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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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.
Warhammer 40k Mechanicus Oh damn, it’s -76% off right now on Steam. Yes, I think I will be checking it out, thank you!
Do it.
It’s really is a good game, especially if you’re a 40k fan
Bg3 it’s not an strategy game, it’s and RPG, in fact based in the trrpg rules of d&d 5
Also BG1 and 2, weren’t grided, so it’s not like they doing it to “modernize” the game.
I really enjoyed all xcoms (from the msdos first games, so many hours wasted with xcom apocalypse…) But also enjoyed al bg (including not MMO Neverwinter, icewind Dale, etc)
Simply, it’s not one of these games.
5e rules explicitly refer to spaces on a grid and had to be changed in several ways to work in a gridless setting.
Right? I only played like a campaign and a half of 5e, but I specifically remember the 5’ spaced grids.
I do not miss the grid at all, I hate being conformed to grids instead of more fluid real movement. It’s just more immersive to order my troops to move as a real person could move, not slide on a rail and stand there in this open space like a chess piece
Your comment doesn’t make sense. There’s no relation between a grid and standing out in the open. With free movement, if you order the character to finish their movement in the open, they’re going to be out in the open.
And I also don’t see the relation between grids and “sliding”.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure in X-com there wasn’t any sliding? It was all very fluid movement, but you could easily see where you troops could move to.
Jagged Alliance 3 has grid, but the movements are more fluid than I’ve seen in a while. It’s all about polish and execution.
The assertion is plain wrong. Some games don’t use grid, some do. There is no trend that I can see.
Solasta released an expansion this year and aow4 dropped in April iirc. There certainly are many others.
I like that they donnt use the grid. Feels more natural. That being said, I would occasionally like a measurement tool or something so you can see if you’re within 5/60 ft or whatever
Grids certainly don’t slow me down, though they do reduce the spectacle and I suppose lower immersion. They certainly make me more aware that I am playing a game rather than taking actions in a world that actually exists. I’d say this is a feature rather than a bug though as they are often used in games that I want to be handling in that analytic piece moving fashion.
Yea, the games I mentioned are all turn based, so I’m not sure that immersion is really what I’m looking for. I will say that the opening combats in BG3 felt very chaotic, and I guess more immersive, but I also felt like I made a lot of dumb mistakes because I was treating it more like a shooter/hack & slash, rather than thinking my moves through.
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.
I play a lot of strategy games and absolutely hate the grid. Always feels super basic and limiting to strategy.
Think it’s just a personal taste thing/what you grew up with playing.
Same and I agree.
Don’t know why. Because XCOM is full of flexibility. But It’s like a feeling like once you see those boxes, it feels like you’re playing by their rulebook.
Which is weird because BG3 is literally about rulebooks.
Oh I mean I never thought of it. I kinda like a grid. But I think that a grid would severely limit bg3
Grids definitely make a different type of game. I think BG3 makes sense gridless, but I also enjoy Into the Breach which is very chess-like.
I think your just playing games that don’t have a grid. I still play a lot of games with a grid. If you want a strategy game that has a grid, my dad has been playing a lot of jagged alliance 3 and has been saying very positive things about it.
I know I’m late to respond, but I did check out jagged alliance 3,and it looks awesome. Thanks for the recommendation!
Even in tabletop rpgs, I advocate for the removal of the grid. I prefer to do combat in the style of tabletop wargames, free movement in any direction, treating each inch of movement as 5 feet (for D&D and Pathfinder).
I just find that a lot more dynamic.
They could just make an option to unable/disable it. I like grids :)
I’m currently in two different D&D campaigns. One plays combats on the regular 5ft grid, the other is “theatre of mind” where where everything is just described. Both are fine, I don’t really feel like I lose anything with either method, it’s just two different abstractions for the same ideas.
Larian’s previous game, Divinity Original Sin: 2, was still highly tactical despite its lack of grid-based positioning or targeting. The game used its mechanics of skills, freer movement, and surfaces/clouds to really shake up each battle and make them unique. Each combat was like a little puzzle. For me, who usually bounces off the likes of XCOM, it was absolutely brilliant. BG3 is much the same, just with a different ruleset (and I’m glad I was familiar with it beforehand. It must be daunting to be thrown into 5e without having a book thrown at you).
Being a nerd now, there is actually a grid in these games, but it’s only used for navmeshes and the surfaces. The game doesn’t expose either of these to you in-game. Visually, the edges of surfaces are messy and extend/retract from where they technically are according to the engine. I suppose you can kind of see the navmesh grid by clicking all around the edges of walkable areas, but other than walking up to edges, the navmesh has little impact on anything else.
I prefer grids myself, I’ve never gotten very far in gridless strategy games I’ve played (Mario+Rabbids, Valkyria Chronicles) because I just have too hard a time keeping track of what I can do with any given unit when I don’t have the grid for reference. That said, I can understand the appeal to some as an immersion enhancement, as others have said, and as something of a “modernization” of turn-based strategy allowing for more freedom of movement. Cool if you enjoy that kind of thing in strategy, but just not my jam. I was raised on Fire Emblem in the genre, lol.
