testament

testament is a character from guilty gear! they're the character i main in guilty gear strive, and i just think they're really cool.

guilty gear strive was my first guilty gear game, having first heard about the series because of brisket basket biscuit bridget. i really wish i had found the series earlier, because everything about it has captivated me. i wish i couldve been autistic about previous entries in the series when they were new. but thats a topic for another post, because i'd love to write a broader post about my relationship with fighting games, and how guilty gear strive is the game that's made me finally able to play one after avoiding them like the plague for many years. and theres so much else to rant about in this game too, like oh my god the soundtrack, the characters, the everything... i'll go over all that in a future post.

testament

okay, now. testament. testament was the second character i ever tried out when i got guilty gear strive, after bridget. bridget was an obvious first character to play as, since she was how i found out about the game in the first place! after playing her for a little bit, and playing through her arcade story (which i have a lot to say about, but i don't know if i'll ever get to it), i looked at the roster to see if anyone else appealed. i thought may looked like a fun character, and giovanna is cool even though she's a cop,

but okay come on what are we doing. there's a non-binary gear with a huge fucking scythe.

like hello? of course i'm gonna play as the non-binary gear with the scythe.

playing as testament

every move testament does looks fucking sick and they feel so fucking good to play as. as far as i understand, they're not considered the most competitively viable character to play as, they're just not the best zoner. but, like, that really doesn't matter to me.

when i play as testament, i get into this really satisfying flow of just absolutely fucking up the opponent with various mixes of the, like, three different moves that testament has. and every time i play guilty gear strive im just trying to get that awesome feeling again, where the opponent just stands absolutely no chance of getting anywhere near me.

and ive not been playing the game for very long, to be clear! theres a lot of combo theory i still want to properly learn, tricks i wanna learn, etc.!
so like, right now i get to feel super fucking powerful, even though i literally am just winging it. imagine how good it'll feel when i actually know what im doing!!
i guess the scary bit there is that my opponent might know what theyre doing too by then... but honestly the matches where it gets really close, where i actively learn new things from my opponent, etc., is even more fun that absolutely destroying someone. both feel really satisfying!

okay but what about testament, the idea

or; tiger poorly recollects random bits of what she's read about testament, thus telling you of her own flawed idea about who testament is.

my favourite thing about testament is that their character development from previous games is like, going from being a spiteful, angry, and hurt main villain in the games before. which like, is reasonable. they were turned into a gear, brainwashed, killed their own dad, humans aren't exactly the nicest to gears, etc. etc. etc.. but they go from that to being someone who's learned to live life and not let everything bad stop them from enjoying the good. i love that testament is like, incredibly powerful, but they just wanna go for a relaxing walk. they just want to experience nice things.

i thought their entire arcade story was really pleasant. obviously, the arcade stories were really limited in what they could do, but i think it has some quotes that really stuck with me and made me appreciate testament for more than just their huge scythe. the entire plot of the arcade is basically just, testament tries to go for a walk, and everyone is like "what the fuck are you doing this place isnt safe for you", and then proceeds to attack testament to prove that this place isnt safe for them. the "rival" in this one, the recurring character no matter what path you go down, is chipp, who just gets increasingly amazed at testament's endless resolve to just go for a walk. my favourite exchange is this one:

Chipp: That's so.. normal!!
Testament: I AM NORMAL! What, does a life need to have some grand purpose to be worth living?

it's a very simple sentiment, but i really appreciate it. you're right, testament. i can just live life for the sake of living it. it's so easy to spend every moment of life worrying if you're doing something Meaningful with it, and to forget that Living Life is meaningful enough already.