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Edit: Staff contacted me an basically told me that I'd have to bump up my rating for all quests I have ever reviewed by one star. Note that this does not reflect my own opinion on the matter, or the quest, but just that it was something I was made required to do.
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I'm on the fence if I should give this quest a rating of 3 or 4. But at the end of the day, I find ratings to be pointless in the first place, if you want my opinion, read my review, not the rating!

So, The Flow of Time. Is it a good quest? Yes. Is it worth playing? Yeah. Certainly, I think it has a few flaws, but you'd be hard pressed to find a quest that does not have flaws.

So what is flow of time? It's a very linear quest that is inspired by the Oracle games. Most dungeon features puzzles mechanics that are unique to it and follows similar logic to the ones found in the oracle games dungeons. Though, the gimmick in level 2 and 3 are very similar, and some dungeons don't have, or don't focus on, these puzzles. Dungeon design is not incredibly streamlined, there is a fair amount of backtracking and running around in circles to progress. Most people probably won't have a huge problem with this though, but it's worth baring in mind that the dungeons are fairly long as a result.

The overworld is not your standard fare either, the majority of it is segregated into sub areas, and connectivity is fairly low. You can still get around quick enough via the games warp system, so it's not an issue per-say. But get from point A to point B (sans warping,) is as roundabout at the end of the game as it is at the start.

Combat wise the quest is now more in-line with a reasonable experience, you get the defence upgrade at a much more realistic time and the difficulty curve scales much better than previous versions of the quest. Magic management has also been made more reasonable, and the candle is a much more viable weapon then it previously was. Some of the scripted bosses come across as a bit unrefined, but they work, and it's certainly more original than just using the standard ZC bosses. The ball and chain guys over flood the final part areas of the game though, so those get a bit dull.

Graphically the quest is what you'd expect out of an Oracle game. And I mean that literally; All overworld palettes are straight up the same as those in the Oracle games and most graphics are just lifted from it. The dungeon palettes are new though, so those spice things up a bit. But generally, graphically you're not going to see anything too original in this quest, but it still looks good. The tilework is a bit hit and miss, nothing stands out as too amazing, and a few places look a bit off. It's not too problematic graphically, but some of the tilework do get in the way of the gameplay.

There is a fair amount of obfuscation in the screen design, which forces you to take long ways around things. This makes travelling around less enjoyable than what I would have wanted it to be. Steps have been taken to minimise the issue with this in later updates of the quest, but certain screens I feel should just have gotten a complete redesign. This is one of those things that people in generally are not going to take notice of, but it still hampers the experience; So I have no doubt that most people won't even notice this when they play the quest.


I may come of as harsh here, but I'm trying to describe what the quest has to offer. And I do genuinely think it's a quest worth playing. But it's worth baring in mind that the quest is very dungeon heavy, and that exploration is very low priority in the experience offered.

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You can read my old review from a previous version of the quest below. Though bare in mind that a lot has changed since then, so it's not accurate to the quest that you can download here.