Don't be a reactionary. "The things that there was when I was a kid" aren't the only good way to do things. There are fucktons of flaws in the top-down tactical model that DAI does indeed sidestep. We don't spend 90 seconds prebuffing for every fight, for example, often after a reload because we didn't know the fight was coming.
The real problem is that the party tactics part in a more in-the-action game like this needs to have much sharper and more customizable AI. Maybe a whole unique interface and "training area" dedicated to setting things up, where you can build the kind of scenarios you want to set up and detonate and tell the AI "there, that's how I'd like this ballet to go." Make it fun and thoughtful for players to set up quick-access "battleplan" profiles you can pause to a menu of at the start of a battle--the player sees the enemy has five archers and only one melee so sets his party to his 'condense on <character> so <character> can AoE' tactic. The player sees there's a bunch of melee, so he triggers the 'tank moves ahead of player character with a little triangulation about enemy paths and taunts at optimal distance' tactic.
The tactics in this kind of game should really be moving more toward -realistic- small-unit tactics, where everything is in preparation and training and calling for the right play at the right time, not in being able to pause and micromanage on the fly. That works for people who think killing six kobolds in Baldur's Gate is fun--and I admit, it can have its appeal sometimes--but by and large video games aren't designed to have sufficiently unique encounters that each one is memorable. This is the great dilemma of tactical games; in twitch games, two very similar encounters can be just about equally fun, because it's the reflexes being tested. A tactical game, though, is fundamentally a puzzle game, and it's much harder to write 20 hours of unique puzzles than it is to design a system that engages 20 hours of adrenalin.
Most importantly, give computer players unique classes designed around AI usability, instead of directly cloning them off PC classes. DAO had detailed but nearly useless tactics. I don't even remember how they were handled in DA2. DAI just lets you call an ability 'disabled,' 'enabled' or 'prefered,' which isn't remotely clear. There was no way for me to tell my AI companions to prefer reviving one another if they weren't under attack, or to tell them to attack spawning creatures at rifts. While they could be counted on to cast Dispel on creatures with shields, they'd also cast it against meaningless debuffs when I wanted them to hold it, because there was no way for me to dictate current overall strategy. Most absurdly, there's -no way to tell them to run,- or if there is, I didn't notice it. If you actually decide you don't want to engage one of the trash battles, you'll have your enemies chasing you across the map and your companions randomly teleporting to you as you get out of acceptable range.
That's probably the clearest statement of DAI's combat faults: you can't communicate even a desire not to engage in another pointless encounter to your companions.
It's not bad because it's not isometric. It's bad because it doesn't do its own thing well. You can't just cling to one format and say "this is good, this is right, this is how it should be done." Because thank fuck we're not still using the Wasteland combat interface.
Except in NEO Scavenger, to a point. See? Even the Wasteland interface concept can be done well.
