The two spells are indeed different in nature.

Flame Strike is supposed to only strike the area which the priest is targeting (it's basically a column of fire from the sky). Fireball is a small ball that will always detonate on impact, which may be a point before the intended target, and the explosion will always fill up a specific volume.

Too many teleporter and pressure plate puzzles for my taste.
Both do AoE damage (one fire, the other one half fire and half radiant) and I assume that flame strike affects a smaller area length and depth wise. But it's difficult to find actual numbers for the 2nd edition spells.

I noticed that Dungeon Master is only like that for the first few levels.

Level 0 is the Hall of Champions so that really doesn't count.
Level 1 has a fair number of pressure plate puzzles, but is fairly basic, as it is largely an introduction to how the game works.
Level 2 has a lot of puzzles, but you only need to complete 2/3 of the level to continue. (Also, one of the 6 areas, Creature Cavern, has no puzzles at all.)
Level 3 is largely puzzle-free.
Level 4 has some puzzles, but it isn't necessary to complete the whole level; you just need enough of the right items to pass the start of level 5.
Level 5 and onward are surprisingly light in terms of puzzles.

In other words, the early part of the game is not representative of the game as a whole.

Chaos Strikes Back, on the other hand, is filled with puzzles.
Dungeon Master 2 is combat intensive for the first half and puzzle intensive (with very little combat) for the second half.

There are two aspects of Dungeon Master that I like that similar games do not replicate:
1. Character growth is dependent on your actions. Cast spells to be a better caster, throw weapons to be a better ninja. This makes leveling up more interesting than in the D&D based games and Legend of Grimrock.
2. The ability to create potions. You don't get a standard healing spell; instead, you get a spell that turns an empty flask into a healing potion. Drink the potion to heal, and you get an empty flask that you can again turn into a healing (or other) potion.

AD&D second edition numbers.

Flame Strike: 5 foot radius, 30-foot high column, maximum range: 60 yards. (PHB page 223)

Fireball: 20 foot radius, maximum range: 10 yards + 10 per level. There's even a description of how much space it will actually take up upon detonation (in 10' x 10' x 10' cubes). (PHB page 149)

Help me guys. How the heck do you kill a ratman? All my attempts to kill one has failed (on several occasions). EVERY attack on it misses. Am I really being unlucky? This happens ALL the time.. I can't play anymore if I can't get past them.

Maybe you need a magical +1 weapon to hit them?

Yeah, someone said the same in another thread so thanks to you too :3 I found a 'magical' polearm that did the trick.

Congratulations. :)

Floor 11: Scorpion monsters (resist everything and do large amounts of lightning damage) and chimeras (not dangerous at all)

I lack the spell that protects against electricity. However, I have Vampiric Touch, which I can use on Chimeras to get large amounts of temporary hit points (which in turn are used up quickly against the scorpions).

I started using Flame Blade instead of one of my Spiritual Hammers on the last floor, and then later switched to Mordenkainen's Sword on reaching mage level 14.

By the way, Fire Storm will hurt you if cast into melee.

Thinking of replacing my Fireball with a fourth Vampiric Touch on this floor.

Edit: Did the replacement. Finally found magic armor, which does not stack with my Ring of Protection (and the Cloak of Protection doesn't, but Bracers of Protection do). Now have -9 AC.

Learned Snilloc's Snowball and Detect Undead, so I now have all 1st level mage spells. (Still lacking in 4th and 5th level, however.)

Went with the fourth Vampiric Touch.

Thanks for looking it up. :-)

What Hex Editor are you using? I'm ready now to try this myself. :)

Oh and do you know if it's possible to give oneself items? I'm thinking about scrying glasses.

I just use the Linux hexedit program.

Giving oneself items should be possible, but I have not looked into it, so I don't know the addresses or item values.

Thank you. Unfortunately I'm on Windows 10 so I don't know if it'll work on that. If not it shouldn't be too hard to find one I think.

Hm. Since identifying objects is basically my only gripe with this game I think I'll look into that when I'm up and running with a hex editor. Going to try dropping a scrying glass and see what that changes. If it works I'll have much more fun playing a character that isn't a mage. :)

There are Windows native hex editors (I don't run Windows, so I'm not familiar with them), but if you want to be able to run UNIX command line utilities (like the "hexedit" program I mentioned), you can install cygwin. (Just make sure you actually select the "hexedit" package to install.) As a bonus, you can also get hexdump (dumps binary file as hexadecimal text) and diff (compare two text files, showing you the differences between them).