The castle, is of course, off limits while the prince is missing, and your inability to visit the castle has its own consequences as well. Some quests are only available during certain times of the year, or become unavailable after a certain amount of time has passed. In some cases, a dungeon or outdoor area will fill up with monsters after you've left it alone for awhile to simulate the movement of monsters into lairs that are comfortable or attractive to their kind. The game runs in real time until you hit the enter key to pause the action. This way players are able to freely explore the world in a smooth scrolling engine and yet enjoy the benefit of a turn based combat where they can thoughtfully step through their combat decisions.
Players are also free to ignore turn based combat and fight monsters in real lime mode.
This works just as well, and we have plenty of disagreements around the office as to which method is more fun. First and foremost, we have an excellent 16-bit color engine designed to handle both outdoor and indoor environments equally well by swapping graphic code where appropriate. Second, our world is huge and extremely well detailed. Most of the quests tie to the story in one way or another, and like the maps and dungeons, none are left to the mercy of a random quest generator. On top of that, we think the art turned out beautifully, as well as the music, game sounds, and in-game movie clips.