It's the Inquisition - grab your best Templar suit...or whatever is clean.

The First Templar is an intriguing game for a lot of reasons. It's an action-adventure game following the exploits of the Knights Templar, the mystery and fear of the Inquisition and the secrets of the Holy Grail. It's a lengthy campaign that takes you over diverse environments and tells a surprisingly well laid out story that culminates in an epic and satisfying finale. It smartly includes online/offline co-op that work really well with the games two character system, tempered only by the fact that it isn't drop in, drop out. The action is also broken up with puzzles that utilize both players effectively, made simple and intuitive with a stay/follow command for anyone playing alone.

But it's also intriguing for a lot of other reasons, namely that the developer, Haemimont, is better known for strategy games like Grand Ages: Rome, Imperium Romanum and the 100-hour stealing Tropic 3 (my favorite strategy/city builder ever). It's fairly bold for a developer to step in a totally new direction, and in a genre now dominated by much, much larger developers and publishers. It speaks volumes of the talent involved that the result is mostly positive but it also provides some proof that smaller teams and limited budgets betray the full potential of certain projects. If you aren't the sort that empathizes with these types of gaming realities then you may have a harder time enjoying The First Templar than those that do.

Indiana Jones & the Temple of the Assassin's Creed

The First Templar tells the story of a French Templar Knights, Celian and Roland, and noble companion, Marie, as they set out in search of, and answers about, the Holy Grail. But they're not the only one's after Jesus' drinking glass, as the allies must fight through hoards of Saracen, King Philip IV's army, and legions of the Inquisition to get there. Blending puzzles, secret passages and lots of action The First Templar hits upon many of the notes we see in RPG's and has made many people wrongly compare to the Assassin's Creed franchise. But don't expect to be crawling up walls and assailing your enemies from the rooftops, this is a straightforward action-adventure game.

Admittedly, combat does share a few similarities. I'd argue, however, that The First Templar has better, deeper and more challenging combat mechanics compared to the original Assassin's Creed game. You have a regular assortment of combos, charges and special moves and as you progress you'll earn experience points which you can use to upgrade and unlock new moves, and abilities. Though you can earn experience from the Arena (pre-order and special edition content) that carries over to the campaign I was still able to unlock everything for my characters without it. Interestingly, abilities (called prayer and concentration) are often more important to unlock before combos because they restore health and zeal. Zeal is a sort of power or stamina that allows you to perform special moves which in turn allows you to break through shields and knock enemies down, both necessary to survival.

In many ways the combat is fun and stays fresh over the ten or eleven hour campaign, but while the actions you perform are exciting the enemies aren't really. With the exception of a few Ogres that you encounter your attackers can all be beaten the same way; block their combo, perform your own, repeat. That's simplifying things greatly but there's no denying that there isn't much strategy needed to survive the common enemies. Making things even easier, you can revive your partner if they're downed at any stage of the game. You will run into a small number of duels and a couple boss fights that are much harder and, as a result, far more fun.

Ironically, enemies are smart enough to attack you from behind and while you fight someone else, something almost no video game enemies do. Though it's cool to see it also brings to light how frustrating the blocking mechanic can be if you don't perfectly face your attacker. The title manages to succeed in one specific area where others usually fail miserably - stealth. A number of levels force you to slink through the shadows and prey upon unsuspecting soldiers. If offline, your AI partner will always take care of the other enemy (they always travel in pairs or more). You might not be doing anything too complex but these sections, particularity in the late game, are always wonderfully paced and extremely rewarding.

The problems with the combat can be blamed on two things, but one of them may just be a personal taste thing that others will ignore. It just felt like the story ducked the magic and supernatural lore of the time period, especially given the context of the story. At a time when heretics were burned at the stake and fear was propagated through the very same texts that this story centers around, it seems there was more of an opportunity for creative ideas than Haemimont was willing to display. Less easy to digest, and a constant problem I'll get more to in a second, is that the animations don't always look convincing. In particular, some slow motion kills are cheapened by the fact your character clips through the enemy and the movement ends up looking decidedly non-lethal. You always get the idea of what's happening but this is an area where the smaller scale of the project really becomes apparent. 

 Grab Your Best Walking Stick

Your pilgrimage during The First Templar will take you all over the Middle East and even if the game isn't a graphical powerhouse it still has some very pretty environments. From villages, camps, caves and castles its impressive how much Haemimont gets out of the world. By adding levels where you traverse through forests that are on fire or you're trudging through dark and foggy swamps they manage to break up locations so the feel different and interesting. Sadly, there are also some real oddities as well, like Celian's strange, awkward walk. The most janky looking thing in the game, though, is the facial animation. It just looks bad. Stiff and ugly characters suffer from archaic movement and detail, and their lip syncing makes Milli Vanilli look currently relevant. You'll also see some strange things during puzzle sections like spikes and blades that jut out of stone with no visible way for the objects to coexist in the same space. None of this is a real problem if you don't care about visual blotches. You will however be annoyed by the poor visual cues you get when trying to run by fire, namely the fact that you get burned even when you appear far enough away.  Luckily, you don't have to spend too much time dodging flames.

The audio is equally hit or miss. On one front the actors sound decent, if maybe unenthusiastic, and the score is serviceable and appropriate for the genre. Unfortunately, there are some really bad problems with the sound mixing. During conversations a character will sound perfectly clear and then for no reason at all become muffled and echoed, ruining parts of the story. The direction of the actors is also poor, doing a disservice to the writing and importance of the plot. I'd usually blame an actor for a bad performance but it's across the board that dialogue is delivered in a flat monotone way without any inflection to suggest emotion. It's disappointing because the writing is good enough that strong performances could have made it easier to forget about the bad looking faces, instead of making them worse.

The Last Crusade

The First Templar was a surprise to me, which is strange because I went in with no expectations whatsoever. It was the impression I got from a couple of early game cutscenes that prepared me for a dismal experience, one that never came. The story turned out interesting and complex, the combat was intuitive and had plenty of depth and the environments were all beautiful. But due to the bad facial animations, the skittish audio production, and simplistic AI this is not a game that I can recommend outright. If you like historical action-adventures filled with mystery, well paced action and stealth, tons of unlockables and you don't mind a little repetition and a handful of mostly superficial blemishes then The First Templar is definitely worth checking out.

Final Score: 68%

65-69% - "Good” The game is either unsure what it wants to be, lacks polish, or fails to build on its strongest elements. A great option for an adventurous gamer or a fan of the genre. Will likely find a hardcore group that love it, but it’s not something something to line-up for.