a classic RPG
Battlespire's less expansive scope, hack-and-slash gameplay, and technical problems ultimately provide a role-playing experience that is only occasionally satisfying. Battlespire, a more action-oriented role-playing game set in a smaller, more structured environment. Battlespire has a more focused and developed storyline and takes place entirely within one "pocket dimension" consisting of seven distinct "realms" or levels. But even with the addition of SVGA graphics, nonplayer characters with plenty of personality, Battlespire's less expansive scope, hack-and-slash gameplay, and technical problems ultimately provide a role-playing experience that is only occasionally satisfying.Battlespire is set in the Elder Scrolls world of Tamriel. Set during the same time period as the events in Arena, the plot of Battlespire fits nicely into Elder Scrolls lore. Battlespire, like Daggerfall, uses Bethesda's proprietary 3D graphics engine, XnGine. Bethesda's XnGine has proven to be incredibly adaptable, having been effectively used in a variety of games from diverse genres. Unfortunately, in Battlespire, the XnGine vividly demonstrates some of its traditional weaknesses. Being DOS-based, the XnGine suffers from stability problems within Windows 95, infrequently crashing for no apparent reason. Battlespire's character generation and skill-based development systems are stripped-down versions of their Daggerfall counterparts and work well, affording you considerable freedom to individualize your character's attributes and increase your abilities in those skills most relied upon by your character. Instead of having your character increase in experience levels, as in Daggerfall, your character is awarded a large number of experience points at the end of each of the game's first six realms, which you can use to increase your character's attributes or to touch up his skill levels. Battlespire's interface is fully customizable and intuitive, and the view-based or cursor-based movement will be familiar to veterans of prior Elder Scrolls games. Although combat occurs in real time, the game pauses whenever you access your automap, inventory, or spell book, making combat a little less intimidating for turn-based grognards. Spell and item hot keys are also available and are particularly useful in the faster-paced multiplayer version of the game. The conversations with Battlespire's nonplayer characters are the game's best feature and a welcome surprise after the shallow conversations and interactions with Daggerfall's cardboard NPCs. NPC conversations are plentiful, generally well voice acted, and universally well written. Spells can be set to only detonate once they hit "organic" objects allowing you to bounce spells off walls and hit targets using bank shots, which can be pretty entertaining, especially in multiplayer games. There are only about a dozen monsters in Battlespire, but most of them are new and not just Daggerfall rehashes. The high-resolution, high-color graphics of Battlespire are much better than Daggerfall's low-resolution graphics, but gamers expecting graphics comparable to those offered in recent action games will be disappointed with the non-3D accelerated visuals of Battlespire. Although support for 3Dfx chipset video cards was initially planned the development team ultimately decided that the texture memory limitations of most 3Dfx cards made it impossible to create an enhanced version without making unacceptable sacrifices.Read full review
