Well, the most boring, tedious, repetitive, brain-dead combat I've ever encountered in a videogame was in D:OS.
If that is the case, I would say it is derived more from the encounters being too easy. Trying it solo or in MP, it was not the case. But with full group by level 14 or so (on Tactician), on my first play through, combat was too easy. The combat in any game can be so described if it is easy enough.
This is a good point, one that I would agree with generally (applying to any game). But given how much I dislike the very concept of TB combat, for me it was actually a blessing to have combat be easy in D:OS, and in fact I even learned later into the game to deliberately lower the difficulty level all the way down just before a combat encounter just so I could breeze through the combat as quickly as possible.
I think one way to bridge the gap between TB fans and RTwP fans is indeed to make combat encounters in cRPGs (a) fewer in number, and (b) smaller in scale and scope (including no artificial bloating of enemy hit points or immunities). If combat itself were a smaller part of the game/lesser focus of the game, then both sides may be able to live with the opposite combat system because they get enough enjoyment out of those parts of the game beyond combat. But if combat is the most important experience of the game, the core experience of the game, then speaking just for myself I have to say I cannot tolerate TB combat. As an example, I enjoyed playing T:ToN even though it has TB combat. Why? Because combat itself was a much smaller part of the game; combat was not the central feature of the game. So even though the combat was terrible, this was offset by all out-of-combat parts of the game that I personally found very enjoyable.
I like a lot of combat and exploration, with a good story to tie it all together. But, yes, if a game was to have very little emphasis on combat, I don't think it would matter which system was used.
