this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Why do modern strategy games hate the grid? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by anakin78z@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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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?

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[–] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's not the lack of a grid specifically that bothers me in BG3, it's that there are a lot of scenarios where in tabletop an enemy would be ruled to have cover, but in BG3 the shot is simply obstructed and your character needs to move before they can take it.

Also sometimes the automatic positioning for melee attacks is bad and will tell you that you can't reach, but if you click to move and then click to attack you actually can.

Also the fact that AoE spells target the ground specifically instead of an arbitrary point in space, which means in some areas you get weird situations where the enemies are close enough together to fireball all of them but you can't do it from your location because the spot where you need to place the fireball is in a slight depression that you can't see into from where you are.

Also there is some weirdness about casting AoEs through doorways, where even if you can see someone that doesn't mean you can fireball them because it's treating the fireball "projectile" as being wider than I would expect, so that it can only go through at certain angles.

I do think a grid system would be less likely to have these issues, but they could be fixed without it.