Developer: Trese Brothers
Publisher: Trese Brothers
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, Steam, iOS, Android
Tested on: PC / Steam
Templar Battleforce – Review
Templar Battleforce, from the Trese Brothers, promises to combine the excitement of turn based Role Playing Game battles with thoughtful strategy as you build and equip your battleforce of space age Templar Knights. Can your squad of specialised battle mechs clean the quadrant of an alien menace?
Story
The game is set in the Trese Brothers’ Star Traders universe – following the three previous games in the series.
The tale begins with your ship being rammed by an alien spacecraft. The aliens board your ailing vessel and it is up to you and your merry band of Templar soldiers to repel the attack and reclaim your ship. Once the ship has been retaken the story continues with 45 or more levels including open desert warefare, capturing tactical points and action behind enemy lines.
All the way through you build the skills and armoury of your squad, trying to find the best mix of tactics and specialisations.
Graphics
The theme here is late 90s, early 2000s retro. The graphics are top-down and endearingly blocky. Effective use of your team can be impeded by the fact that there is little to differentiate the different members of your squad. Each Templar Knight looks fairly similar apart from some colour highlights. To help you check that you have used all your team’s points on each turn, there is a helpful list you can scroll through.
Aliens are more differentiated, some being humanoid for and others insect form. The graphics depicting the landscapes and ships are rudimentary but evocative.
Sound
The sound of this game is functional and does not get in the way of gameplay. Weapons make satisfying weapon-ey noises, aliens hiss and explosions crunch. The music is retro synthetic and can become repetitive. You can go to options and lower the music volume if desired.
Gameplay
Templar Battleforce is a top-down 2D turn based RPG battle game. You start with a basic two man squad on the deck of a damaged spaceship and as you fight and explore, the map slowly expands to reveal the different parts of the ship. At every turn, each of your squad has a certain amount of movement and action points to expend.
For each member of your force you can choose to move up to a certain number of spaces. Action points can then be used to attack nearby aliens or provide buffs to nearby squad members. Once the player has finished using up their points, or just leaving some knights to stand guard, you click the End Turn button. Then the AI controlled aliens make their moves, as you watch your defences hold, or a strong alien strike breaks through or kills one of your squad.
Initially you need to reach objective points while fighting off encroaching aliens. The first strategic mission forces you to defend a strategic item from attack while battling your way to a second objective. This involves some thinking as you need to split your team over two locations and you have to choose which soldiers are better at defence or attack.
As you gain experience you can choose the different types of soldiers to add to your squad. These include flamethower equipped Hydras, Engineers with specialised skills, Sentry Turrents for defense and wild Berserks.
Soldiers can take on different types of attack, such as powerful close range hits, weaker long range shots, strong defense and overwatch, where the knight can shoot at encroaching enemies during the aliens’ turn. Frag grenades are available early on to destroy clusters of enemies.
The mix of talents and powers available for your squad can set up some interesting situations. Decisions made for one mission may not be good for the following mission. There is a steep learning curve too. If you feel you have set up your squad badly you are able to refund the points spent and reallocate them to better suit your style of gameplay.
Conclusion
Despite the simplicity of the graphics, there is a good depth of gameplay here as there are a large number of ways to customise your squad in terms of skills and equipment. Playing the levels requires some thought as your team is stretched to the limit, trying to defend multiple objective points and using the terrain to give an advantage over the swarms of alien attackers.
Recommended for retro game fans who want to stretch their strategic thinking abilities.
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I saw this, “Each Templar Knight looks fairly similar apart from some colour highlights” and wanted to point out the Design feature under status.
You can change the armor design as well as name and face for every Templar. I would always recommend adding color codes to help quickly identify different squad members, as seen in a screensht like this on Steam — http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/683776078269272874/9A553B20B065329ACE116D71EF6F5502FD5F5929/