Revered son of the temple,
For centuries, the demise of evil has been sealed away, hidden from the eyes of mere mortals by the powers of good and righteousness. I am writing to you in need at this desperate hour. The very devil itself walks upon the earth. TDK have used their cursed magic to create a game full of demons, a world where hell has been brought to the reality of our sacred world and existence. Revered son, take up your controller, armed with your Gamecube and vanquish this evil!
It is during the 12th century AD, Europe, that this mind-blowing adventure takes place. The Dark Ages, a time when the entire world was shrouded in evil and there was no place for the righteousness of God to dwell. It is an age where there is a constant struggle between that of light and darkness, where suffering struggles against salvation, pagans plight against saints, miracles muster against disasters. It is the age of the Knights of the Temple, a group of valiant men who have joined together in the holy praise of God. Trapped in a world where nightmares become reality and the celestial spheres of heaven turn into the sulphurous pits of hell; darkness surrounds them on all sides. Take up your sword and shield, wear the sacred cross of God and say a silent prayer as you prepare yourself for the Infernal Crusade.
You take up the sword of Paul, a newly appointed Knight of the Temple, descendant from his father, also a virtuous knight. When you are hunting in the forest, you come across a dying man, another knight, clutching a letter to his chest. Racked with pain, the knight tells Paul that he must take the letter to the temple. Respecting his fellow knight’s last wish, Paul reads the letter and is confused by its madness. Hurrying onto the temple, he talks with one of the monks about the Arch Bishop, demanding to speak with him and tell him about the letter but he is told that he died years ago. Very confused about this, the monk sends Paul down into the catacombs in search of the Arch Bishop’s body.
This is where the action begins and it plunges you right in at the deep end. It seems as though the entire world has been gripped by an evil madness, shattering the minds of men and driving them to the very edge of insanity. The first enemies that you face are the monks of the temple, now crazed and armed with deadly blades to hack you up into little pieces and leave your body to rot amongst the others within the dark and musty catacombs. Finding a strong sword from one of the tombs, you fight your way through against them until you find that the body of the Arch Bishop is gone. You now realise that something is terribly wrong.
The main storyline of the game is simple yet terrifying. An evil darkness has possessed the Arch Bishop. Making his way to the nunnery, he kidnaps a young girl, your old childhood friend, Adel. His plans are to take this girl with him along the route of the Crusades and using her special powers, turn all of the holy locations into areas of the devil. Once his trip has been completed, the very gates of hell will open and the chaos within them will be unleashed.
Knights of the Temple is an amazing game and one I have not seen of such calibre for a long while. It is a type of game that the market thirsts for. There have been many adventure games created and also many strategy titles based upon the medieval age but never has there been such a game where you can take up the sword of a knight and fight your way through legions of demons and crazed enemies.
The gameplay is truly great. Using several button combinations, you can perform sword manoeuvres. Throughout the game, when you progress well, you will also learn new ones to perform and use to defeat the enemies that surround you. It gives the game a realistic edge and many of the sword combinations differ from one another, giving you a wide variety of attacks. It feels as though you are truly within the medieval age and that a knight could have done all you are doing and seeing all those years ago.
Not only do you have numerous combinations of attack but you also learn special moves too. With these you can perform several powerful attacks that will push the enemy back, knock them to the floor or even blast them into the air. These are very much needed, as the game is hard, even when put on Novice mode. However, these come at a price. A purple bar, underneath your health, drains when you perform these attacks but the good part of it is, is that it will rejuvenate over time when you hack away at your enemies with the normal attacks.
Also at your disposal is quite an array of weapons. Although there are only three types---sword, axe and bow---you collect a number of them through the game, progressing from basic weapons to more powerful and durable ones. With the bow, the range and accuracy gets better; the sword, the range of your attacks and strength increases; the axe, your power and agility increases.
You will need all of these, combined with the skill and speed of your attack combinations to defeat the many enemies that come against you. They are by no means stupid and run into walls or miss you with their attacks completely; the A.I. of the game is highly advanced and many a time you will be caught of guard and take a slice in the back for your foolishness. There are many enemies in the game from crazed monks to furious knights, to evil demons, to skeletal corpses, to fiery monsters and many more that your eyes will not believe what they see.
Travelling through amazing landscapes and locations of the world, you have to continue on in your quest and chase to save Adel from the evil Arch Bishop and stop the world from being plunged into the depths of evil. The many places that you visit are all from the historical locations of the Crusades. Starting off in England, you then travel to Acre and from there onward; even into the evil and twisted realm of hell itself.
For a next generation console game, Knights of the temple very much lives up to the expectations of the graphics quality that everyone expects from games today. It is purely amazing.
Starting with the character models themselves, they have been thought through very well, making them look truly authentic to the time period that the game is set in. From all of the different and far corners of Europe, there are English monks with their brown robes where you can even see the woven fabric; moving on, there are the knights with their detailed chain mail, metal armour and stained tunics; the demons have moving tentacles and oozing wounds. Everything moves fluently, with the clothes not just looking like they are stuck on the frame but they move with the characters and their attacks. When you swing your sword at them, they flinch and are knocked back, the blade truly going through them and their movements acting along with that; it is not just an automated response. Blood spurts from their wounds when you slice through them, splashing onto the floor in great pools. Angered and twisted faces come at you and your own contorts in agony when you are hit.
There are many locations within the game, as said, and all of them are very much like they are in the real world, or at least how they would have been during the time period. All of the buildings are created with detail and the textures look realistic and edge from true stone. You can smash through crates and barrels, run through doors and over bridges; the amount of level creativity is great. The lighting works really well when you go deep into dark dungeons or are out in the sun filled streets of acre and the holy lands. Never before has hell ever looked so baron and evil either! The entire game is just full of visual splendour.
Another thing that makes this game legendary is the amazing sound. Firstly, the soundtrack gets your blood racing and adrenaline pumping like no other adventure game before. When you are making your way through the levels, there are tunes that go with the theme of the location; there is dark sounding music when you are adventuring through the rotting catacombs of the temple; there is foreign and desert sounding music whilst you travel through Acre; there is evil and drums beating as you fight your way through the fiery hell. It is as if a band from the medieval ages themselves have come through into the future, just so they can record the soundtrack for this game, it is amazing! The best part of it though is when you come across enemies, a fast and heroic track will begin to play as you slice your way through them and get you right in the mood that you need to perform your attacks and vanquish them back to hell.
One of the other great qualities is the quality of the sound effects. There are the usual sounds of unlocking and opening doors, pushing buttons and moving concrete blocks. But then there are the sounds that make the game what it is. Whilst you fight, there are the numerous sounds of clashing steel or your weapon slicing through flesh. Then there are the blood spurts as you hack into your enemies, not to mention the gurgles and screams of pain. Then there are the firing of your arrows as they thud into the enemies or the crashing sound of wood as you smash open a barrel or crate.
Knights of the Temple---from what I can remember out of my many years of gaming---is one of a kind and in a league of its own in terms of the story and actual game itself. Obviously there have been many adventure games. Yet has there ever been a game like this, where you can actually be a true knight from the Dark Ages, fight through the legendary locations of the Crusades and fight against the very pits of hell itself. No. This game is truly amazing and worth that recognition. It is a game that should not be missed. Somehow it was able to slip into the market rather quietly, as many who I have questioned about it do not know of it. That is certainly a shame. A game of great quality such as this is what the market should have more of.
Take up your sword and shield, pray for the protection of God and see if you can take on the spawns of the devil.
Tobias Rowe
