Dread Templar

Soft Recommend, I had trouble getting into this at first, so much of the level design felt same-y, but then it won me over after episode 2, I'll always be a sucker for Ice and Desert Worlds. Very fun weapons and a soundtrack that just keeps chugging along, I think the most creativity went into designing and hiding all the secrets. The bow and throwable katana are the things that will eventually bring me back for a replay, both felt so good

Overall: 8/10 Positives: - Good map design and level variety. - Good weapon and enemy variety. - Good soundtrack. - Lovely art direction. - Fun in general. Negatives: - A severe lack of ammo throughout the game for all weapons. - Overuse of the wizard/summoner enemy later on. - Game maybe goes on a bit too long.

A different style of DOOM game. The secrets that give you perks and blood gems make you significantly stronger, some even changing how you play completely without having to increase the difficulty. Some of the secrets are very old school with some references to games of the olden era, Blood, Doom, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat, even the Terminator. The music in this game slaps hard, E3M1 Dead Sails really got the old juices flowing. Highly recommend! Full-price and on sale!

8/10 Would Get Ambushed by Psychic Demons Again This game is a love letter to boomer shooters with all the classic chaos, pixelated gore, and a soundtrack that slaps harder than a demon ambush around every blind corner. The upgrades aren’t overwhelming, but there’s enough there to give you some tasty build variety. The level design was fun and varied, but sometimes the enemies know you're there before even God does. I turned a corner and got jumped by a demon SWAT team like I owed them rent. Story? Eh, vague. But who plays these games for Shakespeare? We’re here to shoot first and ask "Wait, was there lore?" never. Yes, it’s a bit long. Yes, the AI has borderline precognition. But when the arenas opened up and the heavy metal kicked in, I was a gleeful little murder machine in hell. If you’re looking for something that scratches the DOOM itch without being DOOM, Dread Templar absolutely delivers. Just… watch your corners. They’re watching you.

Playing Dread Templar is an immensely frustrating experience for me. I want to like this game but there are so many design choices that turn me off. It's biggest design flaw is it's strange insistence on secret hunting. There are A LOT of secrets in this game. The problem with it is that most secrets are necessary for getting upgrades. This means most of your weapons suck at the beginning, they become better and more fun, the more upgrades you have. So what do you do? You look for the secrets because you want to have more fun. However most of them are very obtuse, so a guide is pretty much required unless you're willing to waste your time scouring the maps for them. This is not fun, it's tedious work. Regarding the maps, they're too big for my taste and don't offer enough interesting things to make up for it. I don't want to spend 40 minutes in the same area, I want to move on and shoot things. The enemies? Too spongey with annoying behaviour and bad AI. The music? Alright but considering how time you spend on a map, it gets too repetitive. The abilities? Dash's cooldown is way too long to be useful and I never use the slow mechanic, I just don't see how it would help me. There are so many more things I could go on ranting about but the gist of it is this: Playing Dread Templar annoys me, maybe I'll finish it for completions' sake but I certainly don't have a good time.

It's hard to tell why I don't like this game. I don't necessarily think there's anything to criticize (outside of increase in HP per higher difficulty I think that's objectively bad FPS design), but it just elicits no reaction from me. None of the weapons seem all that interesting, nor do the enemies. And none of the level/arena design feels that good either.

Good game, good music.

not bad. decent boomer shooter

Its good.