Is it just me, or does it take forever to do anything in this game? I enjoy it, don't get me wrong, but it seems that sometimes when trying to get to a section in the map, I'm looking at about five minutes of staring at the screen. This impatience is exaggerated by the fact that the black shroud of war is reinstituted at the loading of a saved game (is this a bug? Whenever I load a game, for a split second after loading a game, the minimap actually has the area cleared, and then it gets covered up).
I guess, to make a long post short, is there any way to speed up the game? Like plus/minus keys or something? I don't see anything in the manual about it, so I'm not hopeful, but it does seem odd that the game was intended to be as slow as it is.

I'm not sure about the shroud of war, since I usually play a map entirely before I save and exit.
The slowness seems like a bug or a problem with your system though. I haven't had a problem like that at all, and I'm on a pretty old PC myself.

It's possible that the game has problems with newer PCs, but I originally played through it on a PIII-550 with no real problems that I remember (though I never completed it, I only got about 3/4 of the way through).

It's not choppy or anything... The animations appear to be properly paced. When attacking or getting attacked everything seems in order; it's just when trying to clear a map after loading a save game, it takes forever for the character(s) to make their way across the map, due to the slow walking speed.
I watched some gameplay videos and they don't appear to be any faster than what I'm seeing.

Yeah, it does take a long time. I've heard there is an aura that enables fast walking, but I didn't find it during the first compaign (on second one now).

Yes, there's aura of fast walking (white magic: boons I think) but it is pretty rare, and totally useless if you don't have the required skill. Some equipment can modify your walking speed, but not enough that you'd actually notice. You can also teleport around using bindstones, but you have to reach a bindstone on foot to activate it before you can teleport to it. :-/

You can sort of cheat (I don't really consider it a cheat as you are very unlikely to get most of your spells to 12 or get some at all in a playthrought unless you do this. It's developers oversight as in my opinion all spells should be either buyable (top level spells cost arm and leg anyway) or gotten one way or another durring one playthrought.) your self the spells you want in a bit tedious way:
Random monster drops are generated the moment you open corpse inventory so to take advantage of this you can quicksave (F7) and quickload (F9 and enter to accept) until you get the spell you want. This works best on bosses and special monsters that are set to give a spell as they always give a spell and are mostly higher level than any normal monster drop (there is one map in which you can get half dozen level 12 spells and half dozen 10/11 level spells during a sidequest).
Aura of Fast Walking (White magic - Boons) isn't that effective alone or without good charisma though so you better get some items to boost the effect. Better way is to use the cheat that reveals the whole map after you reload.

I didn't even think to cheat. Heh. Solution found. :)

You can use cheat engine to speed the game up. I for example speed the game up by about 2x.

You are replying to a post that's NINE years old. Way to go, Einstein.

Woops

Thanks for the flashback.