Is turn based any good in this game?

[Resolute]

I initially avoided this entire series due to the RTWP, but I've heard it has a Turn Based option these days. How is the game as a turn based game?

[Silamon]

It's the only way I played this game and kingmaker.

I used the turn based mod in Kingmaker before it became official even.

It's mostly great, but there are a few fights that are really annoying in turn based. Mostly ones that have a lot of npcs on both sides get annoying as it cycles between them, for those I think its better to just do rtwp on for a while.

[Cutlass Jack]

I only play it turn based. I like it much better than RTwP.

There is only like one fight I turn real time on for in the game. But the game lets you swap between turn based and RTwP at the touch of a button whenever you want. Which is pretty nice.

[IgnatiusJ.Reilly]

Yeah, it's good, but one can definitely see that the game was made for RTWP, given the numerous trash fights. It's great to have turn-based though for the more interesting fights. I had to use a mod when I played Kingmaker, as it didn't originally have a turn-based mode.

[Oku]

The game is designed with it in mind. RTwP is more for clearing out trash mobs. As the game scales up and gets harder you'll want to play it more slow and methodical.

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

You can just switch on and off whenever you want.

[Dragon Master]

I've been playing both.

I find the game is much better in turn-based mode as you know exactly what is happening and can set the pace for the mechanics.

However, there are so many trash mobs that sometimes it is just faster to order everyone to attack, put it in RTwP mode and have the fight over in 30 seconds or less.

[Sunday_Driver]

I play turn base combat only. It's pretty good especially for newcomers as it gives you time to plan each of your steps during combat. However it is very time consuming especially during big battles against many opponents and/or when spread over bigger area.

[StickyFingaz]

rtwp is a real mess in this game. Im a huge rtwp games fan but Pathfinder is not very good.

[Gracey Face]

Despite what a couple of other people have said the game was not built for turnbased. The tabletop rules are, but the videogame wasn't. SO a lot of synergies put in to the game do not work (for example there's a mythic ability that is meant to allow you to get free elemental damage on every hit as in realtime each follower will hit once, then another follower, then another, so they each get that bonus damage, but then in turnbased because one follower uses all of his attacks at once you only get the bonus damage once.

Also the turnbased mode is janky and glitchy. For example casting touch spells flub out half the time because touch spells involve moving and the game doesn't know how to handle that.

The turnbased mode is an adaptation by Owlcat of a popular mod for the first game and was not an intended feature of either game. The games were meant to play like the old infinity engine D&D games (RtwP).

[AlexMBrennan]

But the game lets you swap between turn based and RTwP at the touch of a button whenever you want.

Wrong, you are not able to switch to RTwP during the incredibly annoying Shrine of the Three fight (what could be more fun than very slowly fighting endless waves of cannon fodder while slowly advancing through a maze and disarming traps?)

[StickyFingaz]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Despite what a couple of other people have said the game was not built for turnbased. The tabletop rules are, but the videogame wasn't. SO a lot of synergies put in to the game do not work (for example there's a mythic ability that is meant to allow you to get free elemental damage on every hit as in realtime each follower will hit once, then another follower, then another, so they each get that bonus damage, but then in turnbased because one follower uses all of his attacks at once you only get the bonus damage once.

Also the turnbased mode is janky and glitchy. For example casting touch spells flub out half the time because touch spells involve moving and the game doesn't know how to handle that.

The turnbased mode is an adaptation by Owlcat of a popular mod for the first game and was not an intended feature of either game. The games were meant to play like the old infinity engine D&D games (RtwP).

Pathfinder system itself is a pain to play RTWP, unless you play a straight forward melee. Classes such as shaman, magus, kineticist etc. are totally unplayable for me. Things such as: spend one alteration point to get this or that elemental bonus, then switching between different types of passive skillz, is very annoying to manage. Then the numerous numbers of buffs. You just end up pausing at every second clicking and clicking and clicking different skillz, a real mess. Sometimes you click to issue and order, character doesn't move, so you see the order has not been issued, so you click again. You just take all of your time looking around the screen to see if everything's working properly. Everything feel also slow-mo, reload takes forever, casting takes forever.

Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 have a top notch RTWP system because of the combat rules/system itself. I was just finishing a PoE2 playthrough when I bought WOTR the next day and went for RTWP. I can't express how janky it felt compared to the smoothness of PoE2.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by StickyFingaz:

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Despite what a couple of other people have said the game was not built for turnbased. The tabletop rules are, but the videogame wasn't. SO a lot of synergies put in to the game do not work (for example there's a mythic ability that is meant to allow you to get free elemental damage on every hit as in realtime each follower will hit once, then another follower, then another, so they each get that bonus damage, but then in turnbased because one follower uses all of his attacks at once you only get the bonus damage once.

Also the turnbased mode is janky and glitchy. For example casting touch spells flub out half the time because touch spells involve moving and the game doesn't know how to handle that.

The turnbased mode is an adaptation by Owlcat of a popular mod for the first game and was not an intended feature of either game. The games were meant to play like the old infinity engine D&D games (RtwP).

Pathfinder system itself is a pain to play RTWP, unless you play a straight forward melee. Classes such as shaman, magus, kineticist etc. are totally unplayable for me. Things such as: spend one alteration point to get this or that elemental bonus, then switching between different types of passive skillz, is very annoying to manage. Then the numerous numbers of buffs. You just end up pausing at every second clicking and clicking and clicking different skillz, a real mess. Sometimes you click to issue and order, character doesn't move, so you see the order has not been issued, so you click again. You just take all of your time looking around the screen to see if everything's working properly. Everything feel also slow-mo, reload takes forever, casting takes forever.

I personally prefer turnbased too, but the game is made for RtwP and not for turnbased. It's really just that simple.

Also pausing every second so you can mess around with spells is the whole point of RtwP. I don't see the appeal of it myself but... I do know that in the D&D system because it can allow you to fire effects in orders that wouldn't be possible turnbased you get extra power, but that's the only benefit I can see.

[Gralzeim]

I generally play with turn based but will switch to real time with pause when a fight has a lot of NPCs involved or when it's a fight my team would roll over easily. Turn based is definitely more fun for me, it just feels better.

Real time with pause would feel a lot better if this game had some sort of AI management system for each party member, like some other real time with pause RPGs have, but you can only really do extremely basic individual AI customization for each party member. One ability/spell set to auto-use, and whether you want that member to hold in one spot or not. And that's...basically it, way too much fiddly micromanagement otherwise.

Would be nice if you could set things like 'use limited abilities' 'use unlimited abilities' 'stay at close/medium/far range' 'use potion if at low health' 'heal ally if they're at x% health' and other really basic settings that are common to other RTWP RPGs.

[Crusader993]

Being able to play WotR turn-based is one of the reasons I love this game.

Back when Kingmaker didn't have a turn mode after release, I stopped playing. And started again when they added the round mode afterwards. In the action mode, you simply have far too little overview and control... and everything is far too hectic for me.

[Silamon]

Real time with pause is cool and all but I just never really liked it. It's the reason I barely played pillars of eternity or Tyranny.