Did the aspect that you like actually take advantage of the combat system being RTwP? If the game were changed to turn-based while leaving most or all of the rest of the elements intact, would that improve or worsen the game, or change it at all?
Worsen. The basics of BG is using different spells and setups for different encounters, and they achieve making the greatest and most thought-out encounters feel special by having a lot of quote-unquote "trash" combat in between (and trash combat isn't bad in this sense). The amount of encounters or the creature diversity would be tedious as fuck in a turn-based game, where killing shit and finishing encounters take forever (see: Wizardry 8, a fucking fantastic game which is almost killed by the amount of tediousness through its slow-as-fuck encounter system).
Even better examples are the dungeon-crawlers Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II, with a veritable FUCKLOAD of monsters. Yet it is all 'k, because combat can be resolved quickly, and even replaying the same tough encounter 10 times is a fairly manageable affair. And fuck people who say: "lololol I just used the same tactic for everything". Barring that this is not an attribute of the games being RTwP, I sincerely doubt anyone not cheesing the fuck out of the game were able to complete IWD using the same strategy ad nauseum considering how much different shit that games throws at you, except maybe towards the end (where I almost didn't even cast spells, IWD endgame sucks
).
Do I love well-made turn-based games the most? In theory, yes. Yet IE-combat is, for me, some of the most enjoyable RPG combat I've tried - and that's even considering the fact that I detest AD&D compared to many other P&P systems.
Using RTwP allowed the IE-games to have an insane number of encounters and diversity without falling into some traps that some otherwise excellent TB-games have done.
TL;DR: I like RTwP for insane combat galore, I like turn-based for focused experiences with a maximum encounter-density somewhat like ToEE or KotC.
Good god. I leave for a couple hours and return to find that you've turned a perfectly good discussion of the virtues of phase based combat into another RTwP vs TB pissing match.
to settle this discussion i think it is important we first ask ourselves: what is rpg
... at $2.5M
