An evil Bishop has abducted Adelle, a mysterious young woman with divine powers… With his disciples and their captive, he embarks on an evil crusade, desecrating holy sites by using Adelle's powers to perform dark rituals - his eventual aim to unlock the gates of hell. Playing as Paul, a young Templar Knight, you must track down and give that nasty Bishop a good bashing - and save the babe as well of course…

   

Knights of the Temple (KotT) comes from Starbreeze, the makers of the gorgeous to-look-at third-person fantasy romp Enclave. Differing from Enclave, this medieval sword 'n' slash adventure plays from mostly fixed third person cameras, with a first person view only being used to aim your bow (and bizarrely, you can't even look around in first person unless you have some arrows). The A button is your regular attack, combos of this and the heavy attack button B initiate more powerful moves like windmill, underhand and backhand swings of your weapon. Special magic attacks are taught to you by Adelle and include a handy 360-sweep attack and "windmill death from above". Adelle also teaches you special skills like the ability to heal yourself or shield yourself from enemies' blows. All the swordfighting and movement is beautifully motion captured - literally some of the best we've ever seen.

   

Like a lot of 3D games though, sometimes Paul just won't point where you want him to, and although an icon indicates which enemy your next attack will hopefully hit, due to the fact that some enemies wisely dodge out of the way and the lack of any lock-on-enemy button, you can miss with one of your mighty blows a comical number of times. Although when an enemy is all but dead there is a satisfying 'kill sequence', more combat-related annoyances arise when you knock someone off their feet when they still have some health remaining - you can't finish them, despite the fact that they are obviously at their most vulnerable! - What is this, the Marquis of Queensbury rules gone mad? You can block virtually all of the enemies' attacks simply by holding X, but strangely you can't move whilst doing this - it really limits the combat and makes getting out of some situations when you're surrounded (often) and outnumbered (always) impossible.

Take a lot of hits, so that you're near death and a beautiful and haunting chorus of Angels plays - die and you see a slow motion black and white death sequence that looks really cool. Which is just as well, because if you play on anything other that the easiest setting you'll probably be seeing this sequence a lot - the tougher enemies like to surround you and take turns to pound on you until you die.

Detailed levels but you rarely get to explore much of them, it's all rather linear stuff with the only split paths meaning that you have to go one way to find a key to open a door down the other passageway, or complete some other simple-dimple puzzle. Combined with its fixed camera-flick screen gameplay KotT feels strangely older than its predecessor Enclave (that gave you fantastic enemies, multiple characters to play as and fully 3D areas to explore), and offers nowhere near the freedom of something like Prince of Persia.

   

Even with its rather simplistic gameplay and claustrophobic nature, KotT certainly manages to get some atmosphere going, and the combat (when everything works like it's supposed to) is on occasion quite pleasing - aided by some excellent sound FX. There's lots of over the top acting, medieval-speak, and a lot of supernatural hokum too - when I picked up the "Demonic Sword of Beelzebub" I couldn't help but chortle - particularly as the difference between existing and supposedly upgraded weapons is barely noticeable - no wonder Beelzebub dropped it...

A rather half-baked Xbox Live mode allows you to download a piddlingly small melee level (called 'Battle Woods' and there are supposed to be more on the way) and fight against AI opposition. But this arena is so small that it feels like you're fighting on the stage of a theatre (and not a big one either). It's a simple matter of survival at three different weights, battle wave after wave of enemies, only this time without the help of Adelle's divine abilities to help you. You can then upload your high scores, be amazed just how many people bothered to go through this clunky process, and then wonder why on Earth Starbreeze bothered too…

   

KotT main story mode climaxes with a disappointingly predictable, multi-wave boss battle that will drive you mad (if you're anything like me), and only serves to highlight the flaws in the combat system that are apparent from the beginning. The game always looks nice (considering the settings), with detailed textures, a few spectacular enemies and some breakable scenery as well, but the ancient-feeling, restrictive nature of the game and some dumbassed cameras are always present to stop it from ever becoming too enjoyable. All a bit of a shame really, as the game promised much but never got out of second gear. Knights of the Temple commits a cardinal gaming sin: not being as good as its predecessor - so roll on Starbreeze's next effort, you know it's going to be good looking, so let's hope they remember the gameplay next time.