More games with time limits:

System Shock - on the highest "story" difficulty.
Star Control 2 - The bad guy will eventually start to conquer everything.
Jagged Alliance - Not really fixed time limit, but the enemy will take back sectors if you just sit and wait. You have to stay on your toes.

I hate time limits. For me that just kills the fun. I play games to have fun and relax, not to race against an arbitrarily delineated "Sorry, you lose because you decided to check out the game world" limit. This is especially egregious in my case since I tend to go through games a lot slower than the average player.

I just gave up on Fallout 2 (once again) after reaching the time limit... The only way I'm ever going back is with a speedrun guide so I can get the main quest over with as soon as possible. Yeah, not fun.

Might and Magic 2 is supposed to have a very generous time limit (100 years of in-game time, when each year is 180 in-game days), but it appears to not be implemented.

There's some evidence that World of Xeen is supposed to have a time limit, but it either isn't implemented or the implementation is buggy. With that said, your party members will age permanently as time passes (a mechanic I dislike).

Because devs' goal is to sell games, not to repel people from buying them. "Time limits" do the latter.

Leaving the game unpaused in real time game = skipping turns in turn based game.

From what I have seen Kingdom Come: Deliverence has time limit on parts of the main quest (and possibly some side quests). When you have to solve the murder case and you won't do anything it will be eventually solved by guys that are working with you and the storyline will move foward. But not every story segment has a time limit, so you can "pause" it in such moment and then it will be like other games without time limits.

It's not 100% what I'm talking here about, but it's a good example of a succesful recent game that employs time limits.

I would say that it doesn't make sense to have an open-world game with a main story that makes it sound like everything is urgent, and where every mission acts as if it's following immediately on the heels of the previous one. If a developer's gonna make an open-world game, they should either plot and write the story in such a way that the player character's main-"questline" progress, while perhaps made out to be important, isn't portrayed as especially time-sensitive, or else make the whole thing so intentionally goofy that even the most story-oriented player won't really mind the disconnect. (And no, game writers, "poorly though out and/or written" is not what I mean by "intentionally goofy".)

Clearly, most players don't care about such things, at least not enough to really affect their enjoyment of such games. But I can say that this is something that's always in my mind, too, when I'm playing any open(-ish)-world game with a heavy story element. "Why am I faffing about on rooftops/gathering herbs/playing carnival games/destroying random private property? I agreed to meet up with so-and-so to plan our next move so we could 'strike while the iron is hot'...[looks at genre-appropriate chronometer]...uh, five in-game days ago! Whoops. ...Well, what's a day or two more, really? That iron could scarcely get much colder at this point."

Fallout 2 had a time limit?

Well, it seems that my first question was answered: there are not many games like this, because people hate them.

But other, more complex questions remain: why do they hate them and more importantly - is such dislike really justified?

I still think that time limit on the main quest is an interesting idea and it can work if it's executed well.

Time limits suck.

You're welcome. :P

I know, but WHY do they suck?

I agree that if done right time limits can be effective. But not on the main quest of an RPG. RPG games are generally games where people take their time and try to notice EVERYTHING. When you have the game going "Hurry up. Hey! Listen! Time's running out!! Hey! You know you're running out of time?!"

Games are also a power fantasy. No one wants to feel like they aren't in control. I prefer games in which level grinding is a thing. I like the feeling of accomplishment in leveling up repeatedly. I also like being over-leveled for portions of games. With time limits I don't have the leisure to become the badass I want to be. I have to rush.

Other games work well with time limits though. Brawlers, fighters, sims, flight games... They can use timers to keep you on track and not wander too far. But in a game designed around wandering.... well, don't tell me not to wander.

Well, they're great for some people, but I don't work well under pressure.

I've only skimmed through the thread, but I'm under the impression that this has been answered.

RPGs are about freedom of exploration. Exploration of the unknown (that is : not knowing in advance if you'll find something or not), and thorough exploration (discovering all the game's content). Time limits punish you for playing the game to its fullest extent.

Either it punishes you randomly, for having failed to go in the correct direction out of sheer luck. Or it punishes you for not having stuck to following the (main quest's) clues, for having strayed to discover the contents that the designers have meticulously added to the game while asking you to ignore them.

It's okay for short games that are meant to be re-run lots of times ("Minit" looks cool, and I've enjoyed the fighting fantasy books), but huge games let you accumulate too much time on your dead ends, you're unlikely to restart them again and again. And it's a double bind. Look at that, you have a big carefully crafted world to [please not!] discover.

RPGs are supposed to be the opposite of the little red riding hood forest paths of our everyday lives.