Command could be quite useful, though since it only lasted 1 round and the creature had to understand the language you commanded it with, it sometimes made things difficult. And if you were fighting against a horde of little monsters, as many AD&D combats entailed, taking out one goblin wasn't even a big deal. So there was a good number of situations where the spell just wasn't all that useful.hogarth wrote: At least a level 1 cleric got to cast a couple of cure spells and one paralyze-no-save spell (Command). Whereas a level 1 magic-user got to cast one paralyze-no-save spell (Sleep) and then he'd cower at the back of the party throwing darts for the rest of the adventure.
Also because of simultaneous declaration of action before initiative in 2E, the 1 round duration made things harder than you'd expect. You needed the group on board with helping to murder the creature, and you had to hope their initiative rolls put them acting after the cleric. And while you could have the entire party declare a focus fire on the guy, that had the problem of overkill, you'd end up stabbing the shit out of him, but wasting actions in the long haul. And if the enemy was a caster in the backline, you may have to risk a bunch of AoOs to get to him.
The biggest problem remained the healing issue. You couldn't buy wands of CLW in AD&D. If you were playing the cleric, you were the wand of CLW. If you didn't devote the slot to CLW, you didn't have it. There was no spontaneous cures like there are in 3E. So when your party started to get beat up, you were sure to take the blame when you prepared a bunch of command spells instead of healing.