[00:07] this time bringing you a retrospective review of an Elder Scrolls Legend Battle Spire. One of the Elder Scrolls series, I would say more ill-fated attempts at doing something a bit different for reasons we shall get into, but believe
[00:21] it or not, almost 30 years since this game released, I did not in fact receive surprising to some of you, but at the time this game released, I was wasting my youth away watching cartoons before I was allowed to be in school, thinking
[00:35] housing market if only I wasn't 4 years old. But the crippling follies of my childhood aside, Battle Spire is an odd game for a lot of reasons, but not least of which for being a romp through various planes of Oblivion as we seek to
[00:51] stop an invasion of Tamriel by the forces of Mehrunes Dagon, which may sound a little familiar because that is a plot line they've used a couple times now. But that aside, it is actually interesting for other reasons as well.
[01:03] into it. Like if you buy it these days, probably through like Steam as they released it there in 2022, that is not accessible by default, but you can go But let's actually start from the beginning. So, Battle Spire originally
[01:18] released in 1997 like I mentioned, which is roughly a year or so after the release of Daggerfall in 1996, and that was no coincidence after the success of Daggerfall. Bethesda was trying to follow it up with a variety of projects
[01:33] to take advantage of that success. Now, the early plans there were to release several side adventures. The first one that got released being Battle Spire. This was followed up by The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, and that
[01:45] of Argonia, but as I've already mentioned in a Redguard video, both Battle Spire and Redguard flopped pretty hard, and they sort of just abandoned that idea altogether, and that eventually led to Morrowind from the
[01:57] lessons learned there. But, what was especially interesting to me about the development of Battlespire is that it was initially concepted as an expansion to Daggerfall, and I think that actually tells you a good bit about the game
[02:09] overall because it being a relatively linear dungeon crawl through seven like eight if you count the fact that one of them is split with a bit more like limited progression and exploration, it all just makes a little
[02:23] more sense in that context. I feel like and so it's important to mention, but at some point they decided to turn this into its own full game and in total, as with most older titles, it was not terribly long, but these days, depending
[02:37] solutions to things, you're probably looking at like, I don't know, 15-ish hours to run through the story provided you don't run into any problems and you have a viable build because another thing I wanted to point out is that the
[02:49] balance in this particular game is pretty terrible. They give you a bunch of options that just straight up don't work. As with many older games, there's around or little quirks that don't quite make sense. Like, the game gives you
[03:03] items and occasionally mentions a running skill that is just straight up not there. You can't do that. There were, of course, some changes to what overall, it's just a very unique experience that is very much a product
[03:17] that, I should probably mention in here somewhere that a significant amount of the characters are in fact nude. Which, again, given that Daggerfall had nude characters, not terribly surprising. However, it does make showing some
[03:30] annoying than it should be as far as YouTube is concerned. All of that said, ourselves. The only reason people are really interested in this game these days is its relation to The Elder Scrolls franchise because otherwise, a
[03:45] almost 30-year-old dungeon crawler with terrible balance with some technical difficulties we'll have to get into just wide variety of unviable builds, write home about, and even now it's really more of a curiosity thanks to its
[04:00] relation to that franchise. But, with that exact thing in mind, let's actually start breaking a lot of this down. So, as I mentioned, if you are playing you're probably playing it on Steam via
[04:12] the 2022 release that they put out over there. So, that release is okay. If work for you. But, it certainly won't save you from all the bugs, and you can absolutely get it in a couple of other places as well, like GOG. Though, as far
[04:27] as I am aware, at least they're all the same version. And so, when it comes to there's a few things to know. First starters, while this game is not as broken as something like Redguard can be, it certainly does have a lot of
[04:41] problems. It's probably going to crash on you here and there. As I mentioned, the game refers to and has items that support a running skill that you just because it's not in the game, it got cut. There's a problem with the AI of
[04:54] the regular Dremora where they'll cast spells, but it'll hit the ground, and they'll wind up killing themselves rather than even hitting you, which is convenient for the first level where most of them are, but still. The jumping
[05:06] in this game is also quite odd. When you hit the jump button, it sort of puts out a cursor that you will jump to once you stop pressing the button, and this is moving beforehand, etc. And while that can be just really finicky on its own,
[05:20] it gets worse that sometimes jumping just gets you stuck on geometry, and sometimes you'll fall down and it will correct itself, etc. But, you know, plenty of times it does not. And there's a whole host of just minor bugs as well,
[05:32] like for instance, the emptied corpses of enemies or the loot sacks they leave behind to be more specific are meant to disappear, they do not. But, all of that is honestly burying the lead a little bit because there is one, I would say,
[05:44] extremely game-breaking bug you need to be aware of that thankfully is only a thing on level five, Chimera of Desolation. This one is rough because if you don't know about it, you can wind up bricking your save pretty easily.
[05:57] Basically, anytime you load a save file into Act five, like initially from startup, it will add a bunch of data to that save file that is erroneous. Nobody's exactly sure why. The theory is that because Chimera of Desolation is
[06:12] actually like this big open area with bunch of interior cells and the other levels are just not like that. It's probably related to that for some reason. But basically, if you do that enough on level five, you will just
[06:24] straight up have a save file that eventually gets too big and corrupted and it will just simply stop working. So, depending on the specifics, you can really only load a save about 30 to 50 times, give or take, before that
[06:36] happens. And while that's easy to work around if you know it's coming, it's definitely something you want to know. Now, the sort of secondary problem to that is that you may not realize this, but when your character dies, the game
[06:48] actually restarts, like it fully reboots the game. And this means that if you die on that level and then, you know, reload a save onto it, because you're starting up the first time again, that will inadvertently affect you. So, even if
[07:00] you are thinking you are good, you might not be because of the way that is handled. The easy way to get around this is to just when you start the game up, don't load into the Chimera of Desolation, like load into somewhere
[07:12] else first, save that game, and then load back into Chimera. That should save it off. But luckily, this is only a concern for, again, that single level. And that, of course, is just in addition to all the usual stuff that goes into
[07:25] running and playing a game that is almost 30 years old. So, long story short, if it wasn't obvious by looking at it, it's not exactly in the best place, but it isn't as unplayable as something like Redguard is. But before
[07:38] you get to actually playing the game, we've got character creation. Now, I would describe this as a slightly altered version of Daggerfall's character creation, but there's a handful of catches and a lot of places
[07:51] to trip up because of how different this game is from Daggerfall at the same time. But, the first thing you're going to do is choose your race. This, to be honest with you, is not super important because all the bonuses it gives you are
[08:04] two skills and it's uh super easy to adjust those on the next couple of screens, and so this is primarily a primarily a cosmetic for the paper doll character that you will see in menus. Either way, you can choose Redguard,
[08:16] Breton, Nord, High Elf, Dark Elf, or Wood Elf. Yes, those are the only six available. Now, the next screen I can't show you because it is full nudity, but cosmetic options to customize your character's face that you will see in
[08:30] menus, and then you get to, I would say, the more important part of character creation, which is the actual stats and everything you will be adjusting. Now, if you've played early Elder Scrolls titles like, again, Daggerfall or even
[08:42] Morrowind to some degree, you would be a little more familiar with what this next bit is, but it still works a little bit differently. So, you do, technically predefined class, but if you have any familiarity with the predefined classes
[08:57] of the Elder Scrolls games, you want to avoid that and make your own. And making your own consists of basically spending a bunch of experience points on adjusting and moving your stats, spells, items, and advantages and disadvantages,
[09:12] while also picking your primary, major, and minor skills. Now, the difference between primary, major, and minor is just what they start at, really. But, it's important to know that uh skills cannot be higher in this game than the
[09:24] attribute that determines that skill. So, if you are using, say, melee weapons or whatever, it's going to be bound to your strength. Now, personally, I went with a hand-to-hand build for reasons we are going to get into, but basically
[09:38] unarmed is uh easy mode for this game in comparison to everything else purely thanks to the balance issues that we are going to get into and things like durability destroying your items etc.
[09:51] Unarmed is super straightforward and a very easy way to clear this game and just see the story. Now, it's also important to mention that while we will be spending these experience points on character creation, they only carry over
[10:03] one time. So, you level up in this game by making it to the next level of the dungeon. In between levels basically. In between level one and level two, you will still have your points from character creation left over. After
[10:16] that, they do not carry over. So, that is the point at which you have to use them if that's something you want to do. But, as would probably not be a surprise, there are a few ways to cheese this by dumping stats and taking on
[10:28] disadvantages and things that are actually kind of irrelevant. So, let's is pretty important because you're basically going to want the weapon that you want to use, restoration so you can heal yourself as healing is a bit sparse
[10:41] in this game, and then a couple of basic skills everybody finds use in like critical strike and dodge which are basically your crit strike and then your ability to defend against incoming damage is done purely with the dodge
[10:54] skill. Other than that, it's pretty wide open because a lot of these skills are inadvertently makes some of the attributes a little less than useful. based on your advantages and disadvantages because it determines your
[11:08] total amount of usable magica. Will is important because it helps you resist various magical effects which will make your life easier especially in the late game. But, interestingly enough, I would say agility, endurance, and luck in
[11:22] particular are all useless and you can dump them entirely and you'll probably not even be able to tell. The reason for this is that agility is supposed to help you with hit chance, but that seems to primarily be down to your skill with a
[11:34] weapon more so than it is agility, which means it's pretty easy to dump this and You might think you need endurance for case. So, that wounds thing up at the top of the screen is actually your HP.
[11:48] By default, it is 50. You can raise it up to 200 in character creation, and because it makes the endurance stat completely pointless. If you start out with max HP, you'll gain so much health between levels that it just doesn't
[12:02] anymore, and you can ignore endurance entirely. And then luck is supposed to affect everything, but in a minor way, but it's so minor as to be irrelevant, of those stats, as well as taking on disadvantages, gives you more experience
[12:15] to then spend on the stuff you actually want to do like increasing strength, intelligence, will, and personality if you've got the time because the two I haven't talked about are personality and speed. Speed determines your literal
[12:27] movement speed, and this is something you will probably not ever want to take below default just because of obvious reasons. It's nice if you can get a be-all end-all, either. And then personality is interesting because it
[12:40] determines the willingness of creatures and stuff to talk to you. There's a good bit of talking to various enemies you can do in this game. It's possible to kind of takes the place of like the speech skills from Daggerfall, but some
[12:55] of it is like scripted around the story anyway, and so it's nice to have if you've got the extra points, but again, I wouldn't drop it too low just because of the way it affects various encounters and the like. Next up, let's talk a
[13:07] little bit about skills. Skills are simply not made equal in this game. There's a ton of them that are simply not very useful. For instance, uh trying to do stealth in this dungeon crawler is extremely hard because stealth is
[13:22] extremely hard. Backstabbing is also pretty useless. This is just not a game that favors a stealth approach, especially when you get to the uh uh sort of last few levels where there's so many enemies that it becomes almost
[13:34] impossible to get a good stealth attack. So, I just wouldn't recommend it. Then there are your various weapon skills, your basic skills everybody needs like again dodging or restoration. Now, the thing is most of the spells you have
[13:47] access to in Battlespire are going to come from right here in character creation from that spells button. Battlespire has about, I would say, 30 right here at character creation and this this is the time to get them. Two
[14:02] of them are more important than others and that is the cure health spell and teleport. So, cure health is obvious. There's not a ton of ways to heal here. stuff, but there's a couple levels that just straight up don't have those and
[14:15] you also need something to heal yourself in combat and while you can use potions, resources if you can just do that on your own. So, again, restoration is fantastic for everybody. Teleport allows you to drop an anchor somewhere and then
[14:30] anchor, which in the last couple of levels is extraordinarily useful because with you getting knocked off of stuff. And because of all that, basically what you want is your main weapon type you plan on using, crit strike, dodging, and
[14:46] then everything else is purely optional. Swimming and jumping can be useful, but you can also get through the game with them really low. Swimming, in done through water breathing potions, especially with a lower endurance.
[14:59] Jumping is helpful, but thanks to jumping potions and the fact that all of relatively short, meaning that it's possible to do them with a low jump skill. So, the game can be something you can complete outside of getting stuck on
[15:12] geometry, that's also fine. But what's interesting is outside of the uh individual level ups between levels, you will be able to increase these skills by doing anyway. So, what they are at the start of character creation here isn't
[15:25] wildly important. In fact, playing an unarmed build, you can take that all the way down to its lowest value, which is five, and still punch the early enemies that it just doesn't matter. And that's another way to get more experience
[15:38] Moving on a little bit though, equipment and magic items. These are pointless, but technically these allow you to spend experience points on starting equipment. equipment so fast with the game's randomized loot or primarily randomized
[15:52] loot, spending any experience points on getting it here at character creation is a waste of time. Which brings us then to advantages and disadvantages, which is also pretty abusable, especially especially if you happen to be an
[16:07] unarmed build, because what this allows you to do is set all of the weapons as forbidden, meaning you can't use them. The exceptions being the story-required will be able to equip them to finish the game. Don't worry about it. That also
[16:22] you don't know, there's an armor set and a weapon in particular, technically two weapons actually, that you have to equip in order to finish the game. Those are all exempt. Speaking of however, you might also see here where it says
[16:35] see on screen there is actually the highest level you can equip. So, the default is heavy armor and Daedric material, and what that means is you can't equip heavy armor and Daedric. What you can't equip is anything above
[16:49] medium or light armor, I couldn't wear the stuff above that. So, it's a little clunky in how they present it here, but again, that is the highest level of armor you can actually use based on what that is set to. But here's where it gets
[17:03] fun. So, we see a variety of little advantages we can click. Spell absorption is by far the best and the most expensive of those. This just gives you a chance to absorb incoming spells as long as your magicka isn't full, and
[17:16] ourselves with that magicka via restoration, it probably won't be. And this is a great way to avoid spell damage and in fact, combined with things like rapid healing, the incredibly high health pool you can get, you'll pretty
[17:30] weaknesses irrelevant. Combine that with increasing your default magicka to three times your intelligence bonus, which theoretically should have also been gigantic mana pool that you can cast on healing yourself all the time, which is
[17:44] a bunch of the spells that are coming your way, which makes you not have to critically weak to things because another thing you can do to get more experience points is to give yourself a critical weakness to everything, which
[17:58] irrelevant because even with that critical weakness to those things, if doesn't matter. So, as you can see, character creation gives you a lot of options, some of which will be familiar from Daggerfall, but because of the way
[18:12] the game is set up, it's so easy if you want to to optimize all of the bad stuff, so to speak, out of the game that you hand-make a hyper-viable character. Now, on the flip side of that, at the same time, something I would hope you
[18:27] would have noticed as I was going over that, so much of this stuff is useless and that means that it's really, really easy to make a character build that's really going to struggle to get through this title. And I think some of that is
[18:40] down to, again, just the atrocious balance of especially the last couple of leveling up because again, you can increase skills by using them but you don't get any more experience points to spend to level up style until you get to
[18:53] those in-between level moments. So, if you want to play this blind especially, it is so easy to sort of back yourself into a corner and just have to start progression side of all that is extremely simple by comparison. As we
[19:08] this is going to give us mostly randomized loot. Sometimes you'll see stuff that has a guaranteed effect, but the item it is on changes. And then quests and things as well that you will
[19:21] equipping your character with the best possible stuff that you can wear and take advantage of is some of the primary progression. A ton of it has extra spell upon your build may or may not be important. Like for instance, there's a
[19:36] bunch of enchantment effects on this armor that will increase all of your individual skills. And the problem with that is that if you get an enchantment that boosts say running, that item is literally useless. Though I will say
[19:49] something interesting about the loot in particular is that a lot of enchanted items have a base effect and then a spell you can cast as well. So sometimes it's the combination of those things that make them a little more interesting
[20:03] than the items themselves, but otherwise pretty straightforward, uncomplicated system. Though you do find yourself in the inventory putting this stuff on like character and that can make it a little difficult to see what you have equipped.
[20:17] all of this has condition. It is possible for items to break as you are using them. This includes things like weapons and this is one of the reasons it is easy to do an unarmed build in particular because that is not the case
[20:30] for your fists as it would seem. But then last but not least, again, as you from one level to the next, you will get the opportunity to go back to the level up screen and spend any experience you have. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this also
[20:45] leads to an exploit or two with those items I just mentioned. You can get items that just straight up raise your skills. And if before you step into the portal that leads you to the next level, you pay attention to the skills that
[20:57] that item was raising up, you can actually lower them by the amount that experience to spend on that level up screen. But the catch there is that in between levels on this level up screen, you can only increase your attributes
[21:11] change anything else. This is, however, important still because uh the cap on your attributes at character creation is 75, but you can go up to 100 in the in between level up screen. So, there's again even ways to take advantage of it
[21:26] Now, finally, let's move on a little bit and talk about the story setup of an Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire. So, this game does actually have a decently Battlespire is a place where the Imperial Battlemages were trained. Now,
[21:41] I did notice something interesting. Uh there are places that say this is where and then I would occasionally see something that mentioned that this is where the Emperor bodyguard Battlemages trained. I think it makes more sense
[21:55] all of the Battlemages, and they were speaking kind of just generally about But, again, just a little thing I noticed. Either way, the Battlespire is a place anchored between planes that they use to train warmages, more or
[22:10] less. And you are one such initiate. You get transported to the Battlespire only to find it in ruins. It has been invaded. Everyone seems to be dead for the most part. Your job starts out with figuring out what happened here and why.
[22:23] But, then as that happens, you start uh moving through various planes of the story along the way. Basically, Mehrunes Dagon, one of the Daedric Princes, has used some trickery and things you can find out over the story
[22:38] via particular characters and stuff you'll meet. Eventually, uh got someone to betray the Empire and allow his forces into the Battlespire. And because of its position as a sort of interplanar transportation device, he was going to
[22:52] use it to invade Tamriel, as Mehrunes Dagon seems to love to do. Your job becomes putting an end to that plot. And if If wasn't enough, there is a bit of a side plot with your friend. So, whether your character is male or female, you
[23:07] will have a character sort of assigned as a result of that that was your friend that entered the spire a little bit before you and you are also tracking this person down in between levels and towards the end it comes about that
[23:19] Dagon actually imprisoned this friend and you also want to rescue them as well. There's also a couple side plots about various like clans of Dremora trying to either help you out or oppose you and you get into the politics of the
[23:31] Daedra a little bit if you allow yourself to which all told is perhaps a little bit surprising for a dungeon crawler even a mega dungeon as it may be. But, that's basically the gist of the story. Nothing too crazy, but an
[23:45] interesting notion to be sure. Unsurprisingly, this game and the concept of the Battle spire has been referenced in plenty of other places as well throughout works. But, really more than any of that stuff, I would say the
[23:57] spire's story is everything you have to do to defeat Mehrunes Dagon in terms of interacting with the Daedra and various bits of lore. Like for instance, on level five the Chimera of Desolation, you get a great hunt called upon you
[24:12] Hermaeus Mora's thing that you see in like Bloodmoon and Morrowind. And in order to survive this great hunt, you have to find all of the pieces of armor for the Savior's Hide which is a Daedric artifact. You also have to get the Spear
[24:27] of Bitter Mercy to allow you to kill the final enemy who is otherwise unkillable to get you out of that level by finding a bunch of keys for example. And then the Savior's Hide also becomes integral to the final battle which is less of a
[24:39] battle and more of a puzzle of things you have to do to defeat Dagon which is sword called the Sword of the Moon Reaver and having on previous levels learned Dagon's proto and neo nimick, that is to say his original and changed
[24:54] names. And all of the lore that that stuff gets into is super interesting if you're into The Elder Scrolls universe and get the opportunity to experience it firsthand. Like for instance, you can even find the Daedric artifact Scourge
[25:07] and give it to a Daedra that is looking for it, but thanks to its properties that Daedra gets immediately banished and you don't have to fight them. You also, pretty famously on level three, get to visit the Soul Cairn, the home
[25:20] plane of the Ideal Masters, those crystals that you see in Skyrim, who takes us back there as well. And these guys make terrible deals with everyone to turn them into undead. And this is another level where you have enemies
[25:33] certain point of the level and experience. And it's just, again, very from there, let's talk about the We're going to kind of talk about all of this as once as it is kind of dungeon
[25:48] crawly experience where all of that is more or less all part of the same thing. simple setup, it's not terribly complicated even if it is very dated. So, first and foremost, as I've already alluded to a bit, the game consists of,
[26:03] technically speaking, seven levels. One of them, the second level, is split in between two parts that do not give you a level up screen in between, so it is technically all one level. But basically, every single area that you
[26:15] find yourself in, you're going to be on the floor of a dungeon. Your job is to escape that floor to the next floor. And this is done through various means. On the first floor, the Weir Gate, when you first enter the Battlespire, your job is
[26:28] to close the anchors that make sure the Battlespire is safe and you don't die you open all the anchors, you have to physically go close them, while also finding parts to fix a machine that gives you access to the portal that will
[26:42] some other stuff to find like, you know, and that's done through notes and scrolls you'll pick up and read. But speaking of picking up and reading those scrolls, probably a good time to mention
[26:54] that the inventory is a bit clunky. It's got that really old style like one single pane of items that you scroll through one at a time more or less. And worry about. But, if your strength's super high, it doesn't matter too much.
[27:07] But, in order to loot, interact with things, scrolls, etc., you basically Your right mouse is actually your default attack button. Now, I mentioned up scrolls and look at them in the inventory, it just says scrolls. But, if
[27:21] actually open it up and give you the information, which is how you can keep track of various side plots and get some information critical to you moving forward like passwords and the like. Now, another really interesting thing
[27:33] you can do in order to get some of this information is talk to almost every enemy based on your personality score. And even then, not always, but this will give you the opportunity to do things like potentially pacify random enemies,
[27:46] some of which is based on information you've uncovered like in level four Shade Perilous, once you have the information about the two seducers you are trying to work with, you can tell the other seducers that you run into
[28:00] trying to fix the situation in Shade Perilous. And a lot of the times they'll leave you alone after that and stop attacking you. Not always, but sometimes. And there are many instances of things like that with the enemies
[28:13] either temporarily help them or just convey information. Like for instance, in the Chimera of Desolation, if you talk to the Frost Aedra who you just encountered in Shade Perilous on level four, you can give yourself a little bit
[28:26] name for taking the blame in what happened, which can lead to all of the Frost Aedra leaving you alone in level five. And if anything, that should tell you right away that in combination with the fact that we don't get normal level
[28:42] ups by just killing all of the enemies is killing every single enemy on a level is usually not the best idea or even necessary. And it is sometimes more interesting to find ways around them rather than through them, but there are
[28:56] plenty of situations where you are going to have to fight and kill somebody for example. Now, another thing to keep in mind as you move through levels is that anything that looks like a weapon or it
[29:08] want to try interacting with it because it's probable that there will be an interaction with it. Like there's plenty of stuff you can interact with to move secret passageways and stuff, which sometimes is necessary to get through a
[29:22] you're looking for the pieces to the void guide, the couple of those are like then have to interact with to even access. Once you play the game, you get a better feel for what is and is not interactable, mind you, but something to
[29:36] know for sure. Two other things to mention, wards and healing crystals. So, one thing you'll pick up from enemies, basically all of them, is some variation of amulets with sigils on them. This being the Daedric alphabet typically.
[29:51] These come in two types, regular sigils and then sigils of entry. The sigils of entry are effectively keys you need to have in your possession to get past warded areas on those levels. So, in order to get past a sigil ward, you have
[30:06] to have the amulet on not equipped, but on your person in order to get past that specific enemies and sometimes you have to find them to access the things you need to get to in order to carry on, of course. Then there are the healing
[30:20] crystals. So, in addition to restoration and stuff, uh there will typically be you can simply click on and heal yourself, both your health and mana, mind you. Now, after about a minute or so in game, these will respawn back to
[30:35] where they were previously, which does give you a reliable source of healing even if you are not specced into restoration. However, obviously that isn't super useful in specific fight scenarios where you don't have access to
[30:47] those crystals. So, you know, don't rely on them entirely and you may have to Also worth a mention, there are a couple spell effects and things that can restore like your magic like for instance the restoration potion. There
[31:00] are also items you can get called, I think it's magic resorter, something points, the yellow bar, which will allow you to then of course use your healing magic. Now let's talk about a few other things. So, while I am using an unarmed
[31:14] basically just me punching things to death as is my chosen approach with Something you may remember from Daggerfall is they had that like weird have to move the mouse and like directionally swing your weapon that
[31:29] way. That is also present here in Battlespire if you are using traditional weaponry. You just do it with the right mouse button instead. Other than that You're going to swing your weapon, it's going to do dice rolls behind the
[31:42] scenes. When enemies attack you, it rolls things like dodging etc. Pretty standard stuff for this type of game. Now, it is also possible to do things as I mentioned like sneaking or even a ranged approach. I think all of those
[31:55] feel terrible personally. Uh sneaking and backstabbing and all that is here technically but extremely hard to do. Missile weapons are certainly a little more viable. I just don't like the way they feel but it is something again that
[32:07] you can do if you want to. And then there is casting magic. So, as I mentioned, there are roughly 30 or so spell effects in Battlespire here and than the others, cure health and teleport. You do have a few other
[32:21] options though. But remember, uh learning spells post character creation is actually kind of difficult. It is possible to do. There are like certain scrolls and stuff you can find that will teach you individual spells and the like
[32:34] but understand like most of the spell stuff you want to do you need to know it when you step foot into the Battle Spire first thing. I will also say that some of these are kind of bad. So, [laughter] there are spells like monster summoning.
[32:48] The vast majority of the time any monsters summoned through that will attack you. Stuff like detect enemy or detect spell I just don't find useful cuz in theory you should be able to see it on screen. Invisibility never seemed
[33:00] to work correctly. I would try to use invisibility and enemies would just still directly find you and attack you anyway. So, I've never had any luck with that one. There are then of course like resist and damage spells you can mess
[33:12] around with. But for the most part as the training center for Battle Mages may well imply here in Battle Spire, I would say casting is rewarded more as a combination with your main form of attack and playing like a true Battle
[33:26] Mage is typically going to be more effective than other approaches. But there's a couple of other things I really want to mention. I talked a bit about the atrocious balancing in this game and I stand by that. And nowhere is
[33:40] it more felt than the last couple of levels. In particular starting in Shade Perilous level four and then also in level six and seven, the last couple of areas. Yes, haha six seven, move on. This is because you have Dark Seducers.
[33:55] For some strange reason Dark Seducers uh these are the women with the wings by the way. Uh these monsters are awful to fight. know if it's like a problem with their hit boxes or their exact stats or whatever, but they are just so much
[34:08] are occasions where you have to fight like packs of them and they're really difficult to kill. Primarily because it's really hard to actually land a hit uh you also have to deal with the knockback effect a lot. So, one of the
[34:23] things about getting hit by enemies and stuff, I believe it's they uh technically create you it pushes you back on occasion like a good ways. And the problem with this is that in the last couple of levels in particular, you
[34:35] walkways and stuff, and it's entirely possible for these enemies to hit you, knock you back, and you fall into lava, which is why the teleport skill is so Zion reload every time, you simply have to just use that spell and cast teleport
[34:50] and teleport away to the anchor you've hopefully set before that happened. But also, because of the way enemies approach you, how hard stealth is, the fact that magic is like on its own a super viable thing to do, all of the
[35:02] mistakes you could potentially find yourself making in character creation, because a bunch of the stuff you could get as skills and whatnot just really doesn't matter that much or will even be all that useful to you. Balancing this
[35:14] difficult to get to a point where you have enough knowledge to effectively move through the game, even if it is just to see the story the way you want the unarmed build here so much, because it's just a really easy way to do that
[35:29] want to talk a little bit about the individual levels we will find ourselves on before we start moving to wrap this up. So, as I mentioned, seven levels, technically speaking. Level one is the Weir Gate, the entrance to the Battle
[35:43] straightforward as you could get. Kind of sets the scene and everything, an extension of that, mostly just introducing some like puzzles and riddles and things you have to solve,
[35:57] mechanics is really the name of the game there. And also, introducing some of the clans of Daedra and like how to take advantage of some of that. Level three really, really interesting. So, level three, as I mentioned, is the Soul
[36:13] you can get all that lore from the Ideal Masters, where they take advantage of mortals and make terrible deals and turn people into undead, which is what they enough information to get out of here,
[36:26] exploring, you can get a spell that allows you to kill the unkillable wraiths here, which allows you to more freely explore, but that's another thing level is enemies that cannot be killed through normal means, and you have to
[36:40] sort of puzzle solve your way around whatever the solution is there. Level four is interesting because it switches things. We go to Shade Perilous. Shade Perilous is a realm of the Daedric Lord Nocturnal, rather than Mehrunes Dagon,
[36:53] and this is a bit of a kerfuffle between all the different Daedra at this point, which leads you to making a deal, ideally, with one of the Daedra there that I cannot show you, to help you in the fight against Mehrunes Dagon. After
[37:06] this, level five is the most interesting level by far, the Chimera of Desolation, where you are the target of a great hunt. The Daedra are pretty tired of you you, and they're doing that via a great hunt, where you are playing the role of
[37:20] the hare. Your job is to simply escape, but this is more difficult than it might initially appear, because we have to gather up six gate keys, and then use them to exit the level, but it gets slightly more complicated than that.
[37:33] There are Hearn hunters here. Basically, these like huntsman-type characters, and they cannot be killed unless you have the Spear of Bitter Mercy. This is a problem because one of them and the sort of main gate area has one of the keys
[37:46] what you actually have to do on this level is go around and find all of the different pieces of the Savior's Hide armor, and bring them to a guy named Old Man Chimere, who then, once you have all of this and you talk to him and show him
[38:01] will unlock a spear case that you've also hopefully found, which contains the Spear of Bitter Mercy. Now, this is just a much more impressive level because it's a lot larger than the others. It's outside. There's tons of interior cells.
[38:14] There's a town, uh technically two towns. There's a hot air balloon ride, which I thought was super weird. Very, very cool level. Now, after this, you're almost towards the end because the other thing you learn while you are here is
[38:27] Mehrunes Dagon's protonymic, his sort of real original name that old man Khimaer used in order to try to fight him, which is why he knows all this stuff, and the fact that the Savior's Hide belonged to him at one point. He also tells you what
[38:41] else you'll need to know, which is that you're going to need the neonymic also in order to fight Dagon as well because he changed his protonymic by adding the neonymic when he got sent back to Oblivion in order to protect himself,
[38:53] and you have to protect yourself with Savior's Hide. So, you start piecing together what you need to know, and then you head off towards the Havoc Wellhead, level six. Your goal here is to learn the neonymic, and also pit the Daedra
[39:06] here against each other. You basically just have to get the three keys from the tell you the neonymic, and then make your way to level seven, the final level, Dagon's hunting lodge. Now, in Shade Perilous, you will have run into a
[39:21] uh non-hostile Dremora who talks to you and potentially tells you more about basically lay out what needs to happen for you to be successful in level seven. Your job on level seven is to get to Dagon, and then use the items you gather
[39:35] along the way to actually kill the guy, or at least, you know, send him back to Oblivion as he can't actually die. But, in order to do this, you need to gather up the Sword of the Moon Reaver, and also equip the Savior's Hide while also
[39:47] knowing and being able to use the proto and neonimic against Dagon. All of that still isn't enough, and you wind up needing a distraction with the Daedra that you made a pact with ideally in level four, though to be clear, she'll
[40:01] show up either way. And so, the goal of this level is to just grab the Sword of the Moon Reaver from the Daedra that has it, one of uh Dagon's consorts, and then Savior's armor, you can actually get it from a wraith here as well who will just
[40:15] you'll have learned the words in order to get to this point anyway, and so at that point you can confront Dagon, which is actually not a fight. It is done kind of show that you have all the items, and then once it goes to the
[40:29] actual fight, you have a couple of seconds to just hit him a single time with the sword, at which point you win the game. So, a lot of cool stuff there were interesting. Some of the level design, again, obviously very dated. I
[40:43] also think it is at the same time a initially think going into it. But, nonetheless, let's actually start to how this game runs on the Steam Deck, and the answer is, probably
[40:56] unsurprisingly, poorly. You might have trouble getting it to start. That can, messing around with the exact version of Deck, but even if you do that, it's not really going to do anything to help out
[41:09] with the pretty terrible FPS you're going to get, which I would imagine is why the game has an unsupported rating on the Steam Deck, which, much like probably some sort of compatibility issue more so than anything else. Long
[41:23] it there, though. I mean, I guess theoretically, it is possible. Which brings us to positives, negatives, and then the conclusions. So, on the positive side of things, I love character creation. I love the lore. I
[41:36] enjoy that stuff more than basically anything else. Daggerfall has an that lets you make all sorts of crazy characters. We see a lot of that here, but unfortunately, because of the nature of this being a sort of singular dungeon
[41:50] crawl, it forces character creation to be more streamlined as a result. Like, went over, that just isn't very good because of the nature of this game. But, even still, I do just really enjoy making characters this way. All of the
[42:04] lore is obviously very cool, as well. I think Battle Spire touches on a lot of really cool lore topics that you don't necessarily see anywhere else, or at them, and I think the fact that this game is part of The Elder Scrolls is
[42:17] like the main selling point it has these days, and it's enjoyable in its way, especially a look back at this admittedly much more mature, if the nudity is anything to go by, sort of approach that we had back in the day as
[42:29] opposed to now when things are a little more tame comparatively. But, of course, there are some, I would say, glaringly obvious negatives as well. The balance of the whole thing is definitely up there. It's also incredibly easy to bug
[42:42] this game out and get yourself soft locked or run into technical problems. There's that crazy save bug. Also, I mean, I think you can sum up the much looking at it 30 years later. So, I'm not going to harp on it more than
[42:54] necessary, but, you know, it's a game that has pretty obvious problems. That does, however, bring me to my conclusion. In a weird way, I would say, looking back at this game almost 30 years later, I can say Battle Spire is
[43:09] not exactly a great experience by today's standards by any metric, but think it's actually that crazy to see why this game kind of failed commercially because it takes Daggerfall and then streamlines so much of what
[43:23] made that game super interesting into a much more small and confined adventure that I just don't think lands nearly as well. And while it's an interesting look back at the things they were trying to do with the series before they really
[43:37] Morrowind as an example, that is pretty this, the novelty of its place in the Elder Scrolls lore and franchise because beyond that, I really don't think it has all that much to offer that Daggerfall
[43:51] in particular doesn't do better, especially with things like Daggerfall Unity, etc., making that game much, much more approachable than Battle Spire by far. Nonetheless, I do like that it is still available, but I will say, much
[44:04] like I harped on about Redguard in particular, it is crazy to me that they are charging $6 for this. And yes, it's obviously not very expensive, but Daggerfall for free and then use Daggerfall Unity to have this incredibly
[44:18] big adventure and do all this stuff. The fact that for whatever reason Battlespire and Redguard, they are still charging people money for is pretty wild to me personally and it's a little annoying, but it is what it is, I guess.
[44:31] that's just about everything I've got to say about Battlespire in particular. I certainly hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, by all means like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. Let me know down below how you feel about this
[44:44] title, if you've played it, tried it for yourself, etc. But otherwise, just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.