PlayingHardball: Let's Play Templar Battleforce #5 That Bomb Needs to Go Deep!
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We are playing Templars Battleforce
Let's Play / English / Gameplay / walkthrough / playthrough / turn-based strategy / PC Game / Uncut / Full Gameplay with Comments / Digital Art / Science Fiction / Tactics / Lets Play
The PC game Templar Battleforce is a strategy game featuring top-down turn-based tactical combat against alien Xenos, rogue human factions and an ancient Narvidian threat. Different Templar Mech suits, templar development and squad customization play a big role in gameplay. The game was developed and published by indie studio Trese Brothers in 2015.
With this first video of this Let's Play I wanted to review this game recognizing that Templar Battleforce is sort of a groundwork for the Trese Brothers' later game Star Traders: Frontiers (you can find my introduction and review for that one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkllatbQ4cU) - and because despite some shortcomings I really enjoyed playing it.
While the developers most likels drew on Warhammer for inspiration a surprisingly rich and unique world unfolds in the course of the missions. The 8 different templar classes with a multitude of talents and equipment make for many options in gameplay. The player has to chose which templar units to deploy and which to develop over the course of the campaign. For this development there is a high number of choices to make on the requisition roster. There is an interesting mech suits’ heat management system in place that adds nicely to the tension created by the missions and provides tactical challenge.
On higher difficulties basically every mission sports new alien Xenos, the game creates a nice atmosphere and I found that the xeno and the game sounds create true fear for your templars - similar to the old UFO-Enemy Unknown.
I play the game on hard difficulty which provided a nice challenge while higher difficulties were too stressful for me.
All in all, Templar Battleforce is a surprisingly nice Warhammer 40k clone turn based strategy game on basis of simplified basic graphics with a decent range of tactical choices.
Further info (excerpt from my Steam review):
You earn xp to level your templars and requisition points to get new gear and abilities, all of which are used to customize your squad to your tactical liking.
Genre: Turn based strategy with role playing elements and customizable characters
Category: small studio low budget title
Graphics: Simple but effective
Music: Not too memorable, but nice enough
Sound FX: while very limited nice and fitting sound FX
Game’s strengths:
- The game is nice and fun and the simplicity is not a bad thing here
- Nice variety of missions (43 in total) that did not become too repetitive
- Nice tactical choices, talents, tech tree with relics
- Nice difficulty settings that should fit any motivation, from massive challenge to really easy going
- 8 different templars provide decent tactical choices and room for experiments
- It’s really fun to hunt those xeno
- Decent game AI for mindless aggressive creatures
- bigger potential for a somewhat more open game design in the nice enough game world, maybe like with Battle Tech where you fly around and can do randomized missions to enhance your squad
- Ok story line, not ground breaking but a nice enough plot to provide a connection for the missions
Weaknesses:
- The main campaign and the follow up star base missions do not provide enough xp and requisition points to fully equip your squad with all tech
- In the middle to late game I found melee to be too dangerous and the mission designs prohibited a tactic of running up close to the enemies (and thus waste time) to achieve the mission objectives in time. That limited the game experience somewhat. Accordingly in my first playthrough I never really used the berserker (only one mission deployment), the paladin (only 10 mission deployments) or the neptune (only 13 mission deployments) and I could have done completely without them.
- All 43 maps are nicely designed but provide not so much replayability. After finishing the game I fiddled around a bit with the hardest difficulty setting but as I knew all the maps it was somewhat uninteresting. Also with such big xeno hordes heat management became a fun hampering issue (I’d like to watch someone do later missions in iron mode without suffering casualties).
My personal score for this small studio low budget title (100 max, 85 for an excellent game; below 65 I recommend not to invest your precious time): 79 points
Dear Trese Brothers, nicely done job! Thank you, I had (and have) a good time with your game. I see great potential with you guys!
"Templar Battleforce© Trese Brothers www.tresebrothers.com."