I personally never found the chain system an issue as I played countless of games across the decades that had this chaining system and I never really thought it's limiting me from accomplishing whatever I wanted. From Dungeon Siege II to Dragon Age, Star Wars: KOTOR I & 2 to plenty of other games along the way and until recently, the Divinity Original Sin games and Baldur's Gate 3..
Every single game you mentioned used an entirely different system.
And I would argue that most of them weren't that good, anyway, so I wouldn't exactly take them as virtuous examples. I surely don't wish for an isometric party-based CRPG that controls like goddamn KOTOR, for a start.
We could also namedrop Neverwinter Nights 2 just to be sure every shitty one is on the list.
Also, Dragon Age Origins (which was THE Dragon Age game with somewhat decent controls, before it became an action MMO) implemented its version of the "chain system" exactly in the way I begged several times Larian to consider: as a toggle that could be disabled (and I DID, because auto-follow sucks) and you'd still able to select and issue orders to multiple characters at once. Which you can't do with the toiler chain.
