43 hours into The Dark Spire. I'm up to the 7th floor and the end is in sight! Kind of. I expect it will still take me a while, and apparently there's another floor of post-game stuff, so I'll be busy. One thing I like about the 6th and 7th floors is how, in modern-mode, the graphics are designed with a kind of odd perspective to make the walls look huge and intimidating and the soundtrack builds tension very well using a chorus in the music for those floors. But classic-mode is still where it's at!
I'm using a walkthrough more, some of the puzzles are obnoxious, like a teleporter whose functions need to be figured out via trial and error on the 6th floor that can send you to locations on other floors (sometimes that's good for completing quests and otherwise inaccessible areas, other times it's annoying).
There was one puzzle I doubt I'd have figured out on my own, but I appreciate SO MUCH:
My entire party has secondary classes now: my dwarf is a samurai (warrior-mage), my halfling is a wizard (thief-mage), my elf is a druid (priest-mage), and my human is a paladin (warrior-priest). Mage spells are definitely the most valuable way to fight enemies when you're at higher floors of the tower. Everyone is ABOUT level 17 (secondary classes are based on the average levels of the two main-classes) but I've been spending a hefty amount of experience points on upping my stats.
The game still isn't easy, my party's been wiped out a fair number of times due to bad luck (if a bunch of dragons ambush the party and use breath attacks, they can kill everyone quickly. Spells sometimes fail (or even backfire) and that's enough to seriously mess my party up sometimes.
