![]() ![]() It's a real pity, as we desperately need more mid-range games. Cursed Crusade, in contrast, feels thick and gluey, bogs itself down in interminable cutscenes and generally allows its low budget roots to tangle up the gameplay itself. Even with its cheap production values, the combat in First Templar was at least fun and varied, and kept things motoring along in a pleasing budget game style. The killer blow comes from the fact that The First Templar already did the Crusades co-op melee combat thing back in May, and did a far better job of it. One level, set in a hellish dreamworld, is little more than a confusing mess of generic flame textures.Įven basic button prompts are inconsistent, so you can spend a lot of time trying to find the way ahead, only to discover it was right under your nose the whole time, waiting for you to stand in exactly the right spot. Enemies can frequently be found standing around in corners or trying to walk through walls. #CROSSBOW CRUSADE REVIEW FULL#These core combat problems are compounded by a horrible lurching camera and an ill-constructed gameworld that's full of scenery snags and baffling physics bump into a table and it can float off into the air like a helium balloon. #CROSSBOW CRUSADE REVIEW WINDOWS#These guys pop up at windows and on balconies with all the realism of targets at a funfair shooting range, and the game slips briefly - and awkwardly - into a ham-fisted pastiche of Gears of War while you slowly fire invisible arrows at them until they fall down. ![]() You also have a crossbow, which you'll sometimes have to whip out to deal with archers. Hit it in time, and you'll leave them open to your button-mashing assault. Most of the depth (and I use the word in its loosest possible sense) comes from pressing the shoulder buttons to counter and parry attacks, depending on what colour your enemy glows. Swords pass through enemies, attacks fail to connect, and blocks don't always work. Attempting the lengthier button sequences is barely worth the effort, so most of the fighting system ends up surplus to requirements. At every turn, this is a game you watch more than you play.Ĭontrol is sticky, with combos defeated by noticeable input lag. Hammering away on one button gets the job done nine times out of ten, usually ending in a finishing move animation that can last up to seven seconds. However, such a high fire-rate could not be maintained over long periods and it is estimated that a trained longbowman could fire around six arrows per minute during more prolonged periods of time.There's potential there, but it's squandered by the fact that none of it really matters. It is said that the best archers were able to fire an arrow every five seconds with accuracy. Not only could a longbow fire further than a crossbow – at least until the latter half of the 14th century – but a longbowman’s average rate of fire was significantly greater than that of a crossbowman. In fact, during field-battles the longbow had a clear advantage over its counterpart. ![]() The crossbow may have been easier to use than the longbow, but this did not make it more effective on the open battlefield. The Church considered it one of the most destabilising weapons of the time – akin to how we view gas or nuclear weapons today. So deadly was the crossbow and so easy was it for a raw recruit to use effectively, that the Roman Catholic Church once attempted to ban the weapon from warfare. Mercenary Genoese crossbowmen are pictured here during the First Crusade. ![]()
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