Do you think there's any merit in the debate between Turn Based or Real Time With Pause?
I find that debate largely depends on how you played the original Baldur's Gate.
People who played on Story Mode tend to prefer Turn Based because Real Time with Pause goes by too quick and has too much moment to moment decision making
People who played on Insane tend to prefer Real Time with Pause because Turn Based is too slow and easy.
The problem really only comes when a game tries to do both, like Owlcat's Pathfinder games or PoE 2, both games that are based on the Infinity Engine. When you try to include both, the game logic of Real Time is severely hamstrung because it has to operate on the same action-based logic as a turn based system.
Real Time has to deal with things like Speed Factor, Cast Time, APR, all things that mess with game balance in a Turn Based setting. Slow and Haste mean different things in Turn Based.
Most of the really powerful spells in BG2 are so powerful because they have a cast time associated with them, and hitting a mage while they're casting without protections interrupts them. This is why BG2 doesn't have Counterspell, because every damaging spell is Counterspell.
In a turn based setting Horrid Wilting would just go out instantly and would have to be nerfed to compensate, and that's just less fun.
Kiting is also an important aspect of BG2. You can negate Lightning Bolt, for instance, by maneuvering your party out of the way of it's bounces. Or you can get completely fucked by a Wild Surge the exact same way to hilarious comic effect.
Tying the Real Time logic to a turn based framework removes all of these things because in order for the game to work on both it needs two entirely different databases for each character, spell, weapon and ability. And so often they simply don't have those things.
There's a Real Time with Pause mod for Baldur's Gate 3, and surprise surprise it doesn't work all that well because (for one it's an inelegantly designed mod bolted onto a game after the fact) but also because the action economy renders the majority of the appeal of Real Time with Pause absent. There's no kiting or interrupting, it's just a free for all.
The fact of the matter is, and I've said this many times before, is that Turn Based is more popular because it's much MUCH easier. Fights are slower, players can take their time, and you're never asked to manage more than one character at a time. Most of the difficulty is on positioning rather than the actual combat itself and failure is obvious because you're left a sitting duck. Real Time with Pause is more hectic, asks more of the player, and carries a much higher cognitive load so people crash out a lot faster and a lot harder.
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