RPGWatch Feature - Battlespire Retrospective

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.

Read it all here.