It doesn't take long for The First Templar, a Crusades-era action-adventure, to rear its low-budget head. For us, it was a few moments into the game, when we noticed the protagonist's funky walk: pitched forward a tad too far, holy grail–hunting hero Celian moves like he has some unseen issue...

+ Fast-paced; nuanced combat; supported by character-progressing upgrades; + Low-end production values are unintentionally (we think) funny

- Some poor design decisions show a real lack of polish; ? Didn't they have some sort of Gold Bond substitute back then to soothe Celian's "issue"

Two thousand years ago, Jesus drank from a cup. Such a commonplace action may seem trivial, but it transformed an ordinary chalice into the Holy Grail. This sacred object has fueled the desire of countless historians through the years and has wormed its way into just as many fictional tellings of...

Satisfying combat punctuated by brutal finishing moves; Stealth and puzzle sections are welcome diversions; Well-developed characters that occasionally utter humorous lines; Twisty level design with lots of alternate routes

Iffy collision detection; A scarcity of items to collect

The First Templar is a hack and slash game based loosely around the Templar legends and one knight's quest to recover the Grail. While I am usually pretty generous in my assessments of games that do not rate very well, I give this game a 2.5 stars rating out of 5 for the following reasons:

If you learn one thing from playing The First Templar , the new action-adventure medieval romp from Haemimont Games, it's that you can find experience points hiding in chests that just happen to be lying around the place.

The First Templar is a standard action adventure game with a touch of RPG thrown into the mould by developers Haemimont Games which sees the player taking on the role of a holy Templar as he makes his way through medieval Europe to uncover the secrets of the Holy Grail.

Though The First Templar features adequate design and decent replay incentives, uninspired and repetitive gameplay severely limits this button-mashing adventure's appeal. Conspiracy fans and history buffs would do well to look elsewhere.

Did the medieval Catholic church have some kind of breeding program to produce these giants?

Siccing the Templars on the Inquisition at Montsegur

Fighting the game's few single-player duels

And with any luck it'll also be the last

This game is terrible. Bad/mediocre graphics, the voice acting is as bad as it gets, character design is laughable,and the game play is just plain boring. I do not recommend that you waste your time playing this failed attempt at a game.

MFT is fascinating for the wrong reasons. Its edutainment featuring historical accounts on the templars and the times they lived in. It can't escape connections to Assassin's Creed due to it.

Budget title despite numerous short comings and flaws; the actual game itself isn't too bad

The knights templar were a religious order that swore an oath of poverty, and this game feels like it swore to that oath too since it looks and feels like it literally had no budget put into it; The game play is simple and reptetitive; The graphics are crude.