Battlespire is a total mess, extremely frustrating, with gamebreaking bugs galore. It is a fairly uninspired dungeon crawler with repetitive dialogue and unfinished gameplay. For goodness sake, one of the 6 branches of magic in this game has just one spell. The game lures you in with its reputation and admittedly charming aesthetic, but you'll likely soon find yourself having to reload saves against average combat encounters, or even restarting the game as you realize your character is built wrong or you made one of the many cardinal sins that plague this game. The reward? Well, I'll always take a memorable, frustrating game over a safe, mediocre one. The best thing you'll get from this game are the memories.
Initially, Oblivion is a fantastic game. The guild questlines are great experiences, the world is beautiful and has lots of rich lore hidden in seemingly every corner, and there is a pretty good amount of enemy variety. But. This game has a major struggle with its own leveling system. In fact, it is one of the worst instances of dynamic leveling I have personally seen in my time gaming. There are interesting creatures that you may never see because you blew past its level range, or enemies that will absolutely decimate you because you tackled it much later than you should have. Without powerleveling and playing to your class strengths, enemies will outmatch you and even the simplest of fights become a slog. Since the game is moddable, this issue can be solved by a variety of mods. I personally used Martigen's Monster Mod in my last playthrough of Oblivion, and it reminded me why I loved this game so much. All that being said, I'm not sure how to rate this game. Remedying the leveling issues takes 10 minutes of modding, but it isn't the vanilla experience. Ultimately, I'll rate the vanilla game here: modding the game brings it to a solid 5 stars.
While I certainly have many more ARPGs to play before I can form a definitive answer, I will say that of all of this genre that I have played - including such games as the entire Elder Scrolls series, Fallouts 3, New Vegas, and 4, the Witchers 2 and 3, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Prey, and likely others - this one sticks out above all of them. I have been playing games since I was 5 years old, and here I am now in my twenties - 15+ years of gaming - and getting to the end of Gothic 2 was the first time, in all of my time playing games, I can EVER recall actually feeling kind of sad that it was about to end. Gothic 2 is one of those wonderful sequels where I would say that it improved on its predecessor in nearly every way, increasing the scope of the series without sacrificing quality. Compared to Gothic 1, there are many more paths to explore in Gothic 2. The factions you can join don't have the same quests like they do in Gothic 1, meaning each faction is actually unique in terms of quests, along with other perks like armors, weapons, skills and other benefits. The game scaled wonderfully in my 39-hour adventure - at the beginning I could hardly kill Goblins without nearly keeling over, and by the end I was cutting through Lizard Men with relative ease. Whether your interests lie in magic, ranged combat, or melee combat, Gothic 2 ensures that you have steady and constant progress, regular iterations where your leveling up feels tangible. On top of this, the combat and magic systems actually take some getting used to and do NOT reward button-mashing or brute-force, so you are actually improving at the game while your character gets stronger, and it's wonderful. The game is relentlessly difficult and does not hold your hand - but it's a satisfying experience all the way through. I could go on too about how the wonderful player-character, the organic story, the distinct characters, etc., But I'm out of room. This game is great!
This game frequently goes on sale for $5, but even for its original price of $60 it is very much worth it. You are looking at a game packed with developed characters and interesting gameplay through the use of tactics and the ability to pause combat at any time and issue commands to party members. The game plays differently from beginning to end depending on your origin story, your class, as well as the decisions you make, or don't make, through the game. The main story is your standard-fare "save the world from absolute evil," this evil being the Archdemon, so your main focus of interest is going to be the characters and party members you bring along for the ride. Every party member is distinct in personality and has more to them than meets the eye - you learn more about them as your relationships with them develops. The main antagonist, Teyrn Loghain, is an interesting character for the reasons behind his motivations, and there are many players who are either for or against Loghain, showing the quality of writing behind this game. Voice acting is also excellent for the most part. For the negatives: the game is very ugly. It was released in an era of games where everything is shaded, organic and/or brown - see Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto 4, or Fallout 3 for examples of what I mean. Some of the characters' faces made me feel a little nauseous, similar to Oblivion. My game also frequently crashed whenever I opened my inventory, which can be a problem for those who don't save often. All in all, the negatives are mostly aesthetics or personal problems - the game itself offers a bevy of interesting gameplay, story, lore, and quality.
Having had a few false starts on this game for the past year and finally sticking to it and completing the game - wow. It shows age through its combat - I had input problems firing weapons with my mouse - but voiceacting, story, and the RPG elements make up for it hundredfold. I can definitely see myself playing through the story and quests again - and again and again and again - you get it. The options offered through the clan you select at the beginning of the game, along with the choice of which skills you can strengthen, completely change the gameplay and approach from character to character. I played with Wesp's patch and only encountered a few crashes, which is pretty good for such an extensive RPG. Anyhow, as someone who has never been fond of vampire-related stories or locations, this game captivated me like few others have managed to do.
