OK, I finally took the plunge on Baldur’s Gate 3, and, coming from playing several hundreds of hours of Solasta recently, the first thing I noticed is the lack of a combat grid.
Going back a bit further, my son and I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. We were super pumped for the sequel, but when it finally came out, it kind of fell flat for both of us. Whether or not it’s down to this, I don’t know, but they also removed the grid.
That game, of course, was an XCom-like. XCom used a grid, but a more recent Firaxis game, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, got rid of the grid as well.
To me, all these gridless iterations of classic strategy games just aren’t as engaging. I guess they’re going for a more immersive rpg type of feel? But to me it seems to sacrifice the strategy aspect, and ultimately, judging based on my hours played, that always ends up being too great a sacrifice. My play time on Marvel’s Midnight Suns is less than 10% of Xcom 2, and the same is true for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.
I’m sure BG3 is a great game, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy the campaign, but so far it’s not giving me the ‘feels’.
Do you miss grids? Or did they only slow you down?
Ultimately, the world is not a grid. So while grids may be great for pure strategy games like XCom (and I really enjoyed XCom, not knocking it at all), I think a lot of people would say that for more story-focused games like RPGs, they break the immersion. Thus, BG3 (which I’m also really enjoying) does not use one. Neither do any of the party-based RPGs that I can think of off the top of my head. For me personally, it depends on the game. I am perfectly happy without one in BG3. But I enjoyed having one for XCom, and more recently for Warhammer 40k Mechanicus. I would offer that as a suggestion if you are looking for a gridded turn-based strategy game.