There is a great game for free online called The Battle For Wesnoth. It is turned based and is set in the middle ages. You can find it at www.wesnoth.com

Planescape Torment in particular (infinity space-bar-to-pause engine).  It takes a bit of time to get going but has the best writing of any computer or video game made to date.

Even more off the beaten path, Etherlords II. You would have to find this one used, don't think it is retail anymore? Mix of RPG, adventure, and turn based combat. The overworld is free roam on your strange looking mount, combat is in an arena where you will play a beautifully animated fantasy card game with your opponent. Zorch them with spells, but mostly summon creatures like snakes, spitting cabbages, bees, wasps, and goodness knows what all so as to block what the enemy is summoning and finally kill off the enemy.

I liked and still like this game. Most US players hated it, and US reviewers were not too fond of it either. Think it was popular in Europe.

What brought it to mind was that while playing King's Bounty I noticed that there was some similarity in art between the two games. The spitting cabbage things were direct imports, and other little decorative bits and the general map style seemed to have been derived from Etherlords II as well. Quite a large game it is. Maybe find it at half price books, or ask a game store if someone has brought one in on trade. eBay. Amazon has it in stock, cheap!

Another to try if you can find it real cheap ...

(Let me first move myself behind this thick flame proof shield)

... is Warlord IV Heroes of Etheria. Turn based all the way.

(I know that even now a moderator is reporting me to Brad as a dangerous lunatic!)

When Warlords IV first came out, it had a hideous memory leak and numerous other problems besides. Now, finally, five years after release the publisher Infinite Interactive in AU has gotten the money to fix their old game. Patch 1.05 has fixed the problems far as I can tell and added some new stuff like fog of war and a high level hero, Galadriel, for the campaign. Galadriel's castle is Goldshire. (heh heh) KGB has a patch 1.05a with further improvements and is at work on an even newer patch with lots of great stuff. Patch links available at Warlorders.com.

Galadriel's party members level up with incredible speed, which is helpful against the maniacal AI which is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Your 3 member retinue is persistent and they and your hero level up ever so often. Combat takes place in arenas and is automated. All you do is select a party member to go out and combat with whatever the AI sends out. Bit of tactics involved, bit of chance too since some things can lure out your weakest party member, or assassinate heroes, or do damage to the party as a whole. Towers shoot arrows, and archers in the party get a shot when each new combat starts. Siege engines blast away at towers. Pretty simple. If it is obvious you will win, just tap spacebar, instant resolve.

The campaign is not all that long, but with the optional areas pretty good size, and worth doing once. Then there are some new supplied quest maps to go with the old maps, and the random map generator, and a very easy to use map editor. The maps are quite large, by the way. Exploration is one of the things you do a lot of, capturing cities along the way, exploring ruins where you might find neat stuff, the usual. There is one quest with four parts on each map, bit challenging to complete sometimes, because the maps are quite large.

I persist in playing a bit of W4 HoE from time to time because it is such a fast game for a turn based game with so much going on every turn. Gameplay is not just your retinue group. You will have a number of parties who each turn will be up to something different.

The graphics appeal to me, your mileage may vary. There are 10 playable races. Galadriel is an Elf, but the optional areas will eventually give her the ability to lead any of the races including demons and undead, though only in the campaign and its optional maps. So you can try 'em all. Warlords 5 is planned, but no estimated release date yet.

Etherlords and Etherlords II are both available via Impulse.

You mentioned Warlords IV.  I didn't find that one.  But Impulse carries Warlords Battlecry 3.  Not sure if that's good thing or not, but there you have it.  This Brad guy you're so worried about apparently is wacky, just like you.

Disciples II. You can get this combined with Rise of the Elves in the value software, jewel case section of stores at the present time for $10 or much less if they have a two-fer. I like it a lot when it first came out, except for Rise of the Elves which never appealed to me all that much. The Elves were such a bunch of dimwitted kill-crazed schmucks. As patch level 1.04 game balance seems to me to have gone down the tubes. You spend way too much time trudging back across the map to a city to resurrect party members and heal them. Taking down major groups, you really need to be a mage. Cast two spells on the enemy, assuming you have the mana. Have a thief poison the enemy party. Then attack. I notice the user community on this one is about zero. But it is a turn based classic, no doubt about it.

Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, and its predecessor. I've only played AoW:SM and it is more than impressive. Very nice graphics, you can zoom in too! Turn based across an overworld, and there is an underworld too. Combat in large arenas and you may move your troops around for optimum tactical advantage. Or just press auto combat and sit back and watch, the AI is quite good, usually better than me. AoW has an active player community at present. Very active really.

16 or 17 playable races. Good campaigns, etc. But here is the really impressive part.

The community has produced a super patch, version 1.4, that adds simply an awesome amount to the game. Awesome. Even more awesome, they are at work on patch 1.5. But there are also mods, additional maps, etc. The game may be 5 years old, but it is a very active and alive game at the present time.

http://www.triumphstudios.com/shadowmagic/communityupdate.php has the links to the super patch.

http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=t&fn=29

And above is the link to the General Discussion of the active forum for AoW: SM.

(I'm not sure these are classified as RPG in any sense, but they are turn based.)

...why is everyone suggesting turn-based strategy games? You guys do know there is a difference between RPG and TBS, right? As awesome as Disciples, Heroes or King's Bounty is, they're not really RPGs now, are they?

There hasn't been a good turn-based RPG since Arcanum, a sort of spirital successor to Fallout 1 and 2. And I'd honestly say it's a better game than those two. The only turn-based RPG that tried was Temple of Elemental Evil, and that game had some awesomely giant flaws. Infinity engine games aren't turn-based, and don't incorporate Initiative and stuff like that very well. The same is the case with the Aurora/Odyssey/Electron engine(Neverwinter Nights, KotOR etc). While the games with it are good and all, turn-based they are not.

And I'm still waiting for someone to mention Fallout 3 as a turn-based RPG

In the Infinity games, combat and movement were resolved according to rounds, though by default the start and end of a round (turn) passed without user-interaction to provide for an (almost) real-time effect.  However, there were non-default options that could be set to stop the game at the end of each turn (or according to any or all of about 6 or 8 other conditions).

Aurora (NWN) combat was calculated and resolved on a per-turn basis.  And the game could be paused manually (default: spacebar key functionality).  But unlike the feature in the Infinity Engine you couldn't set it to stop at the end of a turn, though it could probably be scripted (modded) to do so.

I don't know Odyssey or Electron features well-enough to comment on that.

I was wondering that, myself.

To a certain extent, I think of the classic XCom as a TB-RPG, but only because there is clear character advancement for every individual unit.  I think that was the last time there was a blurring of the lines between TB-RPG and TB-Tactical Strategy, to me.  But I haven't seen or heard of a good, true turn-based RPG since Arcanum (better than FO1/2?  I disagree).  I really wanted to like the Exile series, but even though I am by no means a Graphics Whore, I proved myself to be at least a little bit Graphics Slutty, because I can't get over the pixel-art sprites.

I also played NWN2 as a turn-based game (semi-pseudo.  You could set the game to auto-pause after every spell cast, which is like a turn), and that was fun once you hacked the crap out of it to allow for larger parties and hand-fixed the laundry list of bugs.  In terms of modern games, that's as close as you get until Fallout 3.

I strongly recommend the original Neverwinter Nights for RPG gaming... thousands upon thousands of new realms created by gamers available for free download.

If I ever find time I'll check out Kings Bounty which several mentioned was a good TBS.

Alot of good Turn based RPG's mentioned here, Kings Bounty is deff fun, theres one in the making that I've been interested in for awhile also, not sure of a release date it's called Age of Decadence. looks like it might be pretty cool. I beleive this is going to be a turn based RPG also.

Again this is not yet released, but check it out they have some pretty decent info on their site, the Developers seem rather layed back almost as if working from their house in part time hours or something

here is a link to their site http://www.irontowerstudio.com/index.htm

Jagged Alliance 2 is probably best tactical game ever (with UFO Enemy Unknown) and it can offer many RPG mechanics.

Arcanum, as has already been mentioned.

If you like minimalist (read zero) graphics, roguelikes are worth trying. Ancient Domains Of Mystery is great. Just don't expect to win and don't look at it if you think your character should look better than an @ sign.

Arcanum would be the most recent good turn-based RPG I've played, and it is really very good (and very large). If you are able to endure dated graphics and UI then it is certainly worth a go.

Temple of Elemental Evil bored me. I didn't suffer from any bugs, but I didn't finish it. The combat works very well, but the story is a bit naff: not bad as such, but lightweight bogstandard stuff intended to get you to the next fight sequence quickly. Others may prefer it that way. Also, Fed-Ex quests.

The Wizardry series (well, I only played 7 & 8) bored me too, although a lot of people love them. Again, story related, but in Wizardry the writing is outright poor. On the other hand, it's chock-full of levelling up options, any fantasy or sci-fi staple you care to name, and (as proudly stated by the Sirtech website) fairy ninjas. Made me think of Final Fantasy 9, a game I stopped playing shortly after *spoiler alert* the dragon gets abducted by aliens . Actually I think I can excuse FF9, because the intent to satirise/pay homage to their genre in as silly a fashion as possible was clear, whereas Wizardry 8 was supposed to be some kind of crowning epic finale, a vision which apparantly involved magic robots fighting furries with laser guns.

Penny Arcade recommended Eschalon: Book I as a good classic turn-based numbers and text-heavy RPG, I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. I also suspect a trawl through indie-game listing sites might turn up similar games.

It seems levelling up has become synonymous with RPGs, at least on the computer. I do think that RPGs are distinguished by character development, but that this should be more than just the numerical customization of otherwise impersonal units. Character development through story. Story by itself makes an adventure game, levelling by itself probably means you're playing a tactical combat something, but who knows in these licentious days of genre blurring. I find the classification useful, your mileage may vary.