The Game That Wasn’t There
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I have lamented the fading of turn-based gameplay before, but I have to reiterate how galling I find its absence in Western RPGs. I play RPGs when I want a break from fast-action and twitch-reflex dependent gameplay, not to experience more of it. If I have lovingly crafted a party of characters, not being able to take advantage of their individual abilities to the fullest because I'm too busy trying to give orders to them all in the middle of being fireballed, or because my FPS reflexes aren't up to snuff, is a major disappointment.
Bethesda, at least, made some attempts to remedy this with the VATS system in Fallout 3, which was an improvement over Morrowind's pure-FPS combat. BioWare, on the other hand, incurs much of my ire for their copy-paste combat system they use in every one of their games. Yes, you can pause and issue orders, but the speed with which unexpected things happen means you can often lose a combat in one or two seconds without having a chance to try and salvage the situation. Controlling one character means you are either sitting in front of the enemies, clicking attack over and over again; waiting for the cooldown on your special moves to keep spamming them out; or sitting in the back waiting for the cooldown on your ranged attacks so you can do the same. Meanwhile, your AI-controlled party members might be doing what you told them to do through their limited scripting system, or they may be running into a wall while being peppered with arrows/lasers/fireballs. Dragon Age gives you the ability to program your compatriots to a degree, but even that is limited by the player's choices in investing points into unlocking the ability to lead them; this is absurd. Much like it was ridiculous for FFXII to force players to buy Gambits in a system that required them for party members to be useful, it is ridiculous that a player isn't automatically given the option to program their party to their own liking.
