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| Creator | PKLucky |
| Engine | Lex Talionis |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 47/80 |
| Rank | =5th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 7/10
Time Marches On’s main gimmick is the clock. You are in control over two units, and are given a year’s worth of time to train them up to face off an enemy attack. There are various different ways to go about developing your duo: they can reclass into different classes every month to develop different skills. Speaking of skills, they can also be bought from a shop, as can various other items. There’s only so much gold to go around, however. You can safely fish for cash, or go for a higher risk mining expedition. The old faithful arena is also a choice to gain money and experience both.
As it so happened, I managed to gain some very powerful skills, and even the arena enemies proved little threat once I got Ignis on the player character. The prince, too, had the powerful combination of Galeforce and Wrath. When I reached the traditional Fire Emblem map at the chapter’s end, I ended up effortlessly breezing through it. I don’t think the point of it was to be
particularly tactical, though. I think the point is to put unit builds to the test, and they passed with flying colours. I do have two exploits to report: the houses on the map itself can be visited infinitely for infinite EXP, and when learning a new skill, it is possible to back out of the replacement menu, then press A to learn the new skill, and break the five-skill limit.
I do think the preparation phase stretched on slightly too long (it took me two hours and the map was done in four turns and five minutes, if that), but the experience as a whole was definitely interesting and well-done. And most importantly, I had fun.
Presentation: 5/5
Presentation was excellent. The map itself changed palette with the seasons, the UI was perfectly natural for what was being presented, the music set the mood nicely, and I even got jumped by lyrics when booting the game up. The only nitpick I have is that it showed the default name for the tactician instead of my own, but that’s not worth a whole mark.
Story: 3/5
This submission has a theme, and that theme is time. Before the chosen one will set off to kill the great evil, a training session must occur. And so, the player wakes up from a dream on the road to the kingdom of Chronos, where time is valued above all else. Your assignment is to spend a year training up and learning exactly how the kingdom works, while looking after the young heir to the kingdom. As the seasons pass by, royal and tactician grow closer, with support ranks being gained with each one passing. These set an ominous tone, where it is suggested the player’s fate may not be ideal. When the enemy finally attacks, the two set out to put an end to that threat.
Upon victory, it is mentioned that this was the end of the first act of the duo’s journey. The god of fate then ends the chapter talking about the other ways I could have spent my time.
Overall, the story does a decent job of setting the scene and giving a reason for all of the training, even if it does end on a fairly blatant cliffhanger.
Total Score: 15/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 4/10
This chapter has a fun premise: you are tasked to train the young Lord Chronos (and yourself) for battle in one year. Once the year’s over, enemies will attack, and the actual chapter will begin. The main focus here is the customisation throughout this year: both main characters have their name & gender selected by the player in the opening cutscene, and start as mostly blank slates – especially the scion, having a measly 1 in every stat. You then get to reclass them (a lot), modify their growths & skills in monthly shops, and train them using various activities.
During my run, I decided to focus entirely on the scion due to their higher growths. The first few months were very fun, since I had to carefully balance my limited amount of gold and action points while getting familiar with the mechanics – I especially enjoyed seeing what cool new items the shops had in stock each time, the seasonal transitions, and carefully selecting arena opponents to make sure the scion doesn’t waste time & money dying too often. Eventually, I managed to get a pretty good build going – with Ignis, Strength+5, and Fury – which was essentially guaranteed to defeat every single arena enemy in one hit. While achieving this felt great, it quickly grew very repetitive, and the latter half of the training arc was mostly spent spamming arena over and over again. By the time the actual chapter started, my scion was so powerful that no enemy stood any chance whatsoever, and I finished it in moments by simply sending them forward – a pretty underwhelming conclusion to the year-long preparations phase.
Presentation: 3/5
Most of the chapter uses pretty standard fare FE8 graphics, but there were a few highlights for me: I really loved the seasonal map palettes, and the ending CG was very cool too – I imagine that drawing every scion/tactician gender combination took a lot of effort! The portraits were pretty inconsistent with their style and quality however, and a few used FE7 colours, which took me out of the experience a little.
Story: 2/5
The story opened with a tried and true premise – ages ago, the Fire Emblem sealed an ancient evil which is bound to return, and a young lord shall use it to defeat the calamity again. Nevertheless, the chapter doesn’t actually star the Fire Emblem nor the calamity at all, instead focusing on the lord’s initial training and first ever battle against bandits (which takes place in the same town you trained, a pretty nice touch). There are also hints of alternate timelines and mysterious voices, but these are never expanded upon, and the plot ends with the scion and tactician defeating the bandits and returning home. While this works as the prologue of a longer campaign, it’s not very interesting as a standalone chapter.
Total Score: 9/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 4/10
The concept of training your units and preparing them for battle in a hub-like setting is a fun idea, but, unfortunately, I found that there was a very noticeable lack of substance to this gameplay loop. The focus is on customizing your units via skill scrolls, class changes, and stat boosters that can be obtained by interacting with the various NPCs and vendors around the town at the cost of some action points. Initially I thought this was a lot of fun and I enjoyed setting up a build for my units so that they could clear the arena efficiently and level up. This got tedious pretty quickly, however, as the game asks you to spend 12 months (basically 12 chapters) spending your action points to refine your build. After about 5 months, I felt that my builds were completed and I didn’t really get much satisfaction out of continuing to spend my AP each month on further upgrades. When the combat section did finally begin, it was incredibly easy. I was able to rush my lord in and basically one shot the boss, who was equipped with only a steel axe. It ultimately felt like a lot of the effort I put into building the units was not necessary, even though I didn’t do much after the 5th month anyways.
Presentation: 4/5
The presentation is definitely the highlight of this project. The seasons changing being reflected in the map palette was a really nice touch, and amount of effort that went into ensuring the complex menuing worked correctly is impressive. I would have liked to see more variety outside of the standard FE8 graphics. The ending CG is also a great touch, and I appreciate the effort that went into making a variation for the different character choices.
Story: 3/5
The story offers a simple but somewhat interesting twist on the traditional Fire Emblem story, wherein you play as the lord before the beginning of their journey to save the world. You choose a player character who acts as a mentor to the lord, and the two discuss training together as well as a mysterious plot involving an unknown voice and some sort of alternate timeline. The story does not delve very far into any of this though, leaving most of it unexplored. There are some small support conversations between your two units sprinkled between the training months, but the dialogue is largely bland.
Total Score: 11/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 5/10
Time Marches On has an utterly insane gimmick to it, in which for 12 in-game months, you are asked to train up two very special units (in my playthrough, their names were Atlas and Queremy). Every month, you’re given a few tasks to do to tweak their stats, skills, classes, and just about everything about them for the final challenge come springtime once again. I personally decided to build a defence-stacking knight and a proc-skill-stacking swordmaster for no particular reason. I spent a fair bit of time teambuilding for competitive Pokemon matches in the past (strange comparison, I know), and I had a total blast kitting out my goobers with what I thought was optimal gear and skills, even before the actual game started. You are given a shocking amount of flexibility for these two characters, and the game just sets you loose after a few brief, informative tutorials. Absolutely, my kind of character building. No notes.
My fun stopped as quickly as it started once I made it to the combat part of this game, a handful of weak enemies that got utterly annihilated by my overpowered, minmaxed, nuclear bombs of subtextual boy love. Either due to time restraints or the LEAF contest’s rather harsh restrictions of single-map-edness, there’s just not enough meat to chew on after you train up your units. I think this fangame could easily become a flawless gameplay experience with just more opportunities to beat up bad guys. A larger map would help, but I think this submission is uniquely held back by the premise of this contest being 1 chapter only, since intermediary maps between seasons would do a great job at making your persistent build progression feel valuable, in addition to actually breaking up the character building, which got a little tedious at the end.
Presentation: 5/5
For how much menuing you do for this hack, it is really, really impressive how everything manages to stay together. You spend a lot of time talking and building, and it really feels like a gentle hand was used to make sure everything here is comprehensible to read. Special praise to all the vibrant music for the different seasons.
Story: 2/5
There’s a fair bit of story written in this hack, but I’m not keen on liking it. The mentor and the student have dialogue together via their support conversations, but there’s no real arc between them, or any real reason to care about them. In truth, the score in this category is for all the non-obvious boilerplate text and silly interactions, like with the gatekeeper in the southeastern tower and the fortuneteller.
Total Score: 12/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 7 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 20 |
| Presentation | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 17 |
| Story | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 10 |
| Total | 15 | 9 | 11 | 12 | 47 |