YMMV / The Dark Spire

• Demonic Spiders: Venom Dragons. If you encounter them, RUN!
• Scrappy Mechanic: Whoever designed the menu interfaces was probably on several illegal substances. Some of the more frustrating 'highlights' include:
  • Any weapons and armour you purchase in town cannot actually be equipped while in the shop. You have to head over into the Spire proper, or go into the Guild and choose the "Status" option, before you can change your equipment.
  • You cannot actually check the stats of the weapons you purchase, thus leading players to rely on the 'it costs more, so it must be better' approach. And even that doesn't work very well, because there are several expensive weapons that are worthless and cheap ones that are overpowered. The $100 Estoc does much more damage than any other weapon available in the store's initial selection, including the $3000 Katana.
    • For that matter, the up/down arrows on the purchase screen do not actually delineate whether the stat values go up or down, but whether or not the class allows for equipping that weapon without penalties.
    • Actually which of the Estoc and the Katana that do the most damage depends on your character's class levels. If your class levels are low then the Estoc is more useful as it has a Hit Bonus of 3, but Hit is capped between 1 and 10, so a higher level character will have more use of the Katana which, while having no Hit bonus, has higher damage roll and AC subtraction. For example a brand new character would have the potential of doing between 3 ^note minimum damage roll * (hit + hit bonus) = 1*(0+3)=3 and 18 ^note maximum damage roll * (hit + hit bonus) = 6*(0+3) points of damage with the 1d6 damage roll of the Estoc and between 1 ^note 1*(0+0 capped up to 1)=1*1 and 10 ^note 10*1 with the 1d10 Katana. A high level character with a hit score at the max of 10 however will have the potential of doing only between 10^note 1*(10+3 capped down to 10)=1*10 and 60^note 6*10 with the Estoc, but will do between 10^note 1*(10+0) and 100^note 10*(10+0) with the Katana. The game probably intends you to start-out with the Estoc and only buy the Katana much later, though by that point, you’ll obtain better weapons from the Spire.
  • While in the item menu, pressing 'Y' destroys an item immediately, with no confirmation message. Might not be so bad, except the equipment you're currently wearing is also listed in the item screen. So it's entirely possible to destroy aforementioned brand-new battleaxe as you're trying to figure out if there's some way to check the stats on the thing.
  • The game expects you to choose the item being used and the target character simultaneously (via the up/down and L/R buttons respectively). If you press 'A' on an item it will be used immediately on the currently highlighted character, which will 90% of the time be the lead because most every other game asks you to select the item first and THEN select the target character.
  • Inconsistent menu interfaces. The game allows you to cycle through the characters on your team with the L/R shoulder buttons... except when it doesn't. Why? Who knows.
    • All in the name of properly emulating the frustratingly obscure and clunky interface of any good ol' dungeon crawling RPG and the nonsense rules of AD&D First Edition!
  • Want to get a High/Dark Elf? Alternate between going to the tower and praying at the respective alignment's church for half an hour! Unless you're willing to get it "fairly", in which case have fun benching a party member that you've put hours into so you can have a slot for your new party member!