Turn based is bad. It's tipped the balance from 'get' to 'not get' on a few games for me that might otherwise have been tempting.
...But turn based has the possibility of REALLY boring!).
I'm curious whenever someone says something along these lines - can you give some examples of turn-based games you found really boring? and for what reasons? Not that I disagree with you in some cases, often when it comes to, say, non dungeon-crawler JRPG turn-based combat, but obviously we're talking about different beasts here.
Turn based combat is always either boring or ridiculous. I've seen both.
The 'ridiculous' comes in when the bars advance very fast, there is no pause when it's your turn and you need to move through several menus to get at things like healing - which means you have no time to use any abilities except hit fast and hope like heck they die before you do.
The 'at least slightly boring' comes in everything else. With the traditional 'everyone stands in a line' JRPG approach, there is no tactical element whatsoever and no real strategy, either. Your group is either powerful enough, or they are not.
You can also waste an appalling amount of time on encounters that your group can swat in one hit while the game changes to 'battlefield' then you wait your turn, etc. You could have looted the body and been a hundred yards away in real time with pausing (By far the best system).
The simple fact is that most encounters in any RPG are just not going to be a challenge and turn based combat spins them out totally pointlessly.
Real time with pausing lets you stop to think when you hit one of the rare encounters that actually are challenging (Or not, if you think you can take it anyway). It is simply the best system hands down.
I can't even comprehend why any maker of a Western RPG would choose turn based combat now that modern systems can handle just about anything in the way of live action systems. It may be traditional in JRPGs, but combat has always been their worst feature by a very long way.
By far the best system I've seen in a JRPG is in Final Fantasy 12, and that's real time with pausing. If Western companies copy anything, it should be that, as the system itself is actually excellent (Better than the original Dragon Age, in fact, though not the mod that improves the tactics system).
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I'm with Alrik on Steam, BTW. If the game DEMANDS Steam in order for me to play offline single player, it is a no-buy from me. It is a particularly pernicious form of DRM that I will have no truck with.
If Steam is OPTIONAL and only required for multi-player, I have no problem with it.
