Posted on: September 25, 2025
Empow3rd
Verified ownerGames: 345 Reviews: 21
A fascinating mess that can be enjoyable
After finishing Daggerfall (Unity) I was still in the mood for some dungeon crawling. A linear and more old-school dungeon crawl more reminiscent of Ultima Underworld sounded very appealing to me on paper. I picked up Battlespire despite the bad reputation, and boy, the infamy is deserved. The game is a buggy mess. Bugs and issues such as: movement feels off and jumping has a high chance of getting stuck in the level geometry, enemies tend to get stuck, enemies can float off the game level, and can kill themselves with their own AoE damage spells trying to target you but hitting the level geometry instead. Most notably there is a big potential for a save corruption bug in one of the levels. The engine itself felt so buggy and unstable that it felt like it was from a realm of Oblivion itself. Even when it works the game has fundamental design issues: attributes and character creation options that don't do anything or don't do what the manual or the game says they do, strange logic with some of the mandatory puzzles, like for example, requiring you to interact with what you think are static level objects, but the game has no indication or hints they might be interactable. The game difficulty also is heavily skewed towards a battlemage type (which fits the protagonist's background) with restoration magic as there are limited healing opportunities outside of healing spells. Potions can't be bought or gained with a certainty during a level, and there is no way to rest. Despite all the technical and design issues mentioned there is a lot to be enjoyed with the right mindset. The art direction, combined with the dark ambient music, creates an atmosphere that is something truly special and distinct from other Elder Scroll games. The more low-poly Playstation 1 era graphics, combined with some good 2D UI art, ooze with atmosphere. The level design (both visual and functional), aside from moon logic puzzles, is generally pretty good and big step up from Daggerfall. Each of the seven levels feel distinct and varied. The story of the game is okay. Enter Battlespire, go through the various realms of Oblivion, kill the big bad at the final level. Simple enough. However the lore expanding over the daedric realms is some of the best in the series. Despite The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion dealing with a daedric invasion and the realms of Oblivion, I learned a lot more about the daedra princes and the daedra themselves in this game. The dialogue however is for the most part insanely silly which I didn't enjoy at first, but started to give me a welcome chuckle and respite from all the gameplay problems. The gameplay overall is serviceable when it works. The combat never feels especially good but it is not so bad either. At times enemies can have too much health and deal way too much damage. The difficulty is all over the place in general. The most tedious aspect is knockback caused by enemy attacks and spells, combined with bad movement and jumping, which made the final level in Mehrunes Dagon's hell realm more hellish than it needed to be. Despite all of the issues mentioned I did for the most part really enjoy the game. The visuals and music carried the game for me and I was fascinated by the lore and machinations of the daedra. When the game worked it was serviceable enough to keep going, even if the final level was one of the most tedious sections in any game in recent memory. I can't give the game more than 2 stars though. If you are not hooked by the atmosphere if the game, I can't really recommend it to anyone except the most diehard of Elder Scrolls fans and jank enjoyers. With a modern source port fixing the technical issues, combined with a balance pass to make the difficulty more tolerable and make some of the character stats actually functional, this game could be a 3 or 4 for me. Until that day comes you are better off visiting the realms of Oblivion in other Elder Scrolls games.
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