Hehe, yeah, good old D&D. There were tons of cool 3rd level spells - all ignored. Fireball for the big areas, lightning bolt for a slightly finer touch. Especially at high levels when you're pouring out a bucket of dice for your damage. Magic missles and maybe a knock spell for first level. Cone of Cold for fourth. Second level, before Melf's Acid Arrow came around, was a complete wasteland.
BG inherited that spells system and had the same problem. Tons of spells they had to support even though most folks are only using a few kinds. Also lots of camping in dungeons, which seemed more than a little silly. ("Hey Joe, wasn't Bob the Troll supposed to come over to our room dinner last night?" "Yeah, he never showed! But I heard a bunch of adventurers singing and snooring just down the hall. I couldn't attack them in their sleep, though because…umm… because they need to have a fighting chance. Yeah. Just wouldn't be sporting.")
Still having fun in DA2 but I'm still in the 'companion gathering' phase. I've pretty much given up on the high resolution package - why did they even release that thing? Hard difficulty is still kicking me around from time to time. I'm not leaving the fighter lying dead quite as often as I did in DA:O but hey, Sten deserved it. I haven't even looked into runes, crafting, or even the tactics window yet. Gotta do that last one soon.