Turn-Based vs. Real-Time Combat

Which is better? If you automatically choose left, you're probably on the wrong blog.

          
Although I'm only blogging about one, I am currently in the midst of two CRPGs: Pool of Radiance on my PC, and Dragon Age: Origins on my Xbox 360. The latter was my wife's suggestion, after she had read some reviews online. We've been playing for a couple of hours maybe three times a week. Mostly, I play the game and she tells me what dialogue options she wants me to choose.

I confess I am a bit of a sucker for games with good conversations, and Bioware games (Baldur's Gate II, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) do it best. [Later edit: mea culpa. PS:T wasn't a Bioware game. I should have said, "the series of interrelated games by Bioware, Black Isle, Interplay, and Obsidian, starting with Baldur's Gate." Even then, I probably am somehow technically wrong, so if someone can come up with a better term, please offer it.] If the characters are well-drawn, it's fun to learn their back stories, and dialogue options give a lot of room for roleplaying. Dragon Age is very dialogue-heavy, but the responses are interesting and the voice acting is top-notch.
        

I prefer Aeryn Sun, but Irene wants me to romance this chick.

         
Nonetheless, between Pool of Radiance and Dragon Age: Origins, I can honestly say I'm enjoying the games about the same, and I enjoy Pool of Radiance a lot more when it comes to combat.

Dragon Age's real-time combat system gives a lot more combat options, of course. You've got missile weapons, melee weapons, and spells. You've got traps, and poisons, and acid bombs. Each of your four characters has a plethora of special attacks and defenses that you choose as you level up. (Some are passive and happen naturally; some you have to choose.) The animation is beautiful and the sound realistic. You can line up different "tactics" for specific scenarios (e.g., when an enemy gets in melee range, switch to a melee weapon; when a party member falls to 50% of his health, heal him) so you don't have to micromanage each character in combat.

But here's the difference between the two: in Dragon Age, most of the time, I have no idea what the #&*$ is going on. Seriously. Combat begins. My party members go into their tactics. I select one of the foes for my lead character to fight. I start using his special attacks. Meanwhile, there's a cacophony of sound as friends and foes meet each other and cast spells. Colors streak across the screen. My character starts sparkling for reasons I don't understand--am I being affected by an offensive spell, or did one of my party members cast a buffing spell? Sten starts calling for healing but then suddenly he's at full health even though I didn't heal him. Liliana starts saying "trap, trap, trap" even though we're in combat and it's unrealistic to disarm traps. My character is suddenly paralyzed and I don't know why. The screen shakes and I go sprawling against a tree--what hit me? Then, all at once, it's over, and apparently we're all alive.
        

Yes, it looks cool. I just don't know what's happening.

        
Oh, look, honey, it's 10:00 p.m.! You toddle off to bed while I head over to my computer and enjoy the relative tranquility of turn-based tactical combat.

Turn-based combat is dead. I know it. I can't even remember the last game that featured it. Pool of Radiance: The Ruins of Myth Drannor, probably, which was boring beyond belief, but not because of the combat. I actually really liked that part. Anyway, here, in these older games, I can still enjoy it.

These are what I see as the relative advantages of turn-based combat.

1. I know exactly what each character and enemy is doing. When a foe casts a spell, I can see what the spell is, and I know how to counter it. I never wonder why I suddenly got paralyzed, or knocked down, or killed.

2. You notice details. In turn based games, when a PC gets an extra attack, you actually notice it, and it makes the battle measurably easier because of it. I can pay close attention to how much damage various weapons are doing. The effects of special attacks are very apparent. Check out my fighter performing a "sweep" in the video below. Notice how satisfying it is to see all the enemies fall, one by one. In a real-time game, you'd blink and miss it.

3. In turn-based games, you can fight armies. I don't think the Xbox processor would handle all the AI necessary to plot a battle against four dozen kobolds, five trolls, two fighters, and a wild boar.

4. Turn-based games are more tactical. When each character's turn comes up, I can pick the best strategy based on the totality of the battlefield, not the one foe that happens to be in front of me.

Now, I've given plenty of high praise to real-time games. The Infinity engine games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale) were real-time. But they also had a couple of features that games like Dragon Age lack. First, you could set the game to pause when certain things occurred, like a character dying or an enemy casting a spell. This allowed you to check things out, re-evaluate, and issue a new set of orders. Second, the relatively large scale of the map let you see most of your enemies at once. In Dragon Age, the scope of what you can view is very limited, and it's almost impossible to get a sense of the entire battlefield. [Later edit: I just watched a video of the PC version of the game, and there are more camera options there, and you're not quite as close to the action, so perhaps my argument is more valid for the platform than the game.]

The battles I fought yesterday in the kobold caves produced some of the most satisfying, exciting, edge-of-my seat moments that I've ever experienced in a CRPG. I wish I'd saved my big "combat" posting for this battle. It was pitched at just the right amount of difficulty, and it came when my characters were at the sweet spot of character development--that point when you've raised enough levels to have a fair number of attack and spell options, but before you have so many that you get paralyzed with indecision and just rely on the same old standbys over and over. It came at a point when I had cool spells like "fireball," but not so many that I could just waste them.

Part of the source of the difficulty is that there are actually three battles back-to-back with no time to rest and heal (or save) in between. Then, shortly after, just when you think you're out of the woods, there's a fourth one of equal difficulty. During my first exploration, I blundered into them unprepared with low health, and I got killed in the second battle. Because I have a limited save policy, I had to start the caverns over again, but I knew enough to record it the second time.

The setup of the battle is that I'm exploring a series of caves that form a kobold kingdom, with the intent of stopping the kobolds from joining Tyranthraxus's minions. The video starts when I encounter a fighter named Fatima--a runway from a nearby barbarian tribe--who was a prisoner of the kobolds but had just escaped when I ran into her. She joins my party before the big fight.

Here are the highlights from the battle:

01:14: I know I'm about to go into battle, so I cast my available buffing spells.

01:50: Tyranthraxus's emissaries convince the kobolds to attack. Note that I'm facing dozens of kobolds, a handful of kobold leaders (they have bows), and four trolls.

01:58: First fireball (each mage can only memorize one). I accidentally cast it a little too far to the left, but look how awesome it is, clearing out that huge swath of kobolds and damaging the trolls.

02:52: See how Karnov's "sweep" clears out an entire front rank? Doesn't get much more satisfying than that. Octavianus has his own at 03:21.

04:03: I probably didn't need to use my second fireball here, but I was worried about killing all the trolls before the first ones started to regenerate and get back up.

04:34: Zink is a little sick of those two yipping bastards sniping us from the left, so he darts around the troll, behind their backs, and clears them out.

04:58: Karnov's backstab works perfectly on a troll!

05:06: They're surrendering, but Lame Brain isn't about to let them all get away.

After the first battle, there's nothing worth taking. Before I can do anything, the king fires some kind of missile weapon at us, causing pretty serious damage, and the second wave of kobolds attacks, this time pushing wild boars. The boars, note, have an annoying trait of getting back up after you've killed them.

06:40: What do we do with a front rank all lined up like that? Time for a wand of lightning bolt! (I should have started it with the boar instead of the kobold.)

07:17: The smug little dogs think I'm out of fireballs. Little do they know: I have fireball scrolls! Just look at that destruction.

09:20: A second lightning bolt (it turns out there were only three in the wand) finishes off two of the remaining three boars.

10:08: Lame Brain sucks up a backstab from a kobold so he can get into position to take out more of them with his sweep.

10:44: The AI has Fatima running around uselessly in a corner, which is probably good since she only has 4 hit points.

10:53: I fully intend to hit "YES" here and continue the battle so I can heal everyone before the third one starts. Lame Brain and Fatima are dangerously low. But I'm so used to hitting "NO" on this screen that I do it out of force of habit and lose my chance to heal before the third battle.

Tyranthraxus's emissaries are now thoroughly disgusted with the kobolds and join the third battle themselves. There are more trolls, kobolds, and boars.

11:30: Fatima goes down with a magic missile. I don't bandage her until 12:38.

11:43: By now, I'm fairly terrified of losing. I don't want to waste what I think is my last fireball scroll, but I don't see any other option.

12:11: "Hold Person" surprisingly works on one of the fighter/mages.

12:24: Sometimes I love my NPC swordsman.

13:05: Okay, I take it back. I don't always know everything in turn-based combat. I have no idea what that spell just did.

13:31: When this battle began, did you imagine that it was Zink who would go down? Lame Brain has been darting around trolls and boars with single-digit hit points for the entire battle. With 2 hit points left, he takes down the last troll at 13:51.

The battle is over. My party is bruised, and Zink is unconscious, but otherwise I came out pretty well. I use my "cure light wounds" spells to get everyone on their feet.

I want you to notice at this point that I don't save it. That's right: even after all that, I'm sticking to my one-save-per-map rule--a rule I have never regretted more than at 15:03. That pause you see just after the battle starts is me swearing and yelling at the walls. I'm sure I'm going to die here and have to do it all over again.

15:44: Thank Tyr. I have one fireball left. Most of the kobolds die in flames.

16:25: I hate to waste Lame Brain's turn, but he's almost dead. I quaff a potion of extra healing.

16:34: Lot of good that did.

17:03: The third and last lighting bolt is put to use. I feel like maybe I wasted it.

17:58: Koren, who usually sucks at this, triumphantly takes down a boar with a thrown hammer, and then because I forget to re-arm her, at 18:30 she takes down one of the last kobolds with her bare hands.

I made it through another one. I have no more healing spells. I have to use a potion just to revive Lame Brain. And I still haven't killed the kobold king! For all I know, he's hiding around the corner with another army. And I still don't save. Saving is for the weak.

19:56: I am sure I'm about to face another battle. I march grimly to my doom.

19:59: Ha! I'd normally consider this a "let down," but in the condition my party is in, I'll take it as a gift from the gods.

20:17: Interesting encounter. I guess I could have used him in the graveyard, but frankly the vampire wasn't all that hard.

20:33: I come across the kobold king's mostly-useless treasure horde. There's no way I'm trying to lug all that copper back to Phlan, let alone 50 chains of bones, 6 fungus-covered tapestries, and so on.

21:15: The pause is me consulting my map for the quickest way out of here.

21:57: Fatima takes off just as she was beginning to grow on me.

I emerge to the fresh open air and promptly save the game before resting and healing.

I say this without hyperbole: that is the greatest 20 minutes of CRPG playing that I have experienced since starting this blog, rendered all the more satisfying because I resisted save-scumming. You can argue about my tactics--I don't know why I didn't try "stinking cloud," for instance--but you can't argue with the results. And I don't think I will ever have a battle that sweet in Dragon Age.

I'm guessing one more posting to mop up the rest of the quests, and then one as I storm Valjevo Castle. I'm not looking forward to the ending of this one.