Is Turn Based RPG's Dead?

Dont get me wrong, I like Fallout 3, love The Witcher and have a warm fealings fore Mass Effect PC, but being a old PnP RPGer, im kind of miss the old school "Turn Based" RPG's. I miss that can sit and enjoy a cup of coffig, while think out the best way to take out an enemy, and take my time.

Today I have only found them in Strategy/RPG hybrids as HoMM and Kings Bounty, the last good Turn Based RPG I can remember was ToEE, who had good combat but was bugt and was way to short.

Do any of you know if there are some not so well known Turn Based RPGs out there, or if there are some on the way? Or are this a dead genere?

I think the mainstream has abandoned it for now. It's not as sexy; and it's "Old" (as in how things used to be) so it 'must not be any good!' (read sarcasm there).

Off hand, Devil Whiskey is the only PC turn based RPG; pretty close to Bard's Tale. There's always Grimoire... heheheh... HAHAHA. If it ever comes out... like in 3010.

If you have a PSP, there's that D&D game on there. While there's no real 'exploration' part, and it's kinda slow paced, it is actually pretty good. Sadly, my PSP died before I could get far. I've heard the DS has some gems as well, but I haven't got one myself so I can't say for certain.

Well you could try Eschalon or any of the spiderweb games(usually the newest one because its basically a rehash of the older ones.) those two spring to mind as well as say the temple of elemental evil....

Turn-based looks pretty dead to me for now. Maybe there's hope for variations on the theme, though?

I'd like to play a game where there were unique kinds of turns for different situations. So you might have one kind of turn pertaining to how you enter a bar and another for how you negotiate a transaction, one for walking down the street and another for walking down a dark corridor -- stuff like that.

With better AI, combat turns could work a bunch of different ways, depending on who or what you're fighting and the weapons or spells being used. That could be really interesting, I think.

In my opinion, you'll never see another turn-based AAA or major retail release. Spiderweb and other indies will always be around.

Yep - as mentioned, if you want turn-based games in stores, look to the PSP and DS. Otherwise look to the indies.

(Geneforge 5 just released, completely rocks, BTW!!!)

Dhruin said:

In my opinion, you'll never see another turn-based AAA or major retail release. Spiderweb and other indies will always be around.

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HOMM5 is Turn Based, IIRC; and Civilization 4 is Turn Based. Both AAA titles; still in stores. Granted, not RPGs, but still a niche in a niche.

TBS might pop up from time to time, but turn-based RPG is done outside of "old skool" indies. Sad thing, that.

The Indies continue to use TB (PTL), so be like many of us here and SUPPORT them!!

Indeed except for kings bounty there is not much to be happy about.

I am making my own turn-based first person "AAA" title ( the only I knew of in development ), but it is almost impossible to find any grahpics artists these days

Civ is imho - apart from HOMM - the ONLY TBS game with a bigger auience - and therefore attractive to the publishers.

If they weren't they'd be quickly abandoned, too.

I can see a future for the Eschalon model - just as fast and just as slow as you want it.

Realtime with pausing for orders seems to be the main replacement and is still quite alive. The KotoRs had that, but among main stream RPGs RTP goes back at least to Baldurs Gate. Total War (turn based campaign, RTP battles) and Europa Universalis are some strategy games that use this.

GothicGothicness said:

Indeed except for kings bounty there is not much to be happy about.

I am making my own turn-based first person "AAA" title ( the only I knew of in development ), but it is almost impossible to find any grahpics artists these days

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I thought there are 1000s of freelancers out there, or even specialized studios for graphics assets?

Drakensang is in principle turn-based, but on the surface it's action-oriented real-time with pause.

One can make the game stopping after each turn, but this is imho no "true" turn-based combat.

this has been a heavy point of critiism by those who just wanted an "NLT 2.0" game rather than the action-oriented game Drakensang has become.

Zaleukos said:

Realtime with pausing for orders seems to be the main replacement and is still quite alive. The KotoRs had that, but among main stream RPGs RTP goes back at least to Baldurs Gate. Total War (turn based campaign, RTP battles) and Europa Universalis are some strategy games that use this.

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Drakensang also. You can slow it down to "Stop after every round". (What's that called, phase based?) That's enough for my taste.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

this has been a heavy point of critiism by those who just wanted an "NLT 2.0" game rather than the action-oriented game Drakensang has become.

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I'm pretty far into Drakensang. IMHO many of the criticisms by the DSA community are unfounded.
Until now (teleporter in the dwarf city) the game only has 50-60% action. That's low end according to today's standards. It's supposed to pick up in the last quarter though.

Gorath said:

Drakensang also. You can slow it down to "Stop after every round". (What's that called, phase based?) That's enough for my taste.

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For mine as well. Baldurs Gate pretty much nailed it with "pause on event" plus a forced pause.

As long as the amount of information the player has to take in is moderate I find this step forward compared to pure turn based. Party based RPGs are close to the optimal scale for such as system. A strategy game like Civ is slightly different since there is so much more that goes on.

I wouldnt mind if some of the main turn based strategy game franchises (like civ) offered consecutive execution of turns and pause on events during "peacetime" either, it would speed up the flow of the game without taking away much control.

It's an indy niche, but that must not be a bad thing - we might get more unique games that way - not many, but good ones.

Dhruin said:

In my opinion, you'll never see another turn-based AAA or major retail release.

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That seems to be the consensus and is probably right. But you never know. I have high hopes that include a return to things like turn-based mechanics.

Over the years working in high technology I've seen a lot of guys come out of nowhere with game-changing ideas others either never imagined or rejected completely, including the one we're using now -- very few people saw any business value in data communications. Honestly, it was considered a joke by nearly everyone in a position to make decisions about it.

Turn-based games can be fun and can be done very well on the computer. Chess, Monopoly and virtually every game of cards are all examples of that. But they aren't arcade games, and that's really the distinction here.

Doom proved that this genre and ones like it can be done very well in an arcade-game style where the player controls an identity whose basic objective is to stay alive in a dangerous setting. I loved Doom. But I'm beginning to resent its influence on CRPG.

I'd like to see this genre split and move forward in two different directions, one that continues the arcade-game approach while the other takes advantage of the PC as a thinking machine that can be used to interpret and facilitate RPG differently.