The worst Elder Scrolls game is now on Game Pass

pcgamer.com:

As part of the launch of QuakeCon this weekend, recently minted Microsoft subsidiaries id Software and Bethesda have brought a slew of classic games to PC Game Pass⁠—including what is arguably the worst Elder Scrolls game, Battlespire. Battlespire and fellow '90s Elder Scrolls games Arena, Daggerfall, and Redguard were recently brought to Steam as well(opens in new tab). The full list of games coming to Game Pass and the Microsoft store is as follows:

Now I don't mean to be a hater⁠—I'm against anti-Bethesda revisionism, even if I'm not the biggest fan of Fallouts 3 and 4, but Battlespire is a game only a mother could love, if she could even stand to play it very long.

Elder Scrolls' combat has always served as more of a nice accompaniment to exploring Tamriel's rich, wide open worlds, which begs the question of why you'd then emphasize that combat in a largely-linear dungeon crawling game.

Battlespire's basic premise is pretty questionable then, taking the clunky melee combat and busted, uneven skill system of Daggerfall and building a hack n' slasher out of it. Battlespire also offers a particularly buggy, punishingly difficult experience on top of stripping away the series' signature selling points. As YouTuber and noted Elder Scrolls fan LGR put it, "This isn't Daggerfall! Manage your expectations.(opens in new tab)"

Still, even bad games deserve to be preserved for future generations, and Battlespire comes from an interesting time in Bethesda's history. There was a long period of wandering the wilderness for the company between the release of Daggerfall in 1996 and that of Morrowind in 2002 (initially planned for 1998!) Battlespire and Redguard helped keep the company moving before its first true megahit, Morrowind,