A relic from a bygone era
I didn't like Baldur's Gate 2 when I played it. The game practically forces you to pause and micromanage all your party members, and that's just not fun for me. If I want that, I'll go and play a turn-based RTS. That's not what I want from an RPG. I want something like, uh... KOTOR. I'm not gonna say I never paused the game at all in KOTOR, but it was generally in a few key spots, like during a tense boss fight.
The whole pause every two seconds to issue commands to everyone, then unpause to experience one or two seconds of real time combat, then pause again... that shit is just incomprehensible to me. Why would anyone want to do that? That doesn't feel like a game to me. Look, if you like turn based combat like that... then just go all the way and use one of those actual turn-based combat mechanics, like from Persona 4 or the Final Fantasy games. Well, I mean... I've never played a Final Fantasy game, but I figure their turn based combat works like that. Ya know, like Pokemon's combat. It's just all turn based and works fine if that's what you want. But don't give us this bastardized half in, half out schtick. Two seconds of real time combat, followed by a pause and going back to the turn based thing... that's just torture. It doesn't feel good, and if you want real turn based action, it doesn't deliver. Who wants to manually pause every two seconds? It's not what I would consider to be good gameplay, even if it is an old game.
And the isometric view... yuck. Just a terrible choice. Again, something that's fine in an RTS, but feels wrong for an RPG. If I'm some strategic god commanding a hundred different units and mining fucking vespene gas on some outposts... I want that isometric perspective. If I'm role playing as this guy with armor and a sword, talking to people... I don't want that isometric perspective. I want to be down, close to my character. We're roleplaying as a single character, right? We're not role playing as an entire team of characters, because who would want to? How can you actually role play as multiple people, with multiple psyches and personalities, it doesn't make sense. We're one person, indivisible, and the camera should follow that one person. Having it floating up in the air looking down on us like God, with a limited frontal perspective is irritating. In real life, we can see far out into the distance, unless there's a wall or obstruction blocking our view. With an isometric view, our frontal viewing distance is cut off at an arbitrary 25 or 30 foot range. This just doesn't work for me.
Lastly, having a lower armor class is apparently better, which makes no sense.
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