I find it strange that the need to pause is so often raised as a problem with RTwP. As I say, RTwP is built for pausing. You are supposed to pause all the time. Sometimes people say that's stupid because then the action doesn't "flow", but that seems to be nonsensical, since that would rule TB right out. I don't understand why "pausing all the time" is "fighting against the system". The system is real time with pause. As far as I'm concerned, pausing all the time is playing the system as intended. I'm not sure why spending a lot of time paused is any more frustrating than, say, spending a lot of time staring at a TB game with everybody stuck in a heave-ho idle animation.
As I say, if I had to pick one, I would pick TB. But I am simply confounded that people often hold RTwP up to a weird yardstick - sometimes it's beaten for not being real-time enough, sometimes it's beaten for not being turn-based enough.
If I'm to spend most of my time in pause, wouldn't it make sense to have a system built for
that? Say, a PwRT rather than a RTwP? That would pretty much be a phase-based system: "paused" decision phase followed by RT action resolution.
It's also clear that RTwP isn't actually made to be paused frequently. Think of game sounds. You unpause, and the middle of many sound effects assault your ears at once in a nondescript cacophony right before you pause again, like you just opened a nasty toilet, took a involuntary whiff and closed it right back. Fractions of animations play. One wonders, why the fuck did they animate full moves and produce sound effects if I'm only to see and hear steps of it? Assuming I'm the one playing and pausing instead of letting automation play on its own? The whole thing is built for RT, aside from character abilities.