vv221: Yes, compared to the standard AAA budget, it is actually an "indie" budget.
That the result has been games *better* than the AAA published at the same time doesn’t change this fact ;)

hucklebarry: Add Divinity: Original Sin to the list. In fact, it went the opposite direction. The franchise was action RPG and then switched over to turn based in the last release.

McDon: Xcom 2 seems to not be treated as highly, which makes AAA TB games' future uncertain.

dtgreene: I could point out that WRPGs basically abandoned turn-based gaming many years ago, and the effect of doing so has, IMO, not been good.

Ultima 6 had decent combat (possibly the best in the series, actually). Ultima 7 squandered that by switching to real time.

Baldur's Gate's "Real Time with Pause" gameplay also has its issues. The problem is that things happen too fast, and if you don't pause in time, things can go badly in a way that doesn't feel fair. In a turn-based game, you can see everything that's going on and react accordingly. (Assuming you're not fighting 396 berserkers with the message speed at max.) Switch to real time and suddenly things start going too fast. Auto-pause may solve some of these issues but has the downside of making the battles rather choppy and annoying to watch.

Many other games dealt with such issues by simply getting rid of the ability to control multiple characters. As a result, either battles get less interesting or the game ceases to qualify as an RPG.

One thing that many people miss is that turn-based RPG combat has a rhythm to it. The battles alternate between two phases: the command entry phase where you enter commands, and the command execution phase where the action occurs. (Of course, some games like Final Fantasy X (and perhaps also Bard's Tale IV) allow you to enter commands before the previous action finishes. This is more of a tweak to make easy battles faster, but doesn't affect harder battles where the player actually has to think.

Turn based WRPGs have made some resurgence in recent years, fortunately, but for many years, they were essentially non-existant (outside of some obscure indie games like Spiderweb Software games).

Elmofongo: The player is merely a spectator in the combat?

dtgreene: I could point out that WRPGs basically abandoned turn-based gaming many years ago, and the effect of doing so has, IMO, not been good.

Ultima 6 had decent combat (possibly the best in the series, actually). Ultima 7 squandered that by switching to real time.

Baldur's Gate's "Real Time with Pause" gameplay also has its issues. The problem is that things happen too fast, and if you don't pause in time, things can go badly in a way that doesn't feel fair. In a turn-based game, you can see everything that's going on and react accordingly. (Assuming you're not fighting 396 berserkers with the message speed at max.) Switch to real time and suddenly things start going too fast. Auto-pause may solve some of these issues but has the downside of making the battles rather choppy and annoying to watch.

Many other games dealt with such issues by simply getting rid of the ability to control multiple characters. As a result, either battles get less interesting or the game ceases to qualify as an RPG.

JMich: ? You could set the team AI (Iolo for ranged combat, Dupre for aggressive melee etc), and you could move and attack with the mouse as usual. Speed may have been an issue since by the time you understood what was happening, half your party was dead, but you could react just fine.

Faenrir: Just because SOME AAA games have 50M of budget doesn't mean they all do.

vv221: As I understand it (I might be wrong of course) "AAA" is a denomination directly tied to budget and marketing. So if a game didn’t get tens of millions $ during development, it simply won’t be called an AAA title. That’s a marketing term, nothing else ;)
Of course it doesn’t mean *anything* about the quality of the final product.

"In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_%28video_game_industry%29

McDon: nearly every major strategy being a RTS these days,

JMich: Woot? All coverage of it I've seen so far has been stellar. And there is still not enough info about the strategic layer, the customization options, or what the modding tools will look like. Waiting for the next issue of PC Gamer to see if any of those is covered.

Breja: Actually, other than the endless stream of MOBAs I think RTSes are having a worse time than turn-based strategies.

Luned: D:OS leapt to my mind as well. Of course, if OP's definition of AAA doesn't include games produced by a studio like Larian, I guess that's out. Personally I consider Larian to be playing with the big boys now.

Faenrir: Why should anyone care about AAA, then ?

McDon: I'm referring more to the marketing than the actual quality of the game