As far as protective spells go, Hallow is king. Not only does it do everything Protection from Good and Evil does, it adds in a custom list to defend against precisely the foe you want.

Outside of flavor, Mold Earth does come with some fun practical uses that will vary in applicability DM to DM. It usually is a small part of a larger solution, and can open up creative outlets otherwise closed.

The Yoyo is a classic druid maneuver where you stick down a Spike Growth and Thorn Whip some melee combatant through the spaces to shred it to itty bitty pieces. Unfortunately, it requires a lot to go right, and has just a mediocre average case even should it succeed

Hold Monster is one of the earliest castable spells that require big bads come with legendary resistance, because if they fail this save, the fight is more or less over.

Holy Aura, despite similarities, is a superb spell for an 8th level slot. It is LEAGUES better than Foresight, which is to say it's a solid option to have.

This spell isn’t made for players nor monsters; this is a spell that exists for world building alone. You can technically take it, I just don’t know when you’d ever actually want to use it when death is a pretty solid option.

Incendiary Cloud is an efficient tool for decimating large groups of people, but so is Wall of Fire, Fire Storm, Meteor Swarm, and the classic Fireball. Is it worth it over these other “fire go boom” effects? The short answer is it can be, but the difference between them all is minimal.

I can’t emphasize enough how bad Instant Summons is. You shouldn’t take Instant Summons. Instant Summons is garbage. It is trash. It is a giant heaping smelly pile of bull feces. Instant Summons is AWFUL.

Irresistible Dance has a myriad of instances where it shines. Any monster you want to stay put has to; weaker willed monsters might be stuck for more than a single round. The addition preventing it from working on creatures immune to charm opens up a DMs toolbox to allow for counterplay as well

Legend Lore is fine; it’s a last ditch effort to learn critical information the DM needs to get out to move the plot and quest forward. The gold cost attached to it is prohibitively expensive for some tables, which can majorly limit this spell's use, but should gold not be an issue, it does what you’d expect.

For a spell dedicated to finding somebody, having a range only out to 1,000 feet pigeon holes it to work exclusively at finding creatures already close to you. It doesn’t clue you in on direction or distance if they’ve already made a run for it.

Adventurer’s work hard. Imagine getting shot, stabbed, burned, consumed by acidic jelo, killed, revived, killed again, revived again, and transformed into a turtle. All of that can be a part of your average adventuring day. You and your friends deserve the finest relaxation available.

All in all Maze can be fine when used in a specific encounter, but there are tools at lower levels that’ll do what it's doing about as good if not a bit better. A low intelligence creature might get stuck there for the entire fight, but that creature probably would be in just as bad a spot if it got removed in any other number of ways.

Meteor Swarm is the king of damage spells. 40d6 damage kills anything with 70 or less hit points, regardless of save, and typically kills things with up to 140 hit points. No other spell does this much raw damage.

You only should be taking Mind Blank as a player if you’re going against a Mind Flayer colony or something with that level of telepathic prowess. Outside of that specific kind of monster, the effect is done better on spells under half its level.

The core problems the spell has is it both requires you prepare it when you get to prepare precious few spells and does something you already can do without preparing it. If I can already add a bunch of damage to an attack for a spell slot (divine smite), having a redundant way to do that isn’t compelling.

Mislead is delightful. Where Invisibility and Greater Invisibility are just kind of stepping stones, Mislead takes being invisible and pairs it with some other sweet magical ideas.

Modify Memory gives you the power to rewrite recent events in the mind of an individual; it can reshape how they believe something happened, regardless of what actually transpired.

Move Earth is at its best as a silly giant sculpting spell, and serves otherwise niche purposes that rarely come up.

Practical applications of the spell are genuinely hard to come up with in most environments.