[ 1 DVD ]
- Published by : Kalypso Media
- Developed by : Haemimont Games AD
- Genre : Historic Action Adventure
The First Templar is a billed as a vaguely historical adventure. Indeed it is, but not because it's set during the crusades. No, The First Templar is historical because it's a look back at dated game design, a testament to how things were once done, and how they should never be again.
This is the story of a Templar named Celian, a knight who is on a quest to recover the Holy Grail. His journey takes him all over the Middle East, with stops in historical cities like Acre. At its core, The First Templar is a hack-and-slash adventure, wherein you'll be pushed through a series of environments, bludgeon tons of enemies and solve mind-numbingly easy puzzles. It's nothing I haven't seen done better many times before.
Moments into The First Templar you know you're playing a budget game. The menus and user interface are bad with generic fonts and an intrusive heads up display. The screen is simply too crowded – especially in split-screen cooperative play – and it takes away from any of the ambience or occasional beauty the environments have. Games like Dead Space have shown that UI can be both elegant and serve a purpose, while The First Templar's is just phoned in.
The character animations and lackluster graphics don't help The First Templar, either. This looks like a game from several years ago, and no matter how good a performance the voice actors might be trying to give, they're always hampered by the mechanical nature of the character's movements. Graphics aren't everything, but these are so behind that they detract from what is already a mediocre experience.
Looks aside, the major appeal of The First Templar is its story and combat. Unfortunately the story is weak and clichéd, with all the predictable twists and turns I'd expect out of a cheesy action film. The characters aren't particularly interesting, and there isn't enough dialogue between them or background given to the world to make it more than an excuse to put you in a bunch of different environments.
No matter how varied the environments are, though, the levels boil down to the same thing. Your character is funneled down one long path, forced to fight waves of imbecilic enemies and be beaten over the head with the solutions to any puzzles before them. Combat is basically a button mashing affair, where you can generally beat everyone around you just by swinging away like a mad man. Some later fights do force you to block and dodge, but this is mostly because they throw a ton of really dumb enemies at you, rather than presenting enemies that are genuinely challenging and fun to fight.
The "puzzles" in The First Templar break up the pacing so it's not all a combat grind, but it almost always just tells you what to do. Either your characters can look around and just see symbols telling them what to do, or text will pop up in the HUD and just say it. Even side objectives aren't left for you to discover, as arrows simply point the way to all the "hidden" chests and treasures.
Moments into The First Templar you know you're playing a budget game. The menus and user interface are bad with generic fonts and an intrusive heads up display. The screen is simply too crowded – especially in split-screen cooperative play – and it takes away from any of the ambience or occasional beauty the environments have. Games like Dead Space have shown that UI can be both elegant and serve a purpose, while The First Templar's is just phoned in.
The character animations and lackluster graphics don't help The First Templar, either. This looks like a game from several years ago, and no matter how good a performance the voice actors might be trying to give, they're always hampered by the mechanical nature of the character's movements. Graphics aren't everything, but these are so behind that they detract from what is already a mediocre experience.
Looks aside, the major appeal of The First Templar is its story and combat. Unfortunately the story is weak and clichéd, with all the predictable twists and turns I'd expect out of a cheesy action film. The characters aren't particularly interesting, and there isn't enough dialogue between them or background given to the world to make it more than an excuse to put you in a bunch of different environments.
No matter how varied the environments are, though, the levels boil down to the same thing. Your character is funneled down one long path, forced to fight waves of imbecilic enemies and be beaten over the head with the solutions to any puzzles before them. Combat is basically a button mashing affair, where you can generally beat everyone around you just by swinging away like a mad man. Some later fights do force you to block and dodge, but this is mostly because they throw a ton of really dumb enemies at you, rather than presenting enemies that are genuinely challenging and fun to fight.
The "puzzles" in The First Templar break up the pacing so it's not all a combat grind, but it almost always just tells you what to do. Either your characters can look around and just see symbols telling them what to do, or text will pop up in the HUD and just say it. Even side objectives aren't left for you to discover, as arrows simply point the way to all the "hidden" chests and treasures.
You might think that having a cooperative option for the entire campaign could save The First Templar, but you'd be dead wrong. Split-screen cooperative play crowds the screen even more, and playing online means you need to find a friend who made the same purchasing error you did (unless you want to brave a random game). I like that you're always travelling with an AI partner so cooperative play makes sense story wise, but I felt it better to suffer alone this time around.
Gameplay Trailer :
Sytem Requirement :
| Minimum System Requirements: | Recommended System Requirements: |
| CPU: | 2.4 GHz Single-Core | CPU: | 2.4 GHz Dual-Core |
| RAM: | 1 GB | RAM: | 2 GB |
| VGA: | 256MB DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0 (Geforce 6 Series, ATI X1300) | VGA: | 512MB DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0 (Geforce 8 Series, ATI HD4800) |
| DX: | DirectX 9.0c | DX: | DirectX 9.0c |
| OS: | Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 | OS: | Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 |
| http://gamesystemrequirements.com/ |
| HDD: | 5 GB | HDD: | 5 GB |
| Sound: | DirectX 9-compatible | Sound: | DirectX 9-compatible |