Why so much hate for Turn Based Games?

[dukethepcdr]

I love turn-based games. I don't have the best hand-eye coordination in the world and have trouble running and jumping or firing fast enough in some games. I like games where you have time to decide what you want to do then tell the character(s) what to do and watch them do it. I like table top games and I play PC and console games that do a good job of emulating them. I used to play actual table top games with friends when I was in college but I don't know anyone who plays the table top games anymore now that I'm graduated and moved away from where I went to school.

 

[KimMR251]

I do miss turn based games. This is probably because it's what I grew up on and perhaps it forms a sense of nostalgia? Who knows. Although I will say real time has grown on me, considering the majority of games I play today are based on real time (...if not all). I have to say, I do like real time's game play for the fact the game is always going and that it appears to take less time to get through something or that it just appears like it does since I do have ADD when it comes to slower paced games these days...I just won't finish them =X

 

[RonaldBakbacon]

I love turn based. I grew up on 'em and still play them on my tabletop every Saturday. I think this is where my experience in tabletop helps; watching and waiting during a battle comes naturally to me and FEELS natural because of my experience in turn based combat. I suppose, in all honesty, I've trained my brain to not realize that I'm playing a game, even when I know I am and the game sucks at lying to me about its status as a game in the first place! To put it in REALLY nerdy terms, the game consistently rolls a natural 2, but I always roll ones.

That's just my idea. I should note that some turn based games really suck at immersing even my brain. But I've never had that problem with Final Fantasy.

Of course I'm also a fanboy, so take this all with a grain of salt.

 

[Blu3Forever]

there are other games which are turnbased which aint RPGs, look at Advanced Wars which is a great franchise, the best turnbased games around infact.

Besides, if you like snail paced turnbased strategic/rpg games your not really going to like the mindless frantic button bashing most action games offer and vice versa.

 

[The_Toe_Bighter98]

I am so not reading all these pages.

So who cant wait for Biowares spiritually successor to Baldurs Gate, Dragon Age? Who is more excited that they have said that its a blend of Baldurs Gate and A Song of Ice and Fire?

 

[tobyornottoby]

Skies of Arcadia, while all-round a terrible game which I would never recommend (more on that shortly) was great for this, and hence got 80 hours of my time.

what what what? why is that a terrible game?

1. The setting. Pirates are awesome. Age of Discovery is awesome. The game world here is so diverse and living and accurate ^^ cape good hope, industrial revolution england, moby dick, etc
2. The characters. More believable, less black-white or angst that in others. Probably because the design team was all women?
3. The combat. It's turn-based sure... but I enjoyed it, the shared special attack points made it strategic enough
4. Number of characters in combat. Hurray! The story was set up in such a way that the number of characters in your party never exceeded the number of characters you could use in battles. Absolutely LOVED this gimmick

Skies does just about everything wrong; it has an obscene rate of random encounters, most of which can be defeated in the first turn after about half-way through the game when you start being able to do even the lower-powered special moves on the first turn (interestingly, I have two friends who rank it among their favourite games, and another who's currently searching for a copy because she loves random encounters; make of this what you will). It also has a cliched, moronic, facile, happy-clappy plot and protagonist, and the few fights that aren't stupidly easy are broken and near-impossible, and I recognise that none of these things are atypical of the genre; about the only thing it really has going for it is the prettyness of the design work and special effects, and even those are graphically dated.

random encounters: ok agreed, that's bad!
difficulty level: it's good! I like how normal battles are sooo easy and some bosses are sooo hard
rank among favorite games: agreed!
plot: true somewhat, I listed setting and characters among my favorites but the story isn't that special indeed. I don't think it's bad. It's pretty good with some moments. It's just not great
girls liking random encounters: yup that's true for some reason they do :s

but I see some different tastes, most of your points are about the gameplay and most of mine about the world only thing I really agree with is random encounters ><

 

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I think Yahtzee said it best about turn-based combat in his review of Super Paper Mario, it's about as compelling as using the toolbar in Word.

Largely, turn-based combat is tedious and time-consuming. I can see that slowing down combat to make it into more of a strategy game would be interesting, but most of the time it's poorly executed. And this varies from game to game. Some games have you set up what each character in your party is going to do a few seconds before their turn actually comes up, which can be pretty goddamned annoying if the target you'd selected dies or runs off and you helplessly watch your retarded barbarian swing his Great Axe of Skull Cleaving at empty air.

But, often, there is no strategy involved beyond making everyone hit the dancing goblins as much as possible while having someone heal up or resurrect the others every other turn. In fact, healing magic just plain sucks because all it does is lengthen the process since your party lasts long, so the enemies need to be tougher to provide a challenge. I suppose it would be alright if you had options beyond "I hit him" but you don't, really. It's just Rock'em Sock'em Robots, only much worse.

By process, I do mean fight, and it's a dreary experience. Every time a character gets and action, there's a brief animation while they take that action. The first couple times, it's kind of neat, but before too long, you start wishing you could skip it like expository dialogue. Especial stuff like those Summons of GFs or whatever they're called in Final Fantasy.

So, mostly it's a balance issue, I think. Even minor fights seem to go on for hours and the amount of damage you can take and dish out is just ridiculous. Doing limit breaks where you do 99999 points of damage for twelve hits in a row and the boss still has three quarters of its hit points left, then there's something wrong here.