First off – I’m not asking about any jRPGs. I can’t get into the genre. I’m sure they’ll get brought up anyway, which is fine, but my question is about the US/Euro style.
I’m having trouble finding any non-indie turn based RPG games coming out (read that as: I googled around and didn’t see nuttin).
While I don’t mind the occasional real time hack n slash, I always preferred the leisurely pace of the turn based RPG. I’d hate to think that this genre is dying, and that turn based strategy games are the last line of defense. Then again, I’m sure people felt the same about sailing ships in the 19th century.
Anyone with better awareness or greater googlefu know of a new one coming out that I can drool over?
You should have put this in the thread title so we could just shake our heads and have a short pitiful chuckle at your naiveté as we scrolled past. Because once people waste time clicking on and reading your thread, they’re just going to have to mock you.
Anyway, the answer is no, just as it has been for the last ten years.
The last one that I know of that was close was KOTOR… but it’s Bioware’s turn-based style which is semi-realtime if you don’t pay attention. Interestingly, Final Fantasy 12’s battle system is similar in some ways. Although the game is in a different style.
I said this in the other thread, but pause-and-issue-orders is close enough to turn-based for me. All Bioware’s games since (and including) Baldur’s Gate have been pausable real-time, yet they play (for me) like turn-based. If you want AAA RPG lovin’ in the turnish dialect, get friendly with the pause key.
What about Temple of Elemental Evil? I know everyone hated it when it came out, but did they ever patch it up to something decent? It kind of fell off my radar.
Crappy campaign, crappy quests, slightly buggy, poor performance no matter how fast your rig on certain spells but the best tactical D&D combat hands down. If you can look past the negatives, which I thought was easy to do, then it’s great.
I’m not sure if it’s just the severe lack of RPGs to satisfy my role-playing urges, but I’m going to take that as a ringing endorsement and go track down a copy. I’ll probably have to amazon or ebay, though, unless I can find a digital distribution site that sells it.
I should also say that I so very much want to like NWN2. I enjoyed the first one a great deal, but I just can’t make myself have fun with 2. A large part of it is performance, but if I cut off shadows, things are pretty smooth, and shadows are not really important, so I don’t miss them. Still, there’s just something about it that feels wrong, and I can’t put my finger on what it is. It might be the camera, maybe it’s the interface, I don’t really know. All I know is I continue to reinstall it and try and try to get into it, and everytime I give up and go away…until I come back and repeat the process all over again.
Of course, this problem would be solved entirely if someone would just kidnap Garriott, force him to stop making bad MMOs (a bit redundant, that) and get back to creating amazing RPG worlds to get lost in. Getting the Ultima rights back from EA would be favorite. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that and world peace, alternative energy, and dozens of AAA non-Q4 game releases.
Freedom Force 1&2 maybe? There’re not strictly turn based, but are close to it provided you step the speed down a notch or two and use the right click “pause and give an order” UI.
As far as strictly turn based goes, there isn’t really much. Silent Storm maybe? I’ve enjoyed a bit of Hammer and Sickle as well, although it’s unforgivingly hard.
None of these are new of course, just sorta recent. :-/
Pauseable real-time isn’t much like genuine turn-based systems. In theory, you could play it exactly the same way, but in practice I find that pausable games encourage me to just issue attack commands and let the battle resolve itself, occasionally pausing to retarget or order spellcasting. When I end up in a genuinely difficult combat, such as fighting a mage in Baldur’s Gate, I spend a lot of time pausing, ordering spellcasters to cast spell X and buff Y, unpause, and then pause again very shortly to order more spells or react to the enemy mage’s responses. The game basically goes back and forth from hands-off most of the time to poorly implemented micromanagement during hard fights.
By contrast, turn-based games, like Temple of Elemental Evil, get me thinking about oppurtunity costs over what my PCs should be doing each turn. If a combat is routine, this isn’t very important, and it ends up being somewhat slower as I go through my party and issue simple attack commands and then watch my enemies actions. However, if I end up in a tough fight where I have to use up resources like spell slots, potions, and limited-use abilities, it gets more interesting while I decide what spells to cast and who my melee characters should beat up, while at the same time having a better understanding of the consequences of, say, letting that bugbear shaman get another turn, or stepping back to drink a haste potion instead of attacking again, which are less obvious in real-time due to the continuous time system.
In short, pausable games are better for routine combat where I don’t have to do much, but whenever I get into a hard fight I get into a struggle with the interface while simultaneously having a harder time figuring out what commands would be most effective at any point in time. Having played through Baldur’s Gate II, I can say fairly confidently that I would have enjoyed the game more if there were more hard fights and a turn-based system than the large number of fairly easy combats with a pausable system; as it is, I found the combat in ToEE to be much more interesting despite it’s multitude of severe problems that made it a terrible game overall.
A lot of us thought ToEE was terrific. I’m with Gendal on this. Very lackluster in terms of quests and story. Absolutely awesome combat. Definitely was a bit buggy, although I played it through pre-patched without many problems.
In situations of complex battles, I prefer thinking the “End Turn” button to be the same as pressing Space bar twice. It works out the same, everyone can take a turn and voila.
I think I even recall there being an option in one of the NWN games to toggle auto-pausing after every turn, but that was too annoying for my tastes.
I much prefer pausing the game myself, since it lets me get through the routine combat much faster, and that’s also the biggest reason for why I hate JRPGs (and plus, the unskippable animations are annoying).
How about an auto-resolve system a la Age of Wonders (I think) or other TBS games? Can’t think offhand if this has been implemented in CRPGs, or which ones if it has.
edit: To take care of “too easy” battles, I mean. (Yeah I know, another way would be simply not to design any, although it can be difficult to do that without heavily restricting the gameworld or rubberbanding a la Oblivion.)
