A while ago, I reviewed Shame Legacy from Fairyship Games, a forgettable first-person horror game that didn’t exactly impress, but it was far from being the worst thing in the world. It proved that the developer had some potential, making me look forward to their next outing. I just didn’t expect for their next outing to come out a mere month afterwards. Testament: The Order of High-Human feels like the studio’s baby. It’s the culmination of a small development team trying to go for the big leagues with a grand, epic tale about fallen gods, with action, orchestrated music, and everything else you would expect from a big release… but with a fraction of the manpower involved in its making.

When I received the press release for Testament: The Order of High-Human, one of the first things mentioned in it was the fact it was a project comprised of just 15 people, who have worked on it for the past six years. Immediately, I started lowering my expectations, not because I wasn’t confident on the team developing it (working on a project for so long just screams “this is my baby and I want it to be the best damn thing possible”), but because there was no way a team that small could deliver something with the promised grandeur. Testament is a pretty good game, but it’s one marred by many design and budgetary issues. Note that those are not technical issues; for the most part, I have nothing to complain about bugs, glitches, performance issues, and so on.

For instance, let’s talk about the plot. Testament: The Order of High-Human is really heavy on storytelling, but it’s not really good at telling such story. In short, you play as the formerly immortal king of the High-Humans dealing with the betrayal of your brother to the game’s equivalent of the Dark Side of the Force, as well as other beasts who want you dead for convoluted reasons, including a force of nature in the shape of a Satanic Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a convoluted plot marred by a lot, and I do mean A LOT of exposition, almost always told by the playable character himself. It doesn’t sound natural nor ideal. It’s almost as if someone in the team had penned an epic story, but the budget wouldn’t allow for that many NPCs to show up. Someone had to take the mantle.

The lack of subtlety isn’t the only issue with how the game tackles its storytelling. The voice acting ain’t good, either. I will give the voice actors credit for trying to deliver good performances, as they do not sound tired or bored. They just weren’t able to convey the proper emotions required by the scenes they were a part of. The orchestrated soundtrack did alleviate some of these issues, at least, but this is one element in which Testament: The Order of High-Human failed, in my opinion: it just made me not care about its story. Its gameplay would have to carry the entire title on its shoulders. It succeeded, I’d say, but with a few asterisks.

At its core, this is a metroidvania. A fairly linear metroidvania, but one nonetheless. It is also a first-person action-adventure with some minute RPG elements. Even though this sounds a bit generic (and at first, it also feels somewhat generic), I did enjoy the gameplay. The combat is decent, and the controls were excellent. What I enjoyed the most about it, however, was its emphasis on puzzle-solving, namely in some areas where the game would stop acting like a discount Skyrim and more like… Metroid Prime or something. Puzzle-solving with platforming wasn’t something I was expecting from Testament, but lo and behold, it has loads of these sections. Sometimes, they do last for freaking ever.

The game does go overboard with the length of some of its puzzle sections. They are also usually interrupted by some underwhelming plot exposition in the middle. Then, after that, more puzzle-platforming. Let me clarify that they are not exactly badly made, but the game’s pacing gets hit hard when any of these sections show up.

Another main issue with the game’s overall flow was its boss battles. They are as spongy as trying to fight a character ten levels higher than you in The Division 2. Add in the fact your protagonist is actually stupidly frail (so much for being a former immortal god or whatever), and those sections ended up becoming tests of patience. Even though I was having a lot of fun fighting normal enemies, the paltry amount of experience points earned by fighting them made grinding nearly impossible. I just had to learn to deal with those loathsome bosses using the power of self-hatred.

I ended up enjoying Testament: The Order of High-Human quite a bit, despite being a game suffering from a myriad of design issues. Thankfully, it didn’t suffer from a lot of technical issues. What we ended up getting was a decent first-person action adventure game with good controls, an interesting combat system, and a big emphasis on puzzle-solving, even if those sections go on for way too long at times. The overall game feel was just good enough to make me ignore the pointless story, poor voice acting (kudos for the effort, though) and loathsome boss battles.

 

Graphics: 7.0 Good textural quality, some decent lighting effects, and the occasionally well-designed environment. Those contrast with the simplistic characters and overly linear level design.	Gameplay: 7.5 More than just a simple first-person action adventure, thankfully. The combat is decent, the controls are excellent, and the puzzle-solving sections are interesting. They are just way too long. Your character is also extremely frail, to an unnecessary degree.
Sound: 6.5 I was quite surprised with the quality of the soundtrack, but the amateurish voice acting was a letdown. I appreciate the effort, but the quality of the performances and script were disappointing.	Fun Factor: 7.5 It suffers from a myriad of design issues (not many technical ones, though, thankfully), but it’s still an interesting first-person action adventure game. The game feel was good enough to make me ignore the boring story or loathsome boss battles.
Final Verdict: 7.5

Testament: The Order of High-Human is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Testament: The Order of High-Human was provided by the publisher.