I wholeheartedly disagree with the above. "Motricity" spoils combat for me. Tactics and strategy and planning all come to naught if your fingers can't switch fast enough among keys.
This is to say nothing about the fact that RT systems have much less choice because players cannot take the time to process choices and think strategically, when combat devolves into APM.
Which is evinced by the person comparing RT combat to "Autobattlers", the genre that is quite literally devoid of tactics and strategy because it's just the game playing itself.
I suppose the immersion is that in actual combat, you're not able to just pause time and take turns whacking each other.
RT is more "Immersive" due to being a more dynamic affair more closely matching real world engagement.
Though immersion is beyond merely mimicking real life. It's about fitting into the setting as a whole. The immersiveness of TB/RT combat will depend a lot on how its implemented and how much it sticks out based on your own personal preferences (Which is generally the backbone of "Immersion", it's a lot to do whether it gets in the way of your enjoyment or not. Which is why many things that would be "Realistic" get cut from games because it's not immersive to, for example, have to go to the bathroom with your characters in a game constantly)
But hate the combat. No planning, no strategy. Only frontal assault and then tapping keys to try to parry or dodge attacks so you can live till the end of the battle. Fortunately they made a very-easy setting that greatly diminishes damage from enemies, so people who can't keep up with the tapping can take a big beating and still get through the battle. Of course a lot of battle options are excluded, basically I can only dodge successfully. Parrying is just too hard, which makes counterattacking impossible, and a lot of other options and abilities are unreachable because of this.
Ironically, I hate E33's combat for the entirely opposite reason.
I
am very much capable of hitting parries. Which is the problem. The entire combat system, character's having unique mechanics, choices in character building... All of it simply melts away under the thumb of "Stack nothing but damage stats and just parry everything lmao"
Like, there's no reason to improve health or defenses when Parries simply make you take 0 damage. All these unique mechanics characters have, most of the time don't come into play because enemies die to parries before they become relevant. All the traditional JRPG systems in place? Irrelevant since 90% of the time it just comes down to parry everything the enemies do (Though it's not like JRPG's have been traditionally great about their systems... Like, most of the Final Fantasy games are just spam Attack on every character until a boss fight)
It's why I much prefer Shadow Hearts: Covenant's active combat system for a TB game. Since you still actually use all the mechanics of the game, you still plan out your actions like a normal JRPG. You just have the (Customizable) ring system to use when taking actions. So even if you take out trash enemies by just spamming regular attacks, you still actually engage in the game (Unlike when I replayed all the Steam releases of FF where combats I just flipped onto 5x Speed and toggled on auto-attack and then just tabbed out while combat resolved)
in act 2 i find myself confronted with 6 hostile rounds against 1. Every hostile round has multiple attacks that I must dodge, let's say it works 2/3rd of the time, but even with the "low" damage, my PC can never survive long enough to destroy the 3 opponents. What's the fun in that ?
Ironically, this is actually a showcase of E33's combat being a "Worst of both worlds" affair.
The TB nature meaning that enemies always get turns and always are engaged in pre-determined groups. Unlike a proper RT action game where you have the option to reposition to limit enemies ability to attack, as well as techniques like luring enemies out one by one.
Then the RT nature is adding on that fundamental need to use active defenses to survive. Unlike a proper TB game where most things are designed for you to be able to simply face tank (There are exceptions like specific fight mechanics or old school FF games where bosses took double turns and if they decided to randomly attack the same character twice they'd die)
In any dedicated style of game, such an issue wouldn't occur. But the melding of 2 antagonistic styles creates these situations. Which mirrors a lot my opinion about RTwP and how it takes on the worst aspects of TB and RT to create an overall worse and less fun system than either style would normally present.
Thank god there are at least still a handful of games that rely on real tactics and planning and then let you execute it within the fantasy world you're playing in, without RT interference, be it from eyesight, fingermovement,hardware etc...
Aye. Though there's a prevailing trend for a lot of games (4X Strategy games especially) to take on the shallow and awful HoMM style combat which sucks. It's such an absolute garbage system with so little tact or nuance and absolutely ruins games. Like I couldn't stand playing Age of Wonders 4 because this combat system is just not fun at all (And unlike say, Endless Legend where the auto-battle function is pretty cromulent and just adds a smidge of tedium for having to select it every combat. AoW4's auto-battle was utterly useless, it literally would lose every single battle as a total loss, even against tiny armies that I'm 20x more powerful than)
I would prefer if they had better systems with more depth if they choose to shoehorn in manual unit combat.
