The best way I can describe Testament: The Order of High Human as I played it is that it resembles Tommy Wiseau’s Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. . It’s weird, it’s a little unsettling, and it’s often unintentionally funny, but overall it doesn’t quite succeed at what it tries to do. It has great character art and interesting environments, and while the trailer seems to have a robust physics-based magic system, the demo only gave us a glimpse of it. But it’s hard to find much to admire here.
As a writer and editor, my biggest frustration is quickly dismissed. This is not a game written by someone with a solid understanding of English. Even the style of the title is full of inconsistencies. “High Human” can be two words he without a hyphen. They may be separated by hyphens. Subtitles may or may not capitalize “Human”. The in-game encyclopedia, supposed to introduce you to the world’s key concepts, is packed with high school English exam mistakes like capitalization, punctuation, and basic grammar. When you first visit his main menu, there is a notice that this game was created by his very small team of 15 people. I wish one of them was an editor.
And I definitely prefer a few smaller games made by gruff underground indie studios. I’ve played Stardew Valley over his 300 hours and this was made by one man. And even if Testement simply lacks technical polish, you can probably ignore it as long as there’s worthwhile gameplay and a strong story underneath. Paradoxically, it is in a way the opposite. Everything works fine and I haven’t encountered any major bugs. Even in those difficult platform areas that were probably the most fun in the demo. But from the story to the basic combat mechanics, that’s just not the case. And a small team is no excuse.
Who am I?
You play as Alan. Alan wasn’t introduced at all until much later, but he awakens after being kidnapped by some kind of evil Treebeard. He is a “high human”—a very awkward and somewhat eugenic name for the setting’s immortal, magically gifted ruling class—and former king of the land of Tessarah. Somehow, he lost his powers and only got a cheap sword to protect himself. The reason for this will also be explained only later. It’s usually explained through an incredibly compelling expository monologue where Alan talks to himself about something he already knows, but I, the player, didn’t get it.
Eventually, we find out that Alan’s brother has turned into darkness, presumably because his wife died, and he bursts out of the portal, mocking you for being made a “mortal” and giving you an evil villain’s brief Make a speech and disappear. He didn’t know what was really going on until about an hour into the demo, but that doesn’t mean he’s excited about solving the mystery. It’s like taking a novel with the first four chapters cut off and trying to piece together a story from there. Perhaps in the final version a more complete intro will be added. Maybe this is not the intended starting point. It will certainly help a lot.
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but it’s okay. If the combat is great, some kind of confusing story and sloppy localization work probably isn’t the biggest problem in the world. Unfortunately not. Elder Scrolls-esque real-time first-person swordsmanship boils down to mostly repeating the same combo over and over, then dodging and dodging telegraphic power attacks… these guys are some It’s called a “halfling” for a reason, and at this point I had just decided to stop questioning my stylistic worldbuilding choices so as not to lose my mind. . Testament pretends to have a combo system, but it doesn’t. Whether you time your swing exactly as instructed in the tutorial, or mash the left mouse button as quickly as possible, the animation and amount of damage dealt will look about the same.
Focus on prizes
Makes archery a little more fun. Most enemies die from his one headshot, so it’s really nice to be rewarded with Robin Hood’s accuracy. Stealth attacks are similarly capable of single-shotting rogues and doing a lot of damage to bosses, but the opportunities to use them are rather limited. Some of the spells I ended up playing (such as a destructible barrier similar to Geralt’s Quansign from The Witcher, and a drain beam with a very slow life) are fine, but using them You must keep your sword. It made me miss Skyrim’s more flexible combat system.
And when you run out of arrows and mana potions, you’re back to the same boring melee combat routine. Ranged enemies are often just standing there stunned, and closing the distance can cut through them. AI is generally not very good. It cannot be blocked or parried. At least not with the weapons I tried.
There’s also a skill tree-based progression system that lets you focus on melee, archery, or magic. It is okay.
I hate to deny what looks like a truly passionate project by a small group of motivated developers, but when it comes to first-person action RPGs, Testement: The Order of High Human is far from being talked about. I don’t think Some of these jumping and wall-running puzzles were great, and perhaps this demo didn’t represent the release version very well. I would love to try it again. But my expectations for High Human are not high.
