I’m also pretty skeptical. Seems to me a combat system needs to be designed from the ground up to be turn-based or real time. How is Pillars of Eternity possibly going to compare to, say, Divinity Original Sin?
What comes to mind for me is Rebuild 3, the zombie survival game. You can play it with pausable continuous time, or in turn-based mode. But your characters end up wasting time in the turn-based mode that you would otherwise micromanage in continuous time. Basically, you sacrifice a ton of efficiency when you play in turn-based mode, because the game was obviously designed for continuous time.
But I’m also stuck in the rut of waiting to play Pillars 2 until I’ve finished Pillars 1. As if. It’s going to be even more unlikely that I’ll ever get through Pillars 1 if Pillars 2 turns into a solid turn-based RPG.
-Tom