This game feels like a big step back from Daggerfall. I think perhaps I'm just not a fan of the premise of this game, as much of the things I take issue with are, TECHNICALLY an improvement (?) or at least seem to be what the designers did intend to do. For example, the graphics are "Better" as they use images more often than pixel art, however, the low res images and models look so ugly in my opinion. The music is also much more atmospheric, which I suppose is "better" but to me, it is so much more boring and drab compared to the great soundtracks of Arena and Daggerfall.
The world itself is also not a "World" it is simply a building, a very boring building in my opinion with giant open rooms... that are empty a lot of the time, the plot of this game is different to the previous entries as it is stationary, we aren't trecking Tamriel or exploring Iliac Bay, we are instead stuck in a dark gloomy building. Perhaps to some this is an interesting spice up to the series, a more dark, atmospheric setting, but to me, drab, boring and painful to sit through.
The game just overall feels a lot more aimless than Daggerfall or Arena, which is saying a lot considering Daggerfall was an entirely open-ended non-linear adventure, but here you are just placed in a building with no clue where to go or what's going on, and this is by design, the plot is that your player character is mislead into this building and has no idea what's going on.
The mechanics themselves also take a hit, gone are the vastly superior mapping from Daggerfall, and gone are the bare minimum basics of Elder Scrolls, the rest system. The rest system in Arena is tedious, but viable, which was then greatly improved in Daggerfall, so of course, Battlespire chooses to remove it entirely. It does have the grace of giving gradual regen, which is a good addition, but now instead of simply skipping ahead time, your only option is to not rest at all, or to just, wait. Even the character creation and levelling is somehow worse, as youre now given a ton of "points" rather than simply lowering stat numbers, but you must divy up these "points" between every single part of your character. Once again this is an ""Improvement"" as you can dedicate these points to whatever you want, however it just over complicates things as it is pointless to give these points to certain aspects that you can level manually, whilst other things these points can improve are exclusive to this system. Its just a mess, a mess that did not need to be made as it was better as it was previously.
A good addition to this game is the dialogue options with enemies, you can now talk and interact with almost every enemy with branching options for you to choose. This is far better than the NPCs of Arena and Daggerfall, as they mainly exist to either just give you a quest or tell you a location of something, whereas here you can actually have conversations, and all the dialogue is voice-acted to boot. This is one of the few things that is a direct upgrade and is an evolution of the Elder Scrolls formula, rather than a reduction.
I will note that I did not complete this game, nor even play it for a substantial while, so perhaps the game vastly improves going forward. But for the brief time I did have with it, it was a boring slog, so I quit before I lost all will to live. Perhaps if the premise intrigues you of the switch up to the setting/structure this may be of interest to you, but for me, this game is a miss.
The world itself is also not a "World" it is simply a building, a very boring building in my opinion with giant open rooms... that are empty a lot of the time, the plot of this game is different to the previous entries as it is stationary, we aren't trecking Tamriel or exploring Iliac Bay, we are instead stuck in a dark gloomy building. Perhaps to some this is an interesting spice up to the series, a more dark, atmospheric setting, but to me, drab, boring and painful to sit through.
The game just overall feels a lot more aimless than Daggerfall or Arena, which is saying a lot considering Daggerfall was an entirely open-ended non-linear adventure, but here you are just placed in a building with no clue where to go or what's going on, and this is by design, the plot is that your player character is mislead into this building and has no idea what's going on.
The mechanics themselves also take a hit, gone are the vastly superior mapping from Daggerfall, and gone are the bare minimum basics of Elder Scrolls, the rest system. The rest system in Arena is tedious, but viable, which was then greatly improved in Daggerfall, so of course, Battlespire chooses to remove it entirely. It does have the grace of giving gradual regen, which is a good addition, but now instead of simply skipping ahead time, your only option is to not rest at all, or to just, wait. Even the character creation and levelling is somehow worse, as youre now given a ton of "points" rather than simply lowering stat numbers, but you must divy up these "points" between every single part of your character. Once again this is an ""Improvement"" as you can dedicate these points to whatever you want, however it just over complicates things as it is pointless to give these points to certain aspects that you can level manually, whilst other things these points can improve are exclusive to this system. Its just a mess, a mess that did not need to be made as it was better as it was previously.
A good addition to this game is the dialogue options with enemies, you can now talk and interact with almost every enemy with branching options for you to choose. This is far better than the NPCs of Arena and Daggerfall, as they mainly exist to either just give you a quest or tell you a location of something, whereas here you can actually have conversations, and all the dialogue is voice-acted to boot. This is one of the few things that is a direct upgrade and is an evolution of the Elder Scrolls formula, rather than a reduction.
I will note that I did not complete this game, nor even play it for a substantial while, so perhaps the game vastly improves going forward. But for the brief time I did have with it, it was a boring slog, so I quit before I lost all will to live. Perhaps if the premise intrigues you of the switch up to the setting/structure this may be of interest to you, but for me, this game is a miss.
muck
11 months ago