The Lord of Time

Reviewed on: 2024/06/22 (Version 1.0) Score: 4/10 Playtime: About 3h for 100% achievements. [h3]Note:[/h3] While the game has been in development since at least 2021, I couldn't find a single post mentioning it between August 2022 & February 2024 on the dev's Patreon. The dev also has [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536490/Cartel_Simulator/]another Early Access title[/url] currently on Steam, and another [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2384240/Never_Meet_Your_Heroes/]game which has mixed ratings[/url]. Because of this, I urge you to do your due diligence before purchasing. Edit: [b]Please see the Developer response below this review for their comment.[/b] [h3]TL;DR:[/h3] Heavily [i]inspired[/i] by Doctor Who, “The Lord of Time” (TLoT) tries to tell the story of the titular Lord of Time. He's more of an anti-hero who doesn't shy away from slavery to reach his goals. The game's story is very performative. Go here, do this, go there, do that. Outside the free-roam sections, it's a kinetic story with no meaningful choices. The free-roam sections aren't fun either, with the player often having to repeat the same set of actions several times before the main story can progress, just to raise some stat to a certain level. [h3]Gameplay:[/h3] Sadly, this game just isn't fun. Its main gameplay loop involves the stats of the MC and Liu. To perform certain actions, they need to be at a certain level. For instance, Liu will hate you until her [b]comfort[/b] is at 10, which you raise by teaching your class in a relaxed way. After speaking with her, a few kinetic story beats happen, until Liu's [b]expressiveness[/b] needs to be raised to 10. This involves moving the time-ship to a certain location, and performing the same set of clicks many times. (E.g., Go outside, visit the adult parlor, click through a few lines of text, go to sleep, rinse & repeat 10 times.) All navigation and actions are performed by clicking buttons. At the start of the game, the player can pick a name, job, and distribute some stats. However, if you're new to the game, you'll have no idea which stats will be useful for you. Not that it matters much in this version, since only the points in science and fearlessness carry over to the actual game, the others are set to zero. So far, these stats are only used to block progress, they don't change how interactions play out. Except in one case, where you need 5 points in fighting or science, or it'll be game-over. [h3]Adult:[/h3] “The Lord of Time” has several lewd encounters which range from seeing nudity, touching, foreplay and intercourse. There are no other adult topics or subject matters in this version. [h3]Visual:[/h3] This game's UI is outstanding and easily one of the most customized ones I've seen. It gives a visually professional impression. I have no idea why the dev included fake loading screens, taking up to 10 seconds of your time, but he has. The renders of the main locations/hubs feel uninspired, certainly compared to the animated ship's bridge. Other renders, like during dialog, are fine, but nothing special either. I do appreciate that NPCs aren't static, and move slightly when speaking, including facial expressions. In general though, backdrops are fairly boring. Animations are a mixed bag. Some scenic animations will play at certain points during the story, these are done nicely. The lewd animations, however, aren't great and have clipping. For instance, the animation of the MC and Victoria kissing, is just them merging the front of their faces. The visual design of the game's women is something you'll either love or hate. Most women have extreme body proportions, like seen in the promotional screenshots. So far, only the Pharaoh, with whom you can have a one-off encounter, has a more realistic body type. [h3]Sound:[/h3] “The Lord of Time” features a soundtrack, sound effects, and some voiced (female) dialog. Most soundtracks don't stand out, which is good. Other tracks, you'll immediately recognize, as they're well-known classical numbers, or overused royalty-free music. Generally, the tracks fit with what's happening on screen, and their volume is good. Likewise, sound effects are chosen well and aren't overused. Victoria and Liu's dialog is voiced by talent. Their lines are conveyed with sincerity and attention to the emotional context of the situation. Victoria's audio does have a few artifacts here and there, but I don't know if this is the result of the technical setup or post-processing. [h3]Novel:[/h3] We start the game with Victoria walking toward the MC, introducing herself as an AI, and him as a member of the Zenti Cult, on a mission to shape a galaxy according to their will. The MC, having recently regenerated, has lost all his memories. To learn how to operate his ship, he needs to recover a manual. Victoria scans the planet, and locates it on the ground in Chinatown (because it's in China, get it?) How did it get there? Nobody knows. He goes to Chinatown, finds the manual, then talks to Liu, a student. She ends up stealing the manual from him, which inspires him to go teach at her school to get it back. Liu immediately challenges his authority, forcing the player to give relaxed lessons until her comfort-stat is at least 10. And so, the grind starts. After getting the manual back, the MC can figure out his mail terminal, which kicks off the next chain of events. A long and mediocre story short, he'll go to Ancient Egypt to get 1000 slaves from the Pharaoh, and uses them to build cities, and Liu will become a companion after some fetch-missions. Finally, we'll meet Sun Tzu who we'll enlist to transform farmers into soldiers on one of our planets. While the setup/hook of this story is interesting, the writing fails to bring it to life. We'll be traveling back and forth between locations, with a plot-related amount of time passing in between. Days, weeks, months, or years can pass. Because of this, we lose our frame of reference. Wouldn't it make more sense to travel to the distant past when seeding a planet with a civilization, then travel forward in increments to see how this civilization is shaping up? Instead, the reverse happens here, with fantasy sci-fi explaining how two people can parent a civilization of thousands of people in the span of a few years. Similarly, the pharaoh giving the MC a thousand of her best slaves in return for him winning a fight, just feels uninspired. The MC even has the balls to lecture the pharaoh on the ethics of slavery, while he dumped his on an uninhabited planet with no food, shelter or resources, with the task of building him a city (which they do, miraculously). The game's lewd scenes feel empty and unearned. Players will need to buy an upgrade for Victoria before they can use her in lewd ways, and the MC will take the pharaoh after finding five gems for her. This would be fine for a porn-focussed game where plot is secondary, in TLoT, however, the player is expected to grind and to jump through many hoops before being served this content. [h3]Conclusion:[/h3] Due to the weirdness with the game's development timeline, and the dev having another Early Access game on Steam, I can't recommend buying this game. It's likely one of the two titles will be abandoned, or at the very least, to receive slow updates. With the writing and gameplay as it is, the game isn't fun, engaging, or interesting. Even if you're only interested in the lewd scenes you'll be disappointed. The few lewd scenes it has are of a mediocre quality, and gated behind grind. For a price of $11, this won't do. [hr][/hr] [b]Socials[/b] Interested in discussing AVN? 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