Picture this: 20 minutes spent setting up the perfect ambush. Every character is in position. They've oiled their weapons, concentrated on their spells, drunk their potions. The game is in turn-based mode of course, so that all the 10-turn timers don't start ticking down while the rest are being set up.

Finally it's time to spring the trap. Astarion makes the first strike. The enemies don't know what hit them.

But wait, what's this? Only Astarion is in combat, along with the dozen enemies. Suddenly they all start taking their turns against him. No matter, I'll just switch to Shadowheart for the healing and follow-up attack... oh wait, everyone but Astarion is no longer in turn-based mode and all their buffs are at half their remaining time already. Meanwhile Astarion is dead because the enemies freely take their turns before I can get my other characters into the action.

This also happens if there's a cutscene before a boss fight. A lot of the time, not every character will be part of the conversation, and while I talk to the big baddie, everyone else's buffs run out. This leads to the supremely immersion-breaking conclusion that I have to skip the cutscene to optimize my gameplay.

This is a turn-based game, so why does it so often feel like I have to frantically press buttons in real time? Basically...

1: Why do other party members get forced out of turn-based mode when a cutscene or battle starts for one character? Why doesn't the game even warn me about this?

2: Why can't I pause the action during combat so I can get the rest of my party into the battle if only one character accidentally got into combat, before that one character gets ganged up on and killed? It should be possible to advance enemy turns one by one.

3: Why do characters some distance away keep acting in real time during turn-based mode? Sometimes an ally is being killed and I have to rescue them, but going into turn-based mode only slows ME down while enemies just keep killing the ally in real time. This is very stressful.


I love this game but there's so much of the design that really seems to hate the player. Or do most people just not mind the way it is?