Testament: The Order of High Human PC Review

Fairyship Games is somewhat known by some as a small American game development studio. Founded in 2017 by Joe and Moe Naderi, the duo’s main ideal is to create games with solid gameplay and a good story, this concept might have somewhat fallen flat with their first release, Shame Legacy, that released on 30 May 2023. Now, while Shame Legacy might look like a great horror game, it’s rather predictable and lacking. Granted, this is still quite impressive for a team consisting of 15 people.

Fast-forward to now, Fairyship Games finally released their next title, Testament: The Order of High Human on 17 July 2023, a fairly well-made RPG that showed tons of potential during the announcement and teasers. The preview of the game before the final release did come off as a bit underwhelming and left a lot to be desired, but the game also showed a lot of promise and possibly some interesting competition for The Elder Scrolls games. From the looks of it, and several updates later, we’re finally at the finish line and Fairyship Games is ready to release their latest creation into the world after some extra polish.

 

The world of Testament: The Order of High Human isn’t one to be taken lightly as Tessara was once a semi peaceful world, until darkness and corruption took over. This is where you as Aran, a fallen High Human and the former godlike being, come into the story. Unfortunately, his brother Arva disrupted the balance and dethroned Aran. This threw Tessara into chaos while leaving you powerless. You’ll have to make your way all over Tessara and regain your lost power, along with some extra pieces, to stop Arva before things take an even worse turn.

However, you’ll have many obstacles and threats that will stand in your path, the one being Nature Father. Right at the start, you’ll be greeted by Nature Father, who found you after you fell from grace and he tended to your wounds. Unfortunately, not all is as it seems and he’s far from benevolent, but it is also possible that he’s just under the influence of the tilted balance. Though your first meeting with him is rather short-lived as you’ll end up blacking out again, only to wake up with him gone. Now that you’re free to move, the first you’ll do is pick up your most important item, the Orb of Lyra. While it doesn’t serve any interesting uses, it’s Aran’s only link to the Seekers and you’ll soon see why you need it.

Just as soon as you escape from where Nature Father had you, this is where things take a dark turn as Nature Father is now hellbent on ending you in the most brutal way possible. Luckily, Testament: The Order of High Human is somewhat forgiving during the tutorial stages as you learn to sprint, climb over or duck underneath obstacles. However, you’ll also become very aware of your health at that point. You’ll need to keep in mind that Aran was once upon a time a High Human, but now he’s a feeble mortal that can and will definitely die if you’re not careful.

 

This is where, before you even get to fight, you have to learn the value of Condensed Life Essence. These invaluable crystals might be scattered all over the world, but you’ll also discover that there are never enough if you get hit one too many times or if you decide to jump off that one cliff because it didn’t look that far down which can be somewhat devastating for your health bar. Unfortunately, you can’t carry an endless supply of Condensed Life Essence either. You’ll have to be somewhat strategic with how you use them and even more so with how you take on certain encounters. Keeping in mind that Testament: The Order of High Human is somewhat soulslike, you’ll be happy to know that most of your fights follow a pattern that can easily be picked up on if you pay attention. This means that you can play the whole game without taking damage.

For those of you who don’t want to fight hordes of halflings and the various other creatures that walk the lands of Tessara, stealth is a great alternative to clashing swords or just fighting for your life. However, this does need a bit of extra explanation as to what you’ll have at your disposal. First off, you’ll have your trusty sword always ready, even if it is a bit simple at first. This changes quite soon as you level up and unlocks new skills, move sets and attacks for it. Obviously, your sword is also going to be your most valuable weapon because it doesn’t require anything to be useful. It’ll play a vital part in cutting down your enemies from upfront or taking the stealth route and quietly ending them from behind. However, for both approaches come with some risk in the form of enemy awareness and their levels.

As mentioned before, Aran is now mortal and will have to face off against everything in his path, but he didn’t lose his keen sense of awareness at least. When you’re out exploring, you’ll notice that every enemy that van turns hostile towards you will have an emblem of sorts above them that will start turning red as your possible target becomes more aware of you. Most of the time, it’ll take a lot for them to notice you unless you outright start killing them, then they’ll come after you and usually bring friends too. Though this plays quite well into the stealth aspect of Testament: The Order of High Human as there’s usually a different way to get to your objective.

 

Unfortunately, you can’t run into a battle or expect the stealth route to be easier just like that, enemy levels also play a part in the struggle for survival. The emblem mentioned before will also have an overall colour ranging from Green, Orange, Red and Purple. Green being a level that matches yours and purple naturally being incredibly dangerous to you. These are important to keep in mind because you can’t always do a quick stealth takedown on an enemy that’s Red or Purple, it will do some decent damage to them but you’ll still have to either stand fight or retreat to rethink your strategy for going up against something that can chomp your health away in two to three swings.

Don’t worry; you won’t be stuck on the same amount of health until the end, these are quite rare in the game, but you can upgrade your health by collecting Essence of Life. However, you’ll need to collect three to get the upgrade, and even then, you can’t go channeling your inner Rambo because the upgrades aren’t massive. Some caution is still advised even if you do find the health upgrades. Luckily, not all fights have to be face to face as you’ll eventually get a bow and arrows. While you are limited in arrows, your bow can do monstrous damage and really help you along if you’re looking at going for the stealth route.

Your bow serves a second purpose though. Once you get the light bow, Solaris, you’ll be able to destroy Eyes of Darkness that block the way forward. These creatures typically come in the form of a floating eye that can only be seen by using the Insight ability, and your Insight will reveal hidden things like the Eyes of Darkness, enemy outlines through walls, and even corpses that might have something interesting alongside treasure chests. However, it gets much better later on as it’ll also reveal extra information about the creatures you’ll have to face off against by showing what they’re vulnerable to. Naturally, you’ll have to change up your strategy to make your next takedown easier or you’ll become the easy target.

 

Your last and most versatile weapon is magic, though it’s more than just a weapon. Magic in Testament: The Order of High Human is incredibly versatile and can turn the tide of most fights in your favor. Unfortunately, your starting spells on the magic front are rather basic and not at all that impressive. This changes very quickly as you unlock new spells that can make or break the battlefield. With a myriad of attacks, traps, defensive and healing spells for you to choose from, as long as you have enough Spirit Essence, you can dominate any fight with some careful strategy.

Magic does come with the obvious downside of needing Spirit Essence (Mana), and just like Condensed Life Essence, you’ll find a similar type of consumable crystal called Condensed Spirit Essence that will recharge your mana for the next barrage. Naturally, as mentioned before, for health upgrades, you’ll get similar fragments for Spirit Essence, but these aren’t easy to come by either. In the end, you’ll have endless options for combat and strategy, but none of them are perfect or endless in that sense. You’ll have to mix and match your playstyle to survive Tessara.

For those of you who love to horde as much lore as possible, you’ll be happy to know that Testament: The Order of High Human does keep track of everything you encounter while unlocking the lore on the creatures and events of the game. This might not be as important to some but the lore surrounding Aran and Tessara is quite in-depth and always worth a quick look for some extra details or just to sate your curiosity.

 

With so much going on, it’s a small surprise that you’ll still gain experience and levels for everything you kill or any quests you complete. However, the levels you gain are vital not only to your survival but also to the overall interest of the game for the skill points you’re given to use as you please. The reason behind survival is because your skill tree is divided into 3 sections – Sword, Bow and Magic. The skill tree is a bit odd in the way it’s structured because it’s created like a tree of sorts. You’ll have to unlock previous skills to unlock the next ones down the line. What makes the skill tree and leveling system stand out so much is that there are no attributes you can assign yourself, these are instead increased by the passive and active skills you unlock. As an example – Sword skills will naturally increase the damage you deal with the sword but also your overall defense or damage reduction along with smaller bonuses to the other thirds of your skill tree.

To save the best for last, the all consuming consumables and there are a lot of them. A game like Testament: The Order of High Human wouldn’t be complete without consumables and their many different effects, the developers didn’t skimp out on this one either. As you progress through the story, you’ll start unlocking the many consumable items you pick up for use and to make more for future fights. One incredibly useful item, in particular, is called Carura’s Feather, which gives you an infinite dash for a short duration, just to give an example. There are others that can do what your magic does in terms of shields, and even some that will enchant your weapons with fire for extra damage. Luckily, making more consumables isn’t as complicated, you’ll just need a decent stockpile of the only currency in the game from the looks of it, Shards of Creation. With enough Shards, you’ll be able to build a nice stockpile of items that you can use at any moment and these will definitely come in handy when you’re in a tough situation.

On the sound engineering and music front, Testament: The Order of High Human features a brilliant soundtrack that shifts between calm and peaceful to more urgent and rushed for combat. This might be a typical feature for any RPG game, it’s the quality of the music that sets it apart from other games. With the use of mostly instrumental and background vocals, the music alone is enough to get lost in the game with. However, the voice acting also speaks volumes. While you might not hear much from Aran and some of the other characters, the little they do speak sounds so natural for them and each voice actor played their part beautifully in Testament: The Order of High Human.

 

Testament: The Order of High Human just keeps giving with its many mechanics and in-depth story, and it definitely rose even further to the top with just the visual side alone. Fairyship Games went all in with this masterpiece of a game, from the incredibly detailed world and lands to the various creatures and threats you’ll face off against. The game might not have hyperrealistic visuals, but it does in fact, have more than enough detail to keep you more than immersed. You might think the HUD is a bit bland at first because of the lack of detail or how simple it is, but once you get a bit deeper into the game, you’ll see that the simplistic HUD is actually great because it’ll keep unnecessary distractions out of the way so you can focus on the task at hand.

Overall, Testament: The Order of High Human is one hell of an achievement of a game made by a team of 15 people. It has all the best parts of the RPG genre with some new features that just keep you coming back for more. This combined with a gripping story and inspired world design, you’ll have a hard time putting the game down. Things just get better with the odd puzzles you’ll find and the literal mountains of lore to be discovered. This is one of those games that you just have to take your hat off when you consider the detail and the developer team size but also, The Elder Scrolls has some serious competition now.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Editor, NoobFeed