GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 03/04/1998
- Updated on: 05/01/2000
- Released on: 11/30/1997
- Originally published on GameSpot: Battlespire (PC) Review
In September 1996, after several years of development, Bethesda Softworks finally released Daggerfall, the second chapter in its Elder Scrolls role-playing game series. Even though Daggerfall was unstable and relied upon dated VGA graphics, gamers were addicted in droves to its combination of completely nonlinear gameplay, epic scope, and outstanding character generation and skill-based development systems. Largely due to the continued bug-stomping support of its development team, Daggerfall overcame its notoriously buggy initial release and went on to be almost universally proclaimed as the best role-playing game of 1996. A little over a year later, Bethesda has followed up Daggerfall with Battlespire, a more action-oriented role-playing game set in a smaller, more structured environment. Unlike Daggerfall, which led adventurers on a trek through hundreds of predominately randomly generated dungeons and towns (populated by wooden, undeveloped nonplayer characters), 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, and multiplayer features to Daggerfall's core engine and interface, Battlespire's less expansive scope, hack-and-slash gameplay, and technical problems ultimately provide a role-playing experience that is only occasionally satisfying.
Like Daggerfall and its predecessor, Arena, 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. The game begins with your character entering the Battlespire, a testing facility for the Emperor's personal Battlemage guards, only to discover that it has been overrun by malevolent forces. A traitor, working with the archvillain from Arena, Jagar Tharn, has allowed the legions of the Daedra Lord, Mehrunes Dagon, to enter the Battlespire and slaughter the resident Battlemages. Daggerfall-nostalgic gamers hoping for another opportunity to explore the vast wilderness of Tamriel, interacting with guilds and participating in a variety of role-playing lifestyles, will have to wait for Morrowind, the next Elder Scrolls chapter tentatively scheduled to be released in late 1999. Battlespire has a much more limited scope, essentially being a big dungeon crawl along the lines of the Ultima Underworld games from the early 1990s. Gone are Daggerfall's intriguing guild quests, replaced by more mundane, action game-style objectives for each level - find the rods/cogs/sigils/your car keys, etc.
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 (even when using DOS window memory settings suggested by Bethesda). Battlespire's version of the XnGine has a real problem with "clipping" errors, which cause players and creatures to get hopelessly stuck in walls or the numerous 3D polygonal objects littering Battlespire's levels. Any sense of immersion generated by the game's detailed environments is quickly dispelled as soon as you see an ominous, supposedly invincible wraith advancing towards you only to get stuck impotently in the side of a chair. I frequently used the strategy of luring dangerous monsters into walls or objects where they would be immobilized so that I could safely retreat from them or cravenly pick them off from a distance with spells or arrows. Unlike Daggerfall, which used predominately flat 2D "sprites" for its objects, all of Battlespire's objects, other than NPCs or creatures, are displayed as 3D polygons, which, while visually far more satisfying, only serve to increase the graphics engine's clipping problems. You'll also occasionally see objects floating in midair or merged on top of each other (chests and sacks seem to just looove floating on top of each other in Tamriel).
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. Most gamers will likely opt to create their own characters from scratch, but you can choose one of Daggerfall's 18 pregenerated character classes if you want to quickly get into the action. While the inclusion of all of these pregenerated character classes will thoughtfully allow you to recreate your favorite Daggerfall characters, the action-oriented gameplay of Battlespire eventually necessitates developing a character competent at fighting and magic skills. While there are plenty of activities in Daggerfall to occupy the time of a nontraditional character like a burglar, the hack-and-slash nature of Battlespire's gameplay will result in a "wallet-hungry but sword-inept" pickpocket getting splattered all over the walls of the Battlespire.
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 (in the single-player version of the game) 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. Although you can adjust the sensitivity of your mouse movements within the game, the view-based controls are strangely overly sensitive, especially when compared to Daggerfall's. Even worse, when the game loads digital music from the CD-ROM, the game will temporarily pause, but all of your mouse movements will continue to be recorded, so that when the game resumes, your character will likely be staring at the ceiling or the feet of an opponent. In fact, until you get over the learning curve associated with the game's controls, you'll be looking at a lot of floors.
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. These conversations, which you can initiate with virtually all of the creatures in the game, take place within a separate conversation screen. This conversation screen provides the game's best graphics (in the form of the creature depictions) and, although the conversations are fairly linear, some very entertaining dialogue. In fact, the conversations in Battlespire invoke some of the heartiest laughs from a role-playing game since Accolade's Star Control 2. You'll also find that some of the inhabitants are more than willing to attack some of their rival factions - the Daedra are not a mindless horde of demons, but rather consist of a variety of factions, each with its own leader and motivations. Throughout the game you'll get a fairly good idea of the nature of Daedra "culture." If you love a "kill 'em all" style of play and don't have time to chat, there's your character's student peer who entered the Battlespire before you, who will occasionally leave you a cache of useful items or a handy note warning you of some of the dangers ahead (apparently hint books and strategy guides were popular even in medieval Tamriel).
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