It could be! What I felt during game, and meant by "brute forcing", was that it didn't matter which spell I used. There was no time pressure, nor resource management. So any spell would get the same job done. The difference would just be just a few more clicks or a few more seconds. I also remember thinking if it was really worth it to waste time flipping the book looking for the right spell rather than just picking the first one and just spam it.
Ok, I replayed it and in fact there are some spells who don't do absolutely anything to them really, maybe I was lucky in my first try