Are you nostalgic for the boomer shooters of yesteryear? Do you yearn for the days of keycard hunting, hordes of foes, and just enough plot to string it all together? Well, T19 Games’ Dread Templar has you covered, delivering a love letter to the retro FPS genre, to both its credit and detriment. Fans of the original Quake and DOOM games will definitely get their fill from Dread Templar, but it doesn’t have much ambition to carve out much of its own identity.

In Dread Templar, you play as the titular character, who is a sort of holy demon hunter. When the game begins, you descend into hell to avenge your family and kill as many demons as you can, steadily upgrading your arsenal as you go. This isn’t made super clear from the start, however the player character’s backstory is progressively revealed in short, edgy flashback sequences.

It isn’t Shakespeare, but it provides just enough context to the demon slaughter to keep the experience moving without disrupting the gameplay. I was somewhat disappointed by how little the game’s premise, plot, visuals, or gameplay diverge from its main inspirations, Quake and DOOM. Unlike some other recently-released 90s-inspired shooters, it doesn’t have the eye-poppingly distinct visual style of KINGDOM of the DEAD, the goofy sense of humour of Shadow Warrior 3, or even the unique movement mechanics of ULTRAKILL. Fundamentally, Dread Templar is a competent Quake-like, but lacks much of an identity of its own.

The game’s damage indication could also do with improvement. It is often unclear that you are taking damage aside from a mild “ugh” sound by the player character and your HP numbers going down. Particularly with how many annoying flying enemies with homing attacks there were, my health would whittle down fast with little indication of from where I was being attacked, or even that I was taking damage at all until it was too late.

On the other hand, Dread Templar’s upgrade system was a lot of fun. The weapons themselves are already a blast, with many weapons getting alternate firing modes, like the katana also being a throwable spear or the pistol doubling as an SMG. Each weapon has up to three slots in which upgrades can be inserted, and both the tokens to unlock the upgrade slots and the upgrades themselves are mostly only found in the game’s secret side areas, encouraging going off the beaten path.

The upgrades range from basic damage and rate-of-fire improvements to more substantial overhauls, like turning your SMGs into hellfire miniguns or allowing you to fire explosive arrows from your bow. A side effect of the upgrade system is that the difficulty curve of Dread Templar can feel a bit all over the place in some areas, with the first few bosses being some of the toughest in the game, whereas the final boss went down on my second attempt.

Of course, the game wouldn’t be a fitting homage to the early 90s FPS genre without an absolute banger of a soundtrack, and Dread Templar delivers. Notwarhol’s metal soundtrack never failed to get me amped for the action, keeping up the intensity as I assaulted the enemy forces.

Dread Templar maintains a retro style to its visuals, with deliberately blocky, low-resolution enemy models. I also liked the vibrant environments and cool boss designs, particularly from the second episode onwards when it leaves the dull, brown Quake castles and adds some more variety to the settings that you explore.