m gonna be honest. I tend to play Fire Emblem at a slow pace. In my brain, that was usually a neutral trait of mine, sometimes even a positive one since I’d found a reliable method for overcoming the games’ challenges entirely on my own, until I starting watching FE RUclips. The overwhelming opinion seems to be “playing fast is fun, skillful, and thrilling; playing slow is worthy of a derogatory term (turtling).” I’ve learned a lot, and picked up lots of advice that has made my FE experience more exciting. I would say I’m playing more quickly and aggressively than I did back in high school, but my natural inclination is still to take my time and approach cautiously. But now there’s a part of me that feels ashamed of my preferred playstyle.
No reason to feel ashamed, just because I find slower play less exciting doesn't mean you should!
I think you'll find RUclipsrs aren't really representative of any community at large, just their own opinions.
@@actuallizard I understand, and I wasn’t trying to accuse you or anyone else specifically. It’s just something that’s been bothering me for a while. I’m sorry if I came off as inappropriately harsh or critical.
It's worth trying to play fast, just to see what it's like.
That being said, there's definitely good play found in slow FE. The fast player may have a better turn count, but I'll bet your "slow" army is actually better built.
Patience is a virtue, don't ever feel ashamed for it.
Hm, to me playing slow vs fast isn't necessarily tied to skill as much as it caters to different skillsets. Compare chess and bullet chess: both games that require skill and atrategy, with vastly different modes of play. There is some overlap between them, but being good at one doesn't necessarily translate well to the other.
Since FE is a game, the most important metric is enjoyment. For some, that comes in the form of beating the game as fast as possible. Others want to see their characters develop bonds. Others want to see the story. Of course, there is a lot of overlap between groups.
Instead of focusing on why others think the slow playstyle is boring, I suspect it'd be more worthwhile to contemplate what makes the way you play fun to you. Perhaps you'll find that the challenge is what's enticing, and you could try challenge runs or alternative strategies to get more enjoyment out of your game. Or maybe you like overcoming challenges on your own, without guides - and then you're doing fine as you are!
I am somewhat like you - I like finding safe and reliable strategies rather than try to min-max the way that FE influencers play. I also know that turtling is really boring. (Place armor knight at choke with a javelin, put a healer close by to heal when necessary, click end turn over and over)
I think that time constraints are good to add variety because it forces people to expand their thought processes, but I worry that devs will use them and difficulty settings to basically force people to play a certain meta (Imagine being forced to use Wyverns in 3 Houses just to get to key locations in time... The Wyvern problem was already bad enough as is...), which kills the fun even more than turtling.
My favourite use of time in any game is the reaper in persona games. In persona 3 and 5 there are randomly generated dungeons that you revisit multiple times thorughout the game, those being tartarus and mementos respectively. Theoretically, you can take as long as you want to explore these floors, but in practice, if you take too long, that being five minutes in the more recent games, the reaper will spawn, which is essentially a superboss. He has access to all buffs and debuffs, elemental magic, instakills, almighty attacks, basically every strong skill a boss could have, the reaper has. The reaper is also imposing on a visual and audio level. It's a super imposing enemy with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, and whenever it spawns the screen crunches a bit, a slight red aura appears at the edges, and you can hear the subtle sound of chains rattling as it approaches you. This was enhanced even further in the recent remake of persona 3 where the reaper can actually follow you up floors if he's already spawned. Persona 4 kinda ruined him by hiding inside chests, but persona 3 and 5 did a great job of incentivizing you to quickly move through some areas that can otherwise feel tedious.
A game called Invisible Inc has an interesting take on the time as a scaling element. The game is a tactical rpg based around stealth where your agents are infiltrating an unknown facility. The game has an "security level" that steadily goes up by 1 every 5 turns but also goes up faster if you are spotted or make some other mistake. Every time it goes up a level, things get harder in various ways, from turning on more cameras, to adding more guards or better guards, to outright telling enemies exactly where you are. To finish the level, you just need to find and get to the exit elevator, but before leaving you'll want to get as much resources from the level as possible. In practice, you will be trying to stay in the level as long as you can get away with before just narrowly escaping.
Majora's mask feels like time is an unstoppable thing, even though realistically it's actually a very reasonable amount of time. It adds so much to the atmosphere and the stakes
Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn bonus exp is still my favorite way and the one i think is most effective to rush a map
I've been chunking away at a Bayonetta 2 full Pure Platinum save over the last year, and I really love the way time is used there. You're not really necessarily punished for playing slow. You won't game over, you won't miss out on any new items and equipment. The game instead rewards you by playing faster with better rankings in the game, with better rankings/trophies giving more currency. It doesn't punish you directly - it does so by giving you low level trophies to mark your inefficiency, which I think is an interesting way to prompt the player to get better. Not with FOMO, but almost by taunting the player, going "come on, you can do better than THIS."
I really love conquest chapter 16 in concept for this. You get teased with an enticing reward of 10,000g in the resource limited conquest campaign, and suddenly every turn you take, that reward goes down, encouraging you to rush, but on a blind playthrough you loterally dont know where the boss is and so you're also encouraged to divide and conquer, splitting about the map to deal with the enemies so that you can check for bosses more efficiently. I kinda wish the map would give a random seed to where you need to go each time though so it doesnt fall apart on repeat runs once you know where to go.
i thought shura was always the last soldier you check
I disagree, shura always being the last one is a way that standardises the map and makes it more reliable and fun as if you're unlucky you just lose a bunch of gold and that doesn't feel fair at all. It's also worth mentioning that although resources are limited in conquest money is one of the less limited things and not as much of a problem as the game advertises
This discussion ends up sounding similar to a topic I bring up a lot. I find that higher difficulty pushes the player to engage with the game and its mechanics more, because players naturally start seeking advantages to make it easier. Difficulty options exist for a reason because people have different desires for their playtime, but it's the same idea with timers: pressure on the player coaxes more engagement out of them.
While it has no diagetic explanation, Radiant Dawn's Bonus EXP is one of my favorite "timers." It rewards lots of extra Bonus EXP for reaching low turn counts, but it still rewards a normal amount for more relaxed paces, which means a new player who doesn’t know these objectives won't feel any pressure and won't even notice that they did something "slow." The entire system is balanced, postive reinforcement.
Unicorn Overlord has also had great map pacing so far, but not due to each map's global timer. Instead, I find myself pushing forward constantly because I'm trying to interrupt the telegraphed reinforcements from enemy forts.
I'm not really into SRPGS besides Fire Emblem, but I'm really fascinated by time restrictions in video games in general. Persona 3's time limit ties directly into its themes of living your life to the fullest. Majora's Mask's timer also makes you confront the themes of mortality while also adding a great deal of tension, forcing planning and dividing progress into evenly split chunks. The timers in the Fear & Hunger series add to the horror and tension of the setting, making every moment you spend scavenging for supplies a trade off. Unsighted has you make difficult decisions on who to save with your limited time and resources. It's all really, really cool. I wish more games weren't afraid to play with time limits.
UO has pretty good time-design paired with the stamina mechanic. On harder modes, you have limited item uses, and you have forts and valor skills which are limited resources when you have that time limit. It's entirely necessary to the enjoyment of the game and makes the game flow better, which is good design.
Time sensitive I can think of is Gungnir. In that strategy rpg, there are weapons that can only be used during certain day/night cycle, and they do deal massive damage to back it up. Time is so powerful in that game to the point that poison(it ticks very quickly) is more crucial than dealing raw damage.
I'm surprised there was no mention of XCOM 2, a strategy RPG which fans famously disliked at launch for having turn limits on every map. It's definitely a motivator, but it's much more divisive than you'd think.
This video is mostly about smaller time limits on the scale of a map or match, but I really love longer-term time limits that force you to think of the entire game as a puzzle and make the best decisions to save time for the future, like the Persona games, earlier Atelier titles, or the first Pikmin.
I've only played P5R and I wonder, is there any reason to do a Palace before the time limit?
I reached the one where you get the popecycle and never had a reason to quit a palace midrun to do stuff. Maybe buying supplies?
One time I got really disappointed, there was a statue inside the palace and the party said there was some kind of secret to open something, and I thought I had to somehow get the answer in the real world, like stealing a note or looking for clues inside the bad guy's house, but no, it just was in another room inside the dungeon...
@@marcoasturias8520 In theory it's a risk/reward calculation. In the first palace, resource management feels tight enough that you might consider ducking out to come back with full SP, but this becomes less of a concern later, may be less pressing depending on your difficulty setting, and was made even easier in Royal compared to vanilla. There's still a lot of room for calendar optimization in the game, though. There's certainly time in Royal to finish every social link, but not everyone manages it.
Ah, I loved the first Pikmin! Managing the remaining days gives the player such natural way to set their difficulty, especially depending on how many total ship parts they're going for to get a particular ending.
I think some persona games have done this, as well as mystery dungeon games, but having a super boss that spawns when you stay on a map for too long is a simple way to motivate less prepared players to get a move on, and its a fun challenge to tackle when you are feeling strong enough or on repeat playthroughs.
Probably the most interesting time mechanic ive seen in a game is in a metroidvania called UNSIGHTED - basically every npc has a clock that's ticking down until they die. Vendors, quest givers, random townsfolk, everyone. You can extend timers by giving them some of a finite consumable, but its very unlikely you'll finish your first playthrough without a few people dying. Really drives home the narrative stakes.
Another cool one is a bullet hell boss rush called Godstrike, where time is both a currency and your health. Essentially before a boss, you spend part of your time limit to get passive buffs or active abilities. Then when you're fighting the boss, every hit drains from the time limit - but crucially you dont immediately die when it hits zero, instead it goes into sudden death where the next hit will result a game over. Leads to lots of clinch moments.
I like the time sensitivity of FTL quite a lot, myself - in each individual battle/node you can take as long as you want, but enemies are at their most powerful at the start of fights so you need to eclipse them ASAP. It can lead to a cascade failure if you lose your shields before disabling their weapons, for example.
There is a more pressing timer for the map though, where you're chased to the exit by an advancing region of Rebels, and which turns all nodes into brutally difficult fights with little to no rewards. It forces you to navigate strategically at the higher level, and I really appreciate that both these systems exist in the game.
Shoutouts to the classic flash game Chronotron, a game about working with past versions of yourself so that your own actions become your natural timers for solving the rest of the puzzle
The game uses it in interesting ways, with some of the puzzles being set up in such a way that you want to keep a close eye on the timer, and deliberately pick a point in time to take an action so that you know how much time you have before that action is taken
Braid has a mechanic like this, too!
Man ch.4 Thracia 776 is also my favorite map in the whole Fire emblem series. The soldiers countlessly spawning in really makes you feel like your escaping without being unfair. Thracia really loves to push the player sometimes. Especially through the Galzus moments. Galzus is the prime example of HURRY UP OR DIE!!!!!
One potential fix that could combine FE and UO's approach into a more satisfying synthesis is that when the real timer reaches its end, some kind of profoundly negative consequence is triggered. Just spitballing as I haven't yet had time for UO yet but let's say adverse weather conditions kick in that make the map nigh-impossible to complete, or maybe extremely powerful enemy reinforcements arrive. I think making it so the consequences nearly guarantee imminent defeat but it's still possible to clinch it out at the last moment might be the ideal combination of both ideas.
ROR 2 MENTIONED LESS GOOOOOO
Btw chapter 11A of FE6 is imo the best "standard" map in all of fire emblem in a big part because of the time pressure that the hero crest reward brings to the table
Risk of Rain 2 is one of my all time favorite games! Few things satisfy me more than captain's shotgun lol
Watching that phantom kill the egg always hurts me.
One other negative is, for lack of a better term, is I feel like it encourages "good" play to much at times.
I once played FE6 and I was determined to use Roy and Sophia as frontline units. And I did it! It felt good in the final map to send them both out as actual fighters not just because. But the grinding...for levels and supports, and restarting the Arena more than once. It was purposefully bad play that I don't think I could have done well at all with a timer, which is a shame, even more so if you actually liked Sophia or just picked bad units for a game.
This video really got me thinking about how time affects how I play. Personally, I like the idea of time in Unicorn Overlord because it ties into the reward system at the end and gives you motivation to do things efficiently on what’s otherwise an open world-style map. But I also feel like too much tension leads to stress, so I appreciate how pauses work in UO. I feel like Fire Emblem has the balance okay for the most part, but I also play for strategic efficiency while taking my time to plan that out. I feel like UO would be too tedious without the idea of the time limit, while FE would be too stressful with a clock timer (I can go either way with turn count timers)
Yeah being able to pause it is essential in Unicorn Overlord, I wouldn't like it if it were just running all the time while you were thinking!
I think Fire Emblem generally (depending on the game) does a good job of providing rewards for going fast without being too heavy handed (villages, recruitable character, etc)
Getting a game over because it took too long
Jotaro: 5seconds is too short...
I mean, Majora's Mask is a very obvious example of a game using time, there is a literal clock ticking down your doom, but also the entire map changes depending on what day/night of the three you're in. It's plenty of time to do things in, but it's still a threat you always have around. I mean, who didn't start panicking the first time the clock turned into a timer?
Hot take, but my favorite use of time in another video game series is the introduction of timers in most missions for XCOM2. It's not always the most diagetic situation- a hard time limit can struggle with this, but the basic idea of being on the clock when playing as a rebel force against an oppressive dictatorship makes sense.
While timers were highly controversial, I think Fireaxis made a great call in deciding to add them, as they turn the game from a tense, but extremely gameable and sometimes boring turn-based shooter into a more dynamic system, where you really do need to push forward, but still have enough time that you generally don't have to go completely crazy in your dash to the objective.
In both the prior game and XCOM2, that also works for Terror/Retaliation missions, where you're having to balance keeping your squad safe with putting an end to a threat to civilian life, but it was only an occasional thing in the first game.
This is a really insightful vid but I'd have mentioned Pikmin for sure. I love Pikmin 3's time system where you gain more time by building up your stock of fruit juice, which is your main objective. It quite literally rewards you for playing quickly by giving you more time
yoooo love to see travis/hodrik early game in the first seconds of this video. I did that too and it was really fun. Didn't use lex in the back but whatever. Excited to see someone else enjoying it.
Shout out to Majora's Mask, the king of time mechanics.
After 60 hours of gameplay, I haven't run out of time on a map once yet. That being said, the timer makes me play in ways that sometimes feel less fun than I want to, like forcing myself to make my strongest squad rush the boss, because my other squads are too far away doing side objectives and collecting items. I wouldn't mind if some missions that feel like they should be timed were, but not all of them. I'm pretty sure the only reason they do it is because of the infinite reinforcements that give both exp and money, giving you infinite resources just by sitting a strong unit on your base and fast forwarding, which they could just have them stop giving anything after a certain time or number instead.
I love ALL ActualLizard videos!!!!
who’s that funny little clock in the corner of the thumbnail ?
Time Wizard from Yugioh!
This topic have been on my mind lately. An example of a game that have turn limited in every chapter like Unicorn Overlord is Lost Eidolons. It faced some criticism for the hard turn. I personally think it should not be in EVERY chapter. If it makes sense for the scenario, go for it. It will make the scenario more immersive and impactful to the interactive media. However, it should not be used for every chapter as a game over condition. I feel like if the player lose to the condition, it feels awful and unjustly so. If it's incorporated into the story, then the player understands why the game over condition is there. Bonus points to showing a bad ending for taking too long.
I've never really had much of a run in with the timer in unicorn overlord. Generally I complete most maps in about 30 seconds of in game time at most. A large part of this is that even on expert (I still haven't beaten the game so I don't have the extra difficult mode) I am always at least a bit overlevelled because I do all of the content I can because I want to try to get access to the cool weapons/loot/units you can get access to from the side content. My units are basically just built to just kill my opponent before they kill me. For the most part my strategy is sending 3/4 of my units out, using haste II or a feather to double their speed, and having them each target a different objective on the map. If I run out of stamina I use an item (usually just some nuts bc at this point they're near a garrison to restore more stamina), if someone on a unit needs any flavor of healing I use an item or wait until they get to a garrison and deploy scarlet.
With this strategy the time limit instead becomes when the boss killer arrives at the boss because the map will end and I try to achieve every map objective I can before then. But usually if I fail I just have the boss killer wait in front of the boss until I do everything else. I guess I'm already playing in the way the game wants? But I really hope that there is much reason to take the game slower in the hardest difficulty and use things like assists in order to win fights.
I HATE being timed in games. Still haven't completed Majora's Mask because that.
Play the Song of Time backwards, time goes slower with that.
1:11 I agree that "fighting the enemies one at a time" is trivially easy in many FE maps, but good maps can make it interesting!
The polar opposite of fighting the enemies one at a time would be Oswin playing Javelin Emblem against the entire enemy army in 2 enemy phases. If you don't have to fight the enemies one at a time, where's the strategy? I guess it's all in the matchups.
Most early Shadow Dragon maps make "fighting the enemies one at a time" interesting by having the enemies make it difficult. You usually start with multiple enemies immediately rushing you from two fronts. So if you need to fight the enemies one at a time (and on merciless you pretty much always do), you have to proactively take space, separating units or forming them up so that you fight the enemies one at a time on your own terms, because if you don't, there will be no safe place left that can't be hit by multiple enemies. The pirates of Galder are especially brutal because if you let them close, they will water-walk around your frontline and start killing everything.
Every defense map in the series is also inherently a turtling map, there's nowhere to go since you start right next to the throne, but many of these are still fun as long as the enemy is constantly pushing towards the throne. On the best defend maps, you need to move to the right terrain to block enemies from overwhelming you, and you need to shift your units around to keep favorable matchups available at every front.
For most FE maps, the solution to the turtling problem isn't incentives. It's enemies that won't just stand there and let you do that. Thieves, reinforcements all work because they start moving as soon as they appear. And for the best FE maps, regular enemies do too.
One game you didn't mention that I think is worth noting is the XCom series.
In Xcom 1 there were no time limits in missions, at all. This led to players "overwatch creeping" where you slowly move forwards while spamming the overwatch command, allowing you to hold your shot for when an enemy moved on their turn. It was really safe, but it was super boring and slow, but because the game had permadeath and it gave you a distinct advantage it became the meta. This was addressed in the expansion Xcom: Enemy Within where a resource called 'Meld' was added to maps. Much like villages in FE meld would only be available for a limited period of time before you lost it meaning you had to move to secure it; however, much like in FE once you secure it or if you don't care you can simply go back to overwatch creeping.
Now we move to XCom 2. One of the biggest changes in XC2 is that most missions have a time pressure. In many missions there is a hard turn limit to complete the objective or you lose the mission, and also your soldiers. In others there is some objective, such as civilians to rescue or an objective the enemy is trying to destroy that forces you to move. The intent behind this was to force players to make more bold plays which has a higher risk but is arguably more interactive and engaging. According to one interview from the devs, you're more likely to remember a time where you barely had time to secure an objective and made a clutch save rather than moving at a snail's pace.
This was not popular. There is a common mod for XCom 2 that flat out removes all mission timers, and an in game option that doubles them. Players hated being pushed out of their comfort zone.
_To be fair_ I would attribute the failure of xcom 2's timer more to the specific time allotted per mission being very arbitrary sometimes. For 70% of maps, everything went well and the timer would put just the right amount of pressure on you to get moving without getting in your way. 20% of the time, something went wrong and you had way more time than you could ever need, and then it just became a non-issue that took up UI space. And sometimes, something went _really_ wrong and a mission would generate with a nigh impossible timer, like 5 turns to cross an entire map while making a pit stop in the middle to rescue an NPC (an actual example that happened to me once). Doubling or outright removing the timer was preferred not because of the 90% cases being a problem, it was for those one in tens where the timer broke the game in half.
They got to try their hand at a timer again in WOTC, with missions that have a timer you can extend by taking down mini-objectives along the path to the main one, and generally slowing down all timers by ~20% to completely eliminate the impossible timers. Sadly, while cool in theory, that made "unnecessary timers" the most frequent kind of timers.
TL;DR: Don't blame the players, blame bad timer design.
@@PrincessFelicie having played both xcom2 and wotc, I haven't run across a timer I couldn't beat. Not sure if it's more common for higher difficulties. There were a few that came close, when I completed on last turn or 1 or 2 turns remaining, but it isn't that difficult to plan ahead to complete the objective even on a tight schedule.
That said, with wotc there are definitely enough options to delay the timer that mods seem completely unnecessary. Resistance orders are op.
While I didn't usually mind the timers in XCOM 2 (because I found overwatch creeping to be boring) it often had issues setting what felt like a 'fair' time limit with the randomly generated nature of a lot of missions which arguably ended up creating an even bigger problem.
Sure, you might remember the time when you barely managed to scrape out a win 1 turn from losing but you'll sure as hell remember even more when you have just 6 turns to raid a train on the other side of a huge map full of enemies and you already know on loading in that the mission's basically unwinnable.
My favorite time limit chapter in Fire Emblem is Path of Radiance Chapter 20: Defending Talrega. It's not the hardest chapter in an already pretty easy game. But it does have a really good story reason for the time limit. Basically just reducing the damage from the floodgates that Petrine forced Shiharam and his men to open. I think this is a really good way to organically implement a time limit into a Fire Emblem map. Chests and/or villages are always good too. But they're done so often that they don't stick out as much as this does. Plus they don't have a literal turn count limit. It's more about just getting to them before enemies destroy the village or steal the treasure and escape with it.
As for other games, I was immediately reminded of the 3 day timer in Majora's Mask. While it's true you can reset the time loop at any time and even slow it down, it still requires you to really make the most of every second. You have to plan each run of the loop out in advance and any mistakes can completely derail your plans. I remember one time I was doing the Great Bay Temple and barely finished it in time. I had like an hour on the in game clock left by the time I beat the boss of the dungeon. I was really feeling the pressure then because I still wanted to take all 15 of the fairies to the Great Fairy Fountain so I could get the reward for that before resetting the time loop. Barely made it in time, but somehow I did it.
I also think of Sonic games like Sonic Adventure 2 where you usually need to beat levels quickly in order to have any chance at getting a good rank. But you can't just blitz your way to the goal because you need a minimum score to get an A rank. So you have to balance going fast and getting a good time bonus with also scoring enough points within the stage itself. Some levels also inherently have a time limit. But those are usually pretty easy to finish in time. Except for Security Hall. That stage is always a pain even on the first mission.
In Unicorn Overlord the Liberation Quests are the shortest for time limits since those are 50 seconds and other maps are somewhat longer
When the lizard says my silly handle :)
Kind of a silly comparison but I think the best maps in Fire emblem Heroes were the turn based ones. Kill the enemies in 5 turns basically meant you couldn't just enemy phase which back in year 1 was everyone's strategy. Those maps were challenging and there's been nothing like it since which is sad.
Engage chapter 11 was widely praised and I think it is because you HAD TO MOVE IT. Slowly turtling would get you annihilated.
Personally, I hate time pressure, be it turn counts, timers, and it feels like a pressure to have to play optimally or else I'll miss out. I know it's not always the case, but games like Persona and Unicorn overlord are examples of games I know I don't HAVE TO be optimal but it spikes a sense of anxiety from times it's been far too strict in early gaming
But is it Vaike Time?
Scaling maps, RoR2-style, are definitely something I was interested in working with. That was actually the main inspiration behind Rising Tides gameplay modifier from Gales of Nayeli!
One problem with Unicorn Overlord though is that haste 2 is completely broken and trivializes time. Like seriously, whose idea was it for it to only be 1 valor point. Vitalize 2 is also a bit problematic, but at least costing 2 Valor points and needing to be used after your units are already engaging in combat reduces its usefulness. The ability for Haste 2 to just be used at the very start of the map while your starting units are clumped and the fact that it lasts pretty much the entire map is insane
Damn. Thank you for informing me Unicorn Overload has timed gameplay,I was gonna pick up but I hate playing on a timer. Should've watched some reviews .
What about trying out the demo first?
Honestly I wish less games insisted that their timers fit the narrative.
While yes, in an ideal situation that would be nice, but I'd rather tactics games give the majority of maps a timer for no particular reason than have timers reserved for levels that it strictly makes diegetic sense for.
I played this game called Dark Deity and every map will give you bonus gold the less turns you take to clear it. I can't think of a thematic justification for this, but I'd be dissapointed if that wasn't in the game.
I don't like games that tik down while I'm thinking. I want to make the best beat down possible.
Though I do like the map ones where everyone is moving.
Yah I don't like it when the clock ticks while you think either! Fortunately in unicorn overlord the clock doesn't move until your units are moving, and you can pause it whenever you like
@@actuallizard oh that's fine. When you can take a moment in case something comes up or you look over your items to see what goes best with who.
I kind of don’t want to buy Unicorn Overlord because of the timer. I hate timers in games because I need time to zone out and to do little things like take a swig of my drink or text my friends.
Fwiw in unicorn the timer is only ticking while your units are moving. It doesn't run during battles or when you are menuing or issuing orders, so you can spend an unlimited amount of real-life time on a map
@@actuallizard Oh, I didn’t understand that. That sounds a lot better, thank you.
Not just take, but unicorn overlords maps are always Size and Defend the point.
Neat
Shout out to my skanks
On every fire emblem seize map, on turn 5, a 20/20 flying wyvern lord with perfect stats and a Vaida Spear should spawn at YOUR start position on turn 5 to make sure you don't fuck around too much