For years, you have trained to become an Imperial Battlemage, learning the ways of magic and combat to serve and defend the Emperor. Now, as your final test, you must complete the dreaded Battlespire, facing the challenges that lie within. As you enter the proving ground, however, something doesn’t...
For years, you have trained to become an Imperial Battlemage, learning the ways of magic and combat to serve and defend the Emperor. Now, as your final test, you must complete the dreaded Battlespire, facing the challenges that lie within. As you enter the proving ground, however, something doesn’t feel right. You soon discover that Mehrunes Dagon, a Daedra Lord, has invaded and ravaged the Battlespire, killing all in his wake. You are the last hope and although ill-equipped and unprepared, it's up to you to stop Dagon’s plan and restore the Battlespire to Imperial control.
Originally envisioned as an expansion for The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, this installment was instead released by Bethesda as a stand-alone title. Although still within the Elder Scrolls world and brimming with many loved elements, Battlespire is unique in several aspects; rather than open-world exploration, the game emphasises survival, taking players through 7 levels, including various realms of Oblivion. There are also no shops or merchants, leaving players to salvage whatever they can from their fallen foes. Full character and stat customisation are still a key component of gameplay, as is the ability to craft spells on the fly and the game is full of the lore and characterisation for which the series’ is renowned. Can you defeat Dagon and prove you are worthy of serving the Emperor?
Can download Daggerfall and Arena with this game. Very old school, and if you aren't patient, don't even try. If you are, the systems are incredibly deep, and far more satisfying than anything you will find today.
This is a pretty straight forward dungeon crawler made by BGS between the releases of Daggerfall and Morrowind. This game is very different from the standard Elder Scrolls games in that the game is entirely focused on dungeon crawling instead of roleplaying. This game can be difficult to figure out how to progress especially compared to modern games. All in all I would think this is a pretty solid dungeon crawler especially since it gives you a different look into some of the Elder Scrolls lore than the other games; However the controls in this game are highly buggy. When trying to walk straight foward in the game you will almost always end up walking diagonally depending on which direction you are facing. This is incredibly annoying and can make platforming nearly impossible. This will also have a detrimental impact on the movement speed in the forward direction. I feel that if this movement bug weren't present then this game would be good fun to play however I can't get past this bug.
I liked this game a lot, the music was quite nice and fitting for the dungeons. Although I havnt beaten or played this recently, I dont remember coming across some of the bugs that other people report in other revviews
Although it's a mess at times, this game is one of the best games I've ever played and a true testament to treating the player like a mature, intelligent adult. As a player works his way through the huge levels, a lot of brain power and exploration is required to meet the requirements to make it to the next level. Your patience will be tested, but if you persevere, you'll be rewarded with something that is very rare in games these days: a sense of intellectual accomplishment.
The game is about resource management and puzzle solving with waves and waves and waves of enemies thrown at you. Of course, this is where the game gets frustrating and loses its fun value. The enemies are very hard to kill and you will die hundreds of times without question. Sometimes it's a matter of reloading and hope the virtual dice are in your favour for damage received and given, sometimes it's a matter of reloading and changing your weapons and tactics, and often it's a matter of reloading and hoping your enemy gets stuck in a wall. If you’ve played Arena and Daggerfall, you’ll handle the battle just fine – just remember to save every 15 seconds.
There are no waypoints flashing or narrators telling you what to do, so you genuinely feel just like the protagonist of the game and that’s the exceptional brilliance of the game: you're thrown into the fight for the Battlespire with not much more than your staff in your hand and you're expected to find the equipment and supplies you need to survive. Getting through a level is hard, but for the most part fair and logical. (To my shame, I consulted a walkthrough twice and in both instances I told myself, “Are you kidding me? That’s the solution?”)
The game is far from perfect, but I cannot recommend it enough.
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.