I'm probably pretty late to this thread, but here it goes anyway...
I love Baldur's Gate, I've been playing them since I was 10, and I have probably dumped a combined 10,000 hours into NWN and its sequels. I love these games. But the complaint I've had with them from the beginning, is that while DnD rules can be translated to real time with pause, DnD was designed with the assumption that you would have enough HP, spells, abilities, etc. for a couple of fights in a play session. Because combat is resolved so quickly, Bioware had no choice but to throw more fights at the player. Starting BG1 as a wizard with 4 hit points and 2 spells is objectively ridiculous. The NWN method of "rest whenever" and get all your spell slots back in between every encounter is also ridiculous. The only solution is to go back to basics and make combat slower.
I love that combat encounters feel more epic, because I'm not slogging through a dungeon full of 30,000 kobolds like I'm threshing wheat.
I'm sure I've posted this earlier in the thread, but I might as well say it again. BG1/2 were based on 2e rules, which were NOT turn-based. They were simultaneous movement, with initiative-based combat/action resolution. Turn-based was introduced in a late-2e optional expansion, and then in 3e.
So for BG1/2 RTwP was a good facsimile of the rules at the time, but NWN was not. I guess they continued with RTwP from what had been a successful product.
Personally, I do not find TB to be epic in the slightest in videogames; waiting 2 minutes doing nothing while 20 goblins wander around the BG3 temple taking potshots is about as exciting as watching paint dry. It's OK as long as there are no more enemies than party characters, but large groups of enemies are astonishing dull.
TB combat was probably implemented best in XCOM/XCOM2 by rarely having larger groups, and spreading them out so they appeared in waves, rather than all at once; but even with XCOM, I have never felt inclined to play the games again. I think I will always prefer a well implemented RT system ( that would be one that doesn't require 30,000 kobolds ).
