Testament: The Order of High Human

by Aethyna Jul 17, 2023 | 1 Votes | 12 Played | 0 Reviews

6 rate

Genres:

RPG , Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Adventure , Magic , Dark Fantasy , Metroidvania

Platforms:

Publishers:

Fairyship Games You are Aran, the disgraced King of the High Humans, who has been banished to the mortal realm by your own brother, Arva, who decided to forgo their old ways to embrace the darkness. With the kingdom of the High Humans under Arva's grasp, you must restore your powers, defeat Arva, and reclaim your rightful throne! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Testament: The Order of the High Human is an adventure RPG with a linear storyline. In this game, you play as a disgraced King of the High Humans, Aran, who has been banished to the mortal realm by his own brother, Arva, who decided to forgo their old ways to embrace the darkness. With the kingdom of the High Humans under Arva's grasp, you must find a way to restore your powers, defeat Arva, and reclaim your rightful throne!

Plotline

The story started off rather vaguely, showing your character, Aran, being restored to health by a druid of nature. However, the maddened druid has other plans for Aran, wanting him to “become one with nature” to serve the powers that he himself is bound to. One thrilling escape sequence later, Aran finally finds himself free from the druid, albeit for now.

As you progress, you’ll learn more about what happened to Aran, which resulted in his severe injuries in the game’s introduction, especially once Arva, who seems like Aran’s brother, took a portal to Aran’s location to taunt him.

Minor spoiler ahead: From the dialogue, it seems like Aran was a King of the High Humans, a race of human beings who possess and wield magical powers, unlike mere mortals. Both brothers were on the verge of eradicating Darkness in the kingdom of Tessara, the kingdom of the High Humans, but Arva decided to forgo their old ways of the Seeker and of the light to embrace darkness instead, slaughtering his people in the process.

A fight likely ensued. Aran was defeated, stripped of his powers, and banished from his kingdom by his own brother.

Betrayed, Aran is determined to seek the ancient shrines of the Seekers to regain his powers, and possibly more, just so he could defeat Arva, and reclaim his throne.

There are also plenty of bits of lore that you’ll discover as you progress. Collect them all, and you should have a better knowledge of the world the game is set in.

Gameplay

Before you start, you should know that 1. The game is set to normal difficulty, a.k.a. “High Human mode” by default, and if you want the game to be harder (Seeker mode) or easier (Mortal mode), you could change this via the settings, and 2. The game has motion blur on by default as well. If you’re prone to motion sickness brought on by motion blur, it’s highly recommended to disable this before playing the game. You can thank me later, especially once you get to the escape sequence... that’ll really do your head in!

Now, Testament: The Order of the High Human is an adventure RPG with a lot of emphasis on both combat and puzzling, such as platforming-based puzzles and simple logic puzzles like a puzzle where you move mirrors to bend light, though more emphasis is placed on the former.

Combat can be quite diverse in this game, allowing you to take on your enemies in several ways depending on your playstyle. You could, for instance, try to sneak up and backstab an enemy to get an instant kill, or you could bust out your bow and arrows instead. Note that the game also gives you a special vision mode that you can toggle on that will highlight not only nearby enemies, but also their weak spots. If you can hit that weak spot with your attacks, you can deal more damage, and in the case of a bow and arrow, sometimes netting you an instant kill.

However, you’ll quickly realize that, ultimately, the game focuses on its sword-based melee combat since you can have a very limited number of arrows. This is actually quite disappointing for me since I’ve always favored ranged combat over melee, and it does feel like the game’s hemming me in with its restrictions.

That said, besides having a fast melee attack and a heavy or charged melee attack, there are combos you can perform in this game once you’ve unlocked them via the talent tree (more on this later), which may grant your attacks additional effects like pushback. There is no gear you can equip in this game, but you can craft a variety of consumables, some of which can imbue your weapons with powerful effects, using the Shard of Creation that are frequently dropped as loot from fallen enemies.

The melee combat in Testament isn’t flawless, though. There are other issues, including the dodge or dash ability that somehow comes with a painfully long (and invisible) cooldown, making it hard to avoid getting hit in return, or the fact that despite being seemingly designed for one-on-one combat, the game does frequently put you in situations where you’ll have to take on multiple enemies at a time.

As you advance through the game, you’ll also regain magical powers that a High Human should have. Magic consumes mana in this game, but unlike most games, you don’t regain any mana passively, forcing you to rely on sparse mana crystals that you may find. Personally, I’ve noticed that using magic isn’t as good as having more arrows in this game, mainly because the damage that magic can deal isn’t matched well with its mana cost. I frequently find myself drained of mana after a spell or two, with the spells not doing as significant damage as, say, my arrows.

Although the variety of enemies can be a bit limited here, there are enough different enemies to keep things interesting, especially the challenging boss fights where you’ll really need to learn its attack patterns and time your attacks well to defeat. Enemies also come with a difficulty indicator, as shown via the color-coded shield icons above their heads. Purple enemies are harder to defeat than green ones, as they have more health and are seemingly more resistant to damage.

Due to all of these challenges in combat, it’s inevitable that, sometimes, you’ll find yourself completely drained of health. There are green health crystals that you can use to restore your health bar significantly, but like the mana crystals, you can only carry so many of them, and they can be hard to find. Thankfully, the game has a robust auto-save system, allowing you to respawn, re-strategize, and quickly dive back into the action.

In terms of progression, Testament: The Order of the High Human uses a pretty typical level-based system. You earn experience points from defeating enemies and solving puzzles, and in return, you’ll gain a skill point to invest in your talent tree whenever you level up. The talent tree is split into three main branches: Magic, Melee, and Ranged, but there’s an odd little quirk that prevents you from completely specializing in any one of those branches… besides the limited mana and arrows, of course.

You see, the talent tree is designed only to unlock a new selection of perks after you’ve invested a certain number of points into unlocked perks. The thing is, though, the unlocked ones are spread across the three branches, forcing you to have to spread out your points just so you could unlock the next “tier” of perks, wasting points into perks that you know you wouldn’t use anyway.

It does seem like this might be a bit of an oversight on the game designers’ part, which would have been fixable had the game been released as an early-access title and not a full release. Still, here’s to hoping they’d take players’ feedback and fix up the game. There’s a decent RPG here hidden in the rough. Considering the years spent on developing the game, it wouldn’t be too bad to add a few more months to really polish things up.

Graphics/ Sound

If there’s one thing that every player could agree on, it’s that Testament: The Order of the High Human has definitely nailed the graphics right on the head. The atmosphere and game environment are very well-designed. The music used here, along with the sound effects and the visuals, work great in tandem to deliver a truly immersive experience. There’s also voice acting for the characters in this game, but the slight accent gave away the fact that the voice actor for Aran at least isn't a native English speaker.

Conclusion

All in all, Testament: The Order of the High Human is a rather decent RPG if you temper your expectations quite a bit. Despite being inspired by Skyrim, it is no Skyrim. The game isn’t as open-world as the latter, nor does it offer the kind of sandbox-style freedom when it comes to its gameplay or progression since you’ll be restricted in multiple ways, even as it provides you with several combat methods or an extensive talent tree.

However, at this price point, players may expect something more in line with a triple-A title. Due to this, it might be best to wait until you can grab it at a discount!

New Game Added: Testament: The Order of High Human

by Aethyna Jul 17, 2023

You are Aran, the disgraced King of the High Humans, who has been banished to the mortal realm by your own brother, Arva, who decided to forgo their old ways to embrace the darkness. With the kingdom of the High Humans under Arva's grasp, you must restore your powers, defeat Arva, and reclaim your rightful throne!