Slow fight vs. fast fight : What's better ?

Yes, that grid was a point of frustration for me, too.

I was actually glad they had eleminated that in the other two games at last.

I am not a fan of fights which end within 15 seconds (just to pick a number) such as Titan Quest or Oblivion, I definitely prefer slow fights. Wizardry 8 is probably about the slowest I enjoy, BG2 has around the ideal for me (it can be fast for simple fights if I don't pause often as I do during most fights). POR 2 was too slow but on top of that there were too many of the same fight plus the environments weren't different enough so it felt very repetitive.

On the question - there is no right answer. Turn based combat does offer more choises, but comes at the heavy price of taking time for simple fights against easy enemies. I prefer TB combat, however. A great example is ToEE which has excellent, memorable, epic and satisfying combats against 20+ enemies that my party wouldn't have stood a chance in real time combat of any sort. Like the one the side entrance to the Temple or on the 4th level. Maybe its just that ToEE offers the best turn based combat?

Real time, on the other side does offer a more action-y feel and tends to deal with groups of easier to mediocre enemies faster. However, tougher fights can be a pain in the rear, since the health bar goes down alfully fast and if playing a spellcaster or another character with various needed abilites navigating through a dozen of spells without quick slots or good interface (which usually pair up) can lead to permanent loss of memory cells. Especially after a dozen loads. I hated Baldur's Gate 2 when my mages had a plethora of spells, but rarely used any since the interface was quite cumbersome.

On a another hand, neither tend to have ballanced and interesting combat for the levels of the character, usually. In BG or NWN a low level character/party had boring time when you know you can deal with the enemies, but a high level would deal with supposedly a tough fight an easy time - in my last BG2TOB play I dealt with Demogorgon in exactly 2 rounds so that I missed the entire thing, while in NWN I had to watch my lvl 1 Paladin do away with a few goblins or sth similar for several minutes of sheer boredom. Geneforge and Avernum series somewhat deal with this problem at lower levels, but the higher levels still had the problem.

Originally Posted by Arma
In BG or NWN a low level character/party had boring time when you know you can deal with the enemies, but a high level would deal with supposedly a tough fight an easy time - in my last BG2TOB play I dealt with Demogorgon in exactly 2 rounds so that I missed the entire thing,

Have you tried playing with David Gaider's tougher ToB boss-mods? It makes the fights much more interesting, I think.

Real time combat any day. Severance had the perfect melee system. If only someone would add a system like that to a rpg game…

Not saying turn based couldn't be fun. In fallouts it works perfectly But it can easily break the immersion that i'm there, not infront of my monitor giving orders to my character(s)

Yes, it's pretty much true that real time combat is far better for immersion.