Finished the first palace last night. 8 1/2 hours in. I actually ended up passing the deadline because of the threat card requiring a whole day to effect the target. The game then rewinded all of my progress about one week. I went back to the palace thinking "no way are they gonna make me do all of that again!" I was actually thinking about bushing the game entirely but I loaded up my last save and was lucky enough that it put me at exactly 3 days before the deadline so I didn't really lose any progress. If it wasn't for that save I would have been furious. Moral of the story, you don't have to rush through the palace but don't take your seeet time either. It's better to finish early than to lose all of your progress. I would have had to redo several hours of gameplay if it wasn't for my save point.