RPGWatch Feature - Battlespire Retrospective

Dhruin

Dhruin

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With the recent 15th Anniversary of the Elder Scrolls, we've seen attention focus on Arena and Daggerfall, but what of Battlespire? Lee Stanza writes a detailed retro review of this often overlooked Elder Scrolls game. Here's an excerpt:
Given that Battlespire takes place entirely within Oblivion, and you only meet a few surviving humans, many of the things expected in an Elder Scrolls game are missing, including: towns, money, merchants, guilds, trainers, item makers, and spell merchants.

This removes many of the interesting gameplay elements from Daggerfall, while simultaneously making the game immensely more difficult. By itself, combat is moderately more difficult than Daggerfall, but the lack of merchants, trainers and enchanters keeps the player at a distinct disadvantage to opponents in the game. The result is that Battlespire has by far the most difficult combat of any Elder Scrolls game.

In Daggerfall terms, the effect this has on gameplay is like trying to take out a dungeon full of ancient vampires or ancient liches without any protective magic. But in Daggerfall, you only needed to find one route to a specific spot in a dungeon, and could avoid most dangerous foes. In Battlespire, you have to explore almost every room to find
all of the required foozles to solve the puzzles between you and the end of the level.
Click to expand...
Read it all here.
More information.
 
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Battlespire was a bit of a travesty.

I think one of the biggest problems was performance. I remember having a VERY powerful machine at the time, more or less top of the line, and it still ran like an absolute dog.

I kept coming back during the next 3-4 years and I never reached a point where it ran acceptably fast.

I love dungeon crawlers - but this was just one big mess.
 
I am one of those very rare players who not only loved Battlespire but thinks its one of the best TES games (to me only Morrowind was better).

It was challenging which cant be said for any other Bethesdas game, Morrowind is only better because of the great world design. In my opinion dialogs and voice acting were good and added to the atmosphere which by the way is the best part of Battlespire. Great soundtrack, great level design, challenging gameplay, interesting story, characters and dialogs made Battlespire one of my favorite RPG-s, despite its (many) flaws.

Still this might all be just nostalgia, I played it when it was released and not since, maybe I should try playing it again too see if my opinion would be changed.
 
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It definitely had great graphics for it's time.

There's one detail that's a huge turn off to me though, - the fact that the game is seperated into different maps, and you can't go back to a previous map.
 
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A TES game without item and spell makers? I'd rather eat a ham & cheese sandwich without ham & cheese thanks
 
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wolfing said:
A TES game without item and spell makers? I'd rather eat a ham & cheese sandwich without ham & cheese thanks
Click to expand...

Spell maker is sorta there. There is only one base spell for each category, but at casting time you can control area of effect and element type. There is only one "Cause Damage" spell, for example, which you can use it for the equivalent of shocking grasp, poison aura, fireball, etc.

But that's a far cry from the full spell maker of the other games.
 
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What a coincidence, I was just looking for info on Battlespire to decide if I wanted to try tracking it down before I get to that copy of Redguard I picked up cheap.

Given that my tolerance for ultimate PITA difficulty is a bit lower these days than it would have been a decade ago, I wonder if there's any kind of "getting started guide" to eliminate some of the frustration. The UESP wiki has a cheat (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Battlespire:Hints/Tips) but that's not really what I'm looking for.
 
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It was missed from my attention when it was released in 1997. I found it (don't ask me where :) ) and installed the game two weeks ago with the Dosbox. But, I can't run the game smoothly in high detail settings, but it's quite playable in low details. It was a pretty demanding game for it's time (Pentium 75 to run smooth) and since Dosbox makes emulation (not virtualization) my Core to Duo 2 ghz can't be enough for it. I think I'm going to try Microsoft's Virtual PC, and install Windows 98 in it.
 
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I've been running with DosBox 0.72 and a Core 2 2.4 GHz. I didn't usually have problems with frame rate, although it does chug slowly in a few places: large rooms with multiple exits, the outdoor levels, and when the screen is filled with multiple explosions. Don't know if it's DosBox or Battlespire itself, but key presses tend to not register well when the frame rate dips.

Other than that, its surprisingly smooth when compared to Daggerfall which only runs at 320x200. Still, software rendering in an emulator always leaves a little to be desired in performance.
 
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Make sure to install the latest patch (v1.5) (extract to game directory with path, override old files)
http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dlp.cgi?lang=eng&sys=pc&file=batpat15.zip&ref=ps

Make sure to copy entire disc to hard drive
Running off of the HardDrive. (Playing without using the Compact Disc.)


1. Have at least 450MB of hard drive space on a hard drive for file transfer.
2. Be sure that your Battlespire directory is named BATSPIRE and is in the root directory of the drive, such as C:\ or D:\.
3. Transfer the WAVES.BSA into the BATSPIRE directory from your Compact Disc.( 104MB File.)
4. Copy the VIDEOS directory from your Battlespire disc into your BATSPIRE folder.
5. Edit your SPIRE.CFG that is in your BATSPIRE directory and change the "pathcd" line that has your Compact Disc drive letter such as D:\ and change it to the videos directory such as C:\VIDEOS.
Click to expand...

This site is very helpful for all old Elder Scrolls games
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Playing_DOS_Installments_under_DOSBox#Battlespire
 
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DArtagnan said:
I think one of the biggest problems was performance. I remember having a VERY powerful machine at the time, more or less top of the line, and it still ran like an absolute dog.
Click to expand...

I had a pretty decent rig too and it played real choppy for me and crashed a lot. I probably spent all of 3 or 4 hours with it before I uninstalled it and it went into my bin of games.
 
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I played Battlespire 3 years after the release and had a lot of fun with it.
It is the most challenging TES game and walking around gods is interesting ...

Tip:
The game is easier when you have a heal on strike weapon/armour/skill,
because heal potions are very rare.
 
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I liked it a lot. Actually I didn't think combat was overly difficult, I loved most of the characters and the dialog choices, and it ran really fine when I replayed it on a Win98 rig a few years ago. But I never got it to run under DOS box.
 
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I loved this game when I played it.
I played all the TES games and the only one that was not at my liking was oblivion, too easy and boring...even when using ooo.

Loved Red Guard and Daggerfall also.
 
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Welcome to the boards bubasmelo - Redguard & Daggerfall fantastic games -
those were the days ;)
 
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I tried playing this when it first came out but it didn't work at all on my computer. I probably won't play it since I don't like dungeon crawlers.
 
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I never played this one either, so it was nice to read!
 
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I remember buying this game in hopes that it was just an extension of Daggerfall. It was an exercise in frustration for the first couple days. To this day I can't say that I luv it or hate it, but it is my least favorite Bethesda game. My biggest disappointments is that there were no towns to just relax in and it was all action, no real strategy as the review points out. It wasn't very rpg-ish to me.

I also tried to play multiplayer though (I think it was) Mplayer back in the day. That was an absolute flop most of the time because 12 years ago we didn't have widespread broadband so connections were spotty. Plus I don't remember seeing many people playing this game.
 
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