Jesus Fucking Christ, another week and another mediocre game release, as we continue to descend into a biblical drought of good games. This time with Testament: The Order of High Human, an action-adventure game from a newer developer, Fairyship Games. Seemingly their first release, other than the poorly rated and also religiously overtoned Shame Legacy seemingly codeveloped by Fairyship and their subsidiary Revenant Games. Which begs the question: how and why does a one-game company have a one-game subsidiary? That's like us having an intern. Enough about Gary the Gimp though, this isn't about interns, subsidiaries, or even bondage; this is about reviewing Testament: The Order of High Human. Which is unfortunate, as all of those other things, as unlikely as it might seem, would be more fun.
Testicular: The Order of the High Torsion is a poorly written, largely incoherent, allegorically religious story, largely told through the player character, who is supposed to be god, schisophrenically talks to themselves as we traverse the game world. Which, dear god, the voice acting sounds like Tommy Wiseau reincarnated from a media grave. I initially wasn't going to bring that up, as it sounded as if it was made in a country where English isn't the native tongue. However, Fairyship is based in New York, and to be honest, I probably would have preferred a thick Brooklyn accent to what seems like the actor's bad acting impression. I'll save you a little bit of time: the protagonist (player) Aran is supposed to be god; your brother Arva is the devil; your son Aiden is Jesus; the Seekers seem to be Angels/Missionaries/Aliens, and basically every note you find once you get to the village just reinforces the heavy handedness of all of that. Coincidentally, that's when you really start to notice just how clunky the gameplay is.
Big Yikes
The first few hours have their hiccups gameplay-wise, but they are largely hidden due to the weak enemies and lack of unlocks. Once you get around to the village the second time, you notice M. Night hiding in the wheat fields as the gameplay starts to cake its pants. The game balance becomes piss poor, the lack of magic and bow resources makes those immediately secondary, as it becomes a game of just sword-slashing and laggy dodging. Dodging was always clunky at best, but after unlocking the triple dash, it really sets in just how often the game refuses to dash properly. Then there's the Darkness systems, which individual enemies can have, and it requires you to go into insight mode and reveal an eyeball above their heads that you have to shoot with your bow before attacking the enemy itself. Insight mode, however, gets interrupted if you make a combat action, so you just have to kite away and run around the dungeon, holding your sight and these stupid eyeballs mid-fight. The other darkness mechanic involves a big eyeball that drains your health and magic, and you have to run around the battlefield in that non-combat insight mode to find the eyes you need to shoot so that you can shoot the big eye. Oh, and there will be those smaller-eyed enemies spawning at the same time. These kinds of mechanics should have been cut because they just aren't cohesive.
To say nothing of the combat consumable items which you forget are there, but also desperately needed because combat is so damn clunky. Which you craftable with a crafting currency the game throws at you constantly, but is never really needed if you just loot the chests. The trivial boss battles, as one on one fights are when the combat is at its most exploitable. A barely functioning stealth mechanic that oscillates between "how the hell did they spot me and "how the fuck am I not spotted", and has an ill timed delay to execute the stealth attacks.
Going into the game, I had noticed they were a new developer, and as such, I intended to be a bit light on them, ease them into the gimp suit as they say. However, the game just isn't good, and to fix it would have meant reworking and refining systems, and you know, an entire story overhaul wouldn't have been bad either. As it stands, the game is just one big dungeon in which the gameplay is okay at best and broken at worst, the story is god-awful, and the acting sounds like a joke. Save your money. 3/10.