I don't see what control scheme would have to do with verticality and gridlessness - vertical control (or lack off) is awkwardly done as well, but that's a seperate issue. Mimimi's tactics games (Shadow Tactics - now free on EGS, Desperados3) have plenty of verticality and traditional control scheme and they play very well.
I absolutely adore Mimimi's games on account of being a huge Commandos fan (with the first one being one of my first games, period), but they have a very high-up camera angle and you can't exactly use the characters' individual abilities while selecting a whole group, and each character only has five abilities total with standardized hotkeys. You still need to manually control the people you want to do specific things, and if you have people in the selection that aren't as mobile as others (Mugen in Shadow Tactics, Doc McCoy in Desperados 3), then there's a bit of wonkiness involved in it.
Again, I am not as much criticizing the control scheme as pointing out that there are obvious flaws both there and in BG3, but I guess it's all down to personal preference in the end. I never was much of a hater of the chain system, having seen much worse control schemes out there. KotOR is an example, where all the control you have is "follow me" or "stay still", combined with the Aurora jank, leading to characters getting stuck on corners and the like. And NWN2 was an actual nightmare, and remains one still even after they updates the controls in Storm of Zehir, with movement being awkward and floaty and characters feeling like they are unmoored from the terrain. Trying to control a party there, with no formations and it all moving in a blob, was an awful experience no matter which camera mode you pick.
