Written by Thomas G.J. Sharpe
While I have a fondness for mid-market, smaller scale
titles, Testament falls a little limp in too many places for me to be
able to recommend it. As an action game, it feels light and low on impact. As a
story, I was left a bit underwhelmed too often. The stealth elements are hard
to engage with. The RPG systems a bit arbitrary. Yet, it does have some good,
even great aspects to it. So, I am more sad than incredulous at Testament.
As I try to get my thoughts straight about what Testament
is, it occurs to me that it’s a good demonstration why I feel it falls short. I
should start with things I’m sure of, however, and say that it is a
first-person, action-adventure in a dark fantasy setting. Looking at the
developer, Fairyship Games, website, and the website for Testament itself,
this seems to be an attempt to create a series of games about the land of
Tessara with all these odd moving parts. There’re divine lords, orc-like
humanoids, more recognisable animalia, and strange unnatural aberrations, as
well as different spiritual powers and sects. It washed over me, but it’s
spirited enough and done with some degree of enthusiasm and conviction. It very
rarely, however, made too much sense. You play as Aran (a sort of gruff fallen
angel-lord type; bit earnest, bit vague) who has lost his powers and has been
captured by a talking tree. I felt there might be a creepy woodland vibe for
the whole game, but it shifts about to different locales.
The visuals are great. Not amazingly cohesive, but it has an
atmosphere. There’s a tonne of slick wetness, bloom and brightness going on.
Very flashy use of effects. I enjoyed the dingy caves and manky woods, more
than the temples and mountains. Visually, the GUI and HUD are ugly, and break
the gains of the nice art and design, sadly.
Similarly, the writing plays coy and vague, wasting any good
ideas hiding in the world. Throwing around unestablished lore and
world-building with no context. With little or no connection, sympathy, information,
or motivation to be or help, at least, Aran move forward on his
quest, I hoped to find fun in the gameplay and have the story be a bumbling
side-dish. Your daily bread is first person action, mostly swords and arrows.
These both feel damp and too light when executed and when they land. With
little feedback, it did dirty on some good, fun villain designs. I rarely felt
weight or result of action. Stealth can be employed to clear areas of enemies,
but it becomes a bit of a guessing game with hard to ascertain distances of
awareness and sloppy AI.
A real shock here, for me, was that one of the more
enjoyable parts of Testament were platforming sections. What’s that?
First-person platforming sections? No, I’m not a High Human (yuk yuk). There
are some genuinely creative platforming sections with some interesting
environmental puzzles. No, it doesn’t feel as good as Dying Light or Mirror’s
Edge or something like that, but for a game that has so much spaghetti
thrown at the wall, this one of the bits that has stuck.
Progression is blocked by bosses that what you might expect.
A bigger, tougher version of a mob, or a big creature. These were mostly
frustrating, exposing some of the lack of interaction between stamina, energy,
health, and attack styles systems. The challenge is in the wrong place; rather
than feeling as if I was losing a skill battle, I felt like I’d been given
poorly optimised tools to do the job with.
As I trundled through Testament, I did lose interest
I’m afraid and did fail to finish. A final criticism is the length, which is a
co-morbidity of the pacing of the story. It struggled to move me to investment,
as there was only so long I could be sort of into it. The world looks fun and
there is something lurking back there, but too many dull systems amounted to a
misfire here. I hope that the dev looks to tighten the focus of any future
titles. Testament could have been a quite engaging action story if it
were half the time and markedly less flabby.
Overall 5/10
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