Knights of the Temple: Eurojank Crusade & Sequel
Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade is a game that was not released in any important parts of the world, only Europe.
Still, it's a pretty-good-kinda game. It has a fixed camera like the old Resident Evils, or-- or uhhh, Devil May Cry-- (kinda more like RE, the camera's preddy close and it definitely has and RE4 kinda feel to it a lot of the time) It's kinda like the Lord of the Rings movies games. And you play as a CRUSADER named Paul. That's COOL right?
RIGHT, because after the first chapter you get a helmet and you start killing saracens.
Don't worry though, because of course, of course, of course, of course, THE REAL BAD GUY is actually a BISHOP. it's not the usual obnoxious "Church bad" meme though, it's a bishop possessed by a demon, running around the world building a global cult and opening portals to Hell and everything bad. And you have to stop him, because the dimwit humanist "COEXIST" schtick works even less with demons.
Along the way, you'll acquire a NUMBER of neato weapons. Swords, maces, axes, and bows. Mostly swords. And I have no idea what the differences between any of the melee weapons are. They all share the same move-set, and as far as I can tell, whatever the newest weapon you got is probably going to be the strongest. IDK, you dont have an inventory, and there's no kind of weapon stats to look at. It's possible that they have different ranges, but that doesn't matter, and I'll tell you why.
The combat system is bullshit.
Enemies have longer ranges than you. The entire chapter you're fighting saracens, you actually push them out of your combo-range when you attack them, so unless you've already started the combo in advance, it's probably not going to hit them. Especially when you ALSO have to be blocking their attacks (Also, your block isn't instant, it takes a fraction of a second to be effective, so enemies will often be able to slip in a hit before you can block it.) Not to mention the enemies that jump away from you. And that's with the sword. Which I assume has the longest range, so if the longest-ranged weapon can't hit enemies decently, forget any differences, none of it matters, just use whatever new weapon you got. Oh also, they can block against your combos. So really, good luck finishing combos past the first chapter.
Thankfully you can use your GIANT BRAIN to give yourself some tactical advantages. Enemy keeps backing up? Bully him into the wall so he can't run away anymore. Enemies surrounding you? Use your special sweeping attack to give yourself some breathing room and get them back in a line. The way you position yourself is very important.
Your special attacks use a meter which rapidly re-fills, so they're veeeeery very useful. Breaking enemy guards, a powerful jump attack, it's good stuff. As cheap as the enemies can be, you're equipped with just as many dirty attacks to balance things out.
You learn a number of PRAYERS in the game, which is based. The first one being one that heals you. Enemies are pushed back and can only cope and seethe as you kneel and praise God for some bonus HP. Kill a few of them, and your uh... "prayer bar"? refills enough to use it again. There's a few other prayers, but they're mostly not worth the cost of using them.
Back to the combat being bullshit: You're going to eat hits sometimes. It's the only way of getting in hits of your own. There's a few enemies that you can't swing at without being punished, and of course your combos can be interrupted. And will be. It's mostly not a big deal. And it at least doesn't look completely ridiculous, you CAN be a badass and rarely get hit, it's possible. But to really connect with your combos, and fight in a way that isn't just "hold down block, quick attack, hold down block", you're gonna get cut up a bit. And even if you wanted to play like that, you're gonna get cut up anyway because a few enemies can break your guard. You can use distancing to some effect and hit enemies as they're trying to close in on you, but one problem is that you break away from lock-ons pretty quickly, so you can't give yourself TOO much distance.
Still, I played on NORMAL because im a normal guy, and I BREEZED through the game until the final boss, which gave me a bit of a rough time.
When I say I breezed through the game, I mean I had a BIT of a rough time against the first boss before you learn your healing prayer, then I had absolutely zero trouble for the rest of the game, including HELL (yeah, big spoiler, you go to Hell for a bit) and then I reached the final boss. It's an ez pz game, but it's fun.
It crashed a handful of times, but nothing that a reset didn't fix. Mostly when moving to a new level. The combat can feel kind of "slow"-- on your part of course, the enemies attack you nice and quick :) and the targeting just doesn't always work so well. But it does work. Mostly sorta. The delicious Eurojank is present everywhere you look. The game just feels unpolished in a lot of ways. The visuals, the sound, the story especially. But even the writing. Lemme give you a fun example: there's a book you can read in the game, and in the text that's supposed to be what the book is saying, is the prompt asking you if you want to read it in the first place. So when you check the book, it says something like:
"It's a book. Do you want to read it? Look for the dark thing in the shadow place, to find the moon goddess."
I love it. It's also often apparent that English isn't the first language of the writer, but it's not BAD at all, it's just-- well, it's charming really.
Also, the game tells you to skip cinematics with the Y button, but it's really the A button.
STORY.
The story's bad lol. It's not awful, but it's a lot of jumping around without a lot of details. At one point you just DECIDE at the beginning of a mission to find the leader of the saracens to help you. Why? Idk, you just do. That's it. "I need to find the saracen leader and see if he'll help me." it comes out of nowhere. I guess LOGICALLY it makes sense since you're in the area, but other than that, there's just nothing to it(spoiler, he does not help you). 100% of the story you get at the loading screens or a cutscene at the end of a chapter. It's always basically just "Darn, the bishop's already been here! I gotta catch him before he does more bad stuff!" That's it.
I was mostly unoffended by the game's use of Christianity. You're a crusader, it's based, there's no real blaspheming against the Lord, there's no real disrespect of Christians. There's no "oh nooooo actually we're the REAL bad guys!" which was SHOCKING. it's just a single rogue bishop possessed by the Devil, leading a vibrant and diverse cult of demon-worshipers from all walks of life, and you kill them all.
There's a WOMAN who's "given powers by God", which, okay fine. I'm OK with it, SHE'S NOT A WITCH, she says explicitly that God gave her her power, and she's the one who teaches you prayers--PRAYERS, not "spells" so it's FINE. It's fine. Anyway, simp that you are, you're trying to rescue her before she's sacrificed to uh... complete the ritual... to uh... make everything really really bad.
I'll just come out and say it, the ending is kinda shit. It's a "HEH HEH, ACTUALLY YOU DIDNT REALLY WIN, THE BAD GUYS ARE STILL AROUND" kinda deal. But FINE, there's a second game, maybe it'll clear things up, right?
Replay value? none. you can replay levels, which is nice. But that's all. I cant imagine wanting to play on higher difficulties, it'd be too tedious. Normal's nice because you really FEEL like spi-- like a crusader. You're just charging through everything and slaughtering heretics. It's great. It's bad, but it's great.
thaaaaaaats all for now. might add more later, but for now,
777 out of 10.
THERE'S A SEQUEL???
There is. It's by a different studio and way different.
It's not good. It's not bad. So okay in that way at least it's a lot like the first game.
To start with it, it's an "open world" game now. It's not one large map though, it just means you can visit a handful of levels in any order you want. The main three are towns where you can buy items, get side quests, and make progress in your main quest-- getting 3 SPECIAL THINGS to uh... stop the Devil from ruining everything again.
It's been 20 years from the first game, and age hasn't worn your character down a bit. You'll be butchering pirates, saracens, and demons, and now SKELETONS, as easily as last time. Actually, a bit more easily now.
The combat's been criticized as being more of a "button masher" than the previous game. It is, but the idea that the first game's combat system was really any better is laughable.
You still perform combos, using many of the same moves from the first game. And enemies are even slightly-less able to interrupt your combos now, because you bully the hell out of them. But unfortunately now there's just one. little. problem.
No-longer are just your special attacks tied down to the special bar, now ALL of your attacks are-- it's basically a stamina bar now. It's just a baffling design choice that will cause you to neverever use your special attacks. Because your special attacks drain a TON of your bar, which no-longer refills NEARLY as quickly as the first game's. There were a few special attacks that I never even got to see in action. Why would I put points into them or use them, when I can level up my standard heavy attacks instead? My HEAVY attacks that do HEAVY damage. The ability to level your moves in any way you choose is at least a positive. A positive because it's your way to work around this new limitation placed on your shoulders.
I put everything into heavy attacks, bullied my way into a small fortune in the pit fights, got the strongest armor, fully leveled my healing, and became an unstoppable tank for the Holy Spirit. That's great, obviously, but it's also the only way to play this ball-busting game with the waves and waves of enemies it throws at you, so don't PRETEND that this is a choose-your-own-crusader kind of game, because it's not. There's actually STEALTH MECHANICS in the game that you learn in the tutorial level-- visibility/shadows and walking on noisy surfaces. Do they come into play at all? No. You don't get to be a Vatican Assassin, sorry. You WILL wield the giant 2h sword, you WILL pray the full Rosary OUT LOUD in the cursed Roman city, and you WILL fully level your Constitution before even THINKING about leveling any regular attacks.
You do get a crossbow and BONUS experience for silent kills before an enemy sees you, but that's about it. "At least it's not the bow from the first game" is all I can say about it.
I will say there are some REALLY COOL weapons in the game. And the COOLEST ONES don't even lose durability! Not that I know what that means, since weapon durability isn't explained anywhere. Not even in the user manual I found. Do they lose attack strength? I don't know, the "AS" number--which is what I assume is attack strength, never goes down. Still, you can get your weapons repaired when they're damaged. And I guess, maybe it's a good idea? It's expensive, though. And, OF COURSE, enemies don't drop gold. So unless you want to spend a lot of time in the pit fights or re-selling items for profit to a certain merchant, it might just be better to power through the game like the first one-- using the newest weapon you find, until you can get your hands on the legendary ones.
Unless you're like me, and you choose to get the Fire Axe, the most powerful axe in the game, which IS TOO SHORT TO HIT one of the final bosses to deal the killing blow, potentially screwing you if you don't have a longer weapon with you to finish the fight. So just hold on to everything and you'll be fine.
Probably. I don't know actually, because there's a few parts that I think I might have just gotten lucky with. The game can REALLY be ridiculous with the enemy-spam, and if you're not sufficiently prepared for it with items and how you're built, I can imagine having your entire game screwed. Sorry, actually it doesn't matter how well stocked you are on healing items, because in at least one level (the one which gave me the hardest time) the game seems to just take all of your healing items from you. So, oh well! Lol. Again: be the Tank of the Holy Spirit. Or suffer.
Now, I won't hold onto this spoiler any longer, it's not a big enough deal: at the end of the first game, your waifu was POSSESSED. It was bullshit. And now the demon--Azawhatever-- is just like, using her as a puppet. It's hardly addressed at all in the game, and your character makes zero effort to try to save her, despite that being his entire goal in the first game.
Is he just that blackpilled about her soul? He's not blackpilled about saving the REST of the world from the Devil. It makes no sense. You loved this woman, and now it's like you don't care at ALL. There's actually a level of ideal Christian stoicism to the way Paul just doesn't let it get to him--to look the Devil in the face as he taunts you with the body of your wife, and not even flinch--which is extremely based. But was that intended, or is it just bad writing? I can't believe it's the former, but either way you slice it, he should at be trying to save her soul.
But nothing really makes sense. The first game had you battling against a newly-forming cult that threatened to unite the world under Hell. And you did it as a focused, zealous soldier of God. Now, a "Gate of Hell" is being opened, you're 20 years older, and you decide to start being like, a Witcher. You're taking SIDE QUESTS for PIRATES? Okay, fine, maybe you need money for your expenses... you've got to be well-provisioned if you want to save the world from Hell, but a lot of the quests are just silliness. Not to mention, of course, they're broken sometimes.
One man has you collect 10 black pearls for him. Apparently there's 12 in the game. That's cool, a little breathing room, right? Wrong. I found 11-- and if you get ANY MORE THAN THE 10 REQUIRED, YOU CANNOT COMPLETE THE QUEST. It just breaks the dialogue when you try to turn them in. There's a similar issue with mushrooms in the game, but I didn't even get to experience that. There's also-- you know what? Forget it lol. That's just how the game is.
There's much less of a "Christian" feel to this game. And that's impressive(in a bad way) when most of the Christianity of the first game just came from Paul saying stuff like "Oh Father, help me!" in the loading screens. But no, now the vibe is a much more generic kind of demon-slaying one. Your prayers are no-longer even called prayers, they're divine POWERS now, like every other fantasy game. At least they're still noted to be given to you by God. And Paul *does* flat-out tell a Pagan "There is only one God". But still, if you want to feel like a Crusader instead of just a Witcher with a Cross on his armor, you've got to bring that attitude in with you this time around, because the game will do nothing to provide it to you.
The jank--like the first game--is kinda charming. It's functioning. Mostly. And you know what? I'd play it again to try to get the good ending. Because I ... think I got the bad ending. I don't know, finding information about this game is even more difficult than for the first game.
So that's it. Paul's Bizarre Adventure: Eurojank Crusaders Part I & II. Save your waifu, save the world, abandon your waifu, do some odd jobs for pocket money, save the world again
EDIT: no, i got the good ending. It just happens to not be good.