I first picked up Severed for the 3DS in January 2017 after playing Guacamelee through Steam and really enjoyed the game that developer DrinkBox Studio created, and thought that I would give this game a go; plus being on sale did not hurt much either as the game had already been out (at least on the Vita) for eight months, being released on the 3DS three months prior; maybe I did not buy it on sale now that I think about it. But looking at my 3DS library, the beginning of 2017 seemed to be a strange year for me in that I started several games and was then distracted away and never finished them, or in the case of Severed, played beyond the first 15 minutes. All I knew about the game prior to even buying it was that it centered around a woman who was out to rescue her family and was in a first-person perspective. Well, Severed turned out to be a lot more than a simple first-person action game, and one that I am thoroughly enjoying.
After beating Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, I knew that I wanted to hop back on and restart Severed as I had only started the game and played fewer than 10 minutes, encountering, I think, only one enemy. While Severed is a first-person game, it turned out it is more of an old-school dungeon crawl than a free-roaming Elder Scrolls game, even the first two games which were all first-person. You move from room-to-room in single motions, but once you are in the room, you are able to look around the room but are limited to left and right, but not up and down. While in rooms you are able to interact with certain objects like hidden buttons in walls (Indiana Jones would approve), levers and chains, and breaking open pots (Link would approve). There are also enemies to encounter which you are able to see and anticipate before you engage in the encounter. I do not have any pictures while fighting enemies because this is being played on the 3DS and that functionality has ceased to exist with the discontinuation of Miiverse (which I did not know was a function until earlier last month (December 2020).
Combat against enemies is a mixed bag experience for me, and not through any fault of DrinkBox's mechanics. I think. When you fight an enemy, there is a meter at the bottom of the screen that shows both their health and when they are going to attack, which comes in handy once you start fighting two and three monsters at the same time. When the meter fills up and the enemies attack, each different enemy (of which I have come across four types), they have their own individual tell in how to block them with a swipe of the stylus, and it is all about timing. I feel like I am successful close to 60% of the time in blocking enemy attacks, but when I am surrounded by three enemies and their meters are filling up, and I am paying attention to my own health, I may start panicking and end up missing either with the game telling me that my block was at a "bad angle," and with enough bad angled blocks or just straight up missing altogether, you die.
Thankfully, the game looks like it autosaves every time you come into a new room or screen, so dying is not too much of a problem, which is kind of odd. I am currently playing the game on Normal difficulty so attacks from enemies are not weak and combine that with my 40%+ accuracy in not blocking incoming attacks means that I have died quite a few times, and then respawned in the previous room. Which, to me at least, is kind of a strange mechanic. Throughout the stages are trees that you can eat the fruit from to regain health, and certain enemies (or it could also be under certain conditions, but I have yet to figure out what those conditions could be) drop their hearts which you consume to regain your own health. Finding these trees (or dropped hearts) always feels exciting because those seem to be the only method of healing and deep in the heart of the Temple of the Crow, healing is pretty essential. Unless you die and respawn at full health in the room right before the room you died in. Similar to the later stages in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the dying mechanic seems more like a combination of an inconvenience and a blessing because again, you are brought back with full health.
You know, I think you might be able to tell I am enjoying myself, or at least I think it is obvious as I have written what I consider to be quite a lot for a First Impressions. I know I still have aspects that I want to talk about and I am sure there will be more as I delve deeper into the game, so look forward to a more in-depth review in the coming weeks. Clocking in at around seven hours, I am currently only 1h37m in, so I know there is going to be a lot more to experience.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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