Developer: Fairyship Games
Publisher: Fairyship Games
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
Testament: The Order of High Human – Review
If you’ve never heard of Fairyship Games we can’t fault you. This new American indie studio only released one other game before this, a survival horror title called Shame Legacy. It was released back in May of this year and got mixed reviews. Now Fairyship Games is back with an action RPG called Testament: The Order of High Human. Similar to their previous attempt, this game manages to be mediocre in a lot of aspects. So let’s dive into what exactly this adventure has to offer for players.
Story
Testament starts the same way as so many other games before it, namely with your character waking up in an unfamiliar place. After getting up and finding a mysterious orb, the game’s journal entries and the main character talking to himself slowly start to piece together what happened. You play as Aran, a high human. These are a sort of god-like people who rule over the world. Aran’s brother Arvan usurped the kingdom from him and cast Aran down so he would be powerless, but Aran miraculously survived. He has to set out on a quest to reclaim his powers and take revenge on those that conspired against him.
The plot of Testament is pretty cliché, set in a typical fantasy world with dragons, orcs, and magic. While it’s definitely not the worst narrative we have ever been forced to sit through, the many cutscenes tend to drag out, and none of the characters or plot beats are very surprising or charming. Overall, you can find a dozen other games that have tackled this exact plot.
Graphics
The graphics might be the best thing about Testament. If you’re playing on a decent PC, the game looks great and the framerate makes the animations extremely smooth. While the fantasy world of Tessara might not be very original, it certainly is designed beautifully. There are some pretty unique enemy designs too, even if the game recycles them over and over again. The scenery is diverse and invites you to explore the various areas of the game. However, we need to be upfront and say this is only the truth about half the time. The game is unpolished, so sometimes randomly you’ll get weird texture bugs or framerate drops. They usually fix themselves pretty quickly and don’t impede the gameplay too hard, but they’re worth mentioning.
Sound
The soundtrack of Testament is nothing to complain about. Like the story, cliché might be the best way to describe it. You might think you’ve heard this music before since it sounds like every soundtrack in every other bland fantasy game ever. That doesn’t make it bad, though. Just boring. What definitely is more annoying is that the voice acting also fluctuates in quality a lot, ranging from pretty good to downright horrendous between characters or even cutscenes. The main character Aran has a terrible habit of talking to himself when nobody is around, and when the voice lines are less than stellar, this becomes more of a noticeable issue than it otherwise would have been.
Gameplay
Testament: The Order of High Human is basically an extremely superficial adventure RPG. The game is not exactly open-world, though you have the option of exploring the areas you’re dropped in and going on some side quests. You’re led pretty linearly along the story and from one combat section into another. The combat itself is not bad, but not great either. The formula is pretty standard with a sword for melee combat, a bow for ranged combat, and a bunch of spells. These spells can be offensive or used for defensive means, such as healing yourself or stunning enemies. Later on, you’ll unlock some new powers, with longer cast times making them more of a challenge to use during combat. Sadly, there are no actual upgrades for your armor or weapons, and the leveling system is very minimal. This means the combat becomes repetitive pretty quickly.
This is especially true since Testament is surprisingly quick to recycle enemies. Every combat encounter basically entails you getting stuck in a small area that functions as an arena, while waves of enemies come at you. There isn’t as much strategy or skill to it as you’d expect, you just dash out of the way and mash the button to attack. There is no parry or shield, and no timing to your attacks. The combat is still pretty fun and even challenging at times, it’s just that combined with the lack of actual skill progression, the game feels pretty undeveloped and like it could go more in-depth. Even the bosses you face are almost all recolors of the same handful of enemies with more health and abilities.
Aside from the combat, Testament also has a few lengthy platform and puzzle sections. These parts are actually way more entertaining. The puzzles aren’t overly complicated but they certainly offer a nice change of pace if you’ve been running around defeating enemies all day. On top of that, the platforming runs smoothly and is a lot of fun. If these bits were not in the game, the combat would probably get so tedious Testament would be way less enjoyable.
Conclusion
It feels undeserving to call Testament: The Order of High Human a bad game, but it certainly isn’t a good one. There are some basic ideas there and it certainly borrows a lot from other RPGs. Sadly, it never does anything new with them and doesn’t get past the very bare-bones elements you’d expect in this sort of game, leaving most players utterly dissatisfied.
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