The story goes like this, a young girl and her family are brutally attacked. The girl’s family goes missing, or worse, and she is left with half a right arm, thus the name of the game ‘Severed’. She has to get herself together, figuratively and literally, to traverse the underworld of whatever dimension she resides in and in hopes of getting them back before it’s too late. Thankfully, her mother has taught her the ways of a warrior, meaning that she can take care of herself once she gets a sword. She must find a way to get a sword and go on a puzzling adventure to get her family back, one way or another.
Don’t let the colorful art style or simplistic animation of Severed detour your senses from seeing it for what it truly is, which is a dark adventure that is wrapped up with a layer of action and a heavy amount of role playing elements on the inside. It’s more complicated underneath and far more engaging than similar AAA titles with a higher price tag. On top of all this, Drinkbox apparently is one of the few developers that has accepted the innovated tools of the Wii U and have found a way to put them to interesting gameplay design usage. It’s odd seeing a developer actually do something innovative with the Wii U that doesn’t hinder the gameplay one bit. A lot of people force the Wii U capabilities because they think it’s cool, rather than useful.
Let’s get right into it, shall we?
Severed works well within the context of the gameplay design. The story and the technique compliment each other. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but honestly sometimes people who develop for the Wii U will force the gameplay design against the story. Severed is not that game. Your main character is armed with a sword. The sword works, much like it does with the game Fruit Ninja, where you swipe across the screen with a stylus to deflect attacks and also dictate your offense. The stylus leads everything and it goes perfect within the framework of the story. For example, you will meet enemies that have multiple arms, all weird, such as a spider with human hands. To kill the spider, you swipe across the body of the spider with your stylus to do damage. The bigger the swipe across the screen, the bigger the damage you inflict. The smaller swipes equal out to smaller damage. When you’re not inflicting damage, you’re deflecting it. The concept is simple and it doesn’t hinder the process at all.
The technique of deflection works the same way as the offense. You swipe the enemy attack before the attack is made, thus deflecting the attack. Going back to the spider for an example, the spider will raise his/her arm to attack and you simply swipe at the arm to deflect and disrupt it. The game gives you an onscreen indicator when to swipe to deflect. At the bottom of the screen, a yellow circle starts to appear and grow with the anticipated attack from the enemy. When the circle is complete, the attack happens and you have about .5 seconds to respond before the enemy gets through. It’s not bad when you’re going up against one enemy, but it can get tricky when multiple are attacking you at the same time (usually from in front and behind). Regardless, the offense and defense use the Wii U innovation perfectly, simply and within the context of the Severed tale.
One thing I would like to mention briefly, is how the first-person perspective of the game reminds me a lot of the original Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System (look it up, young gamers). You have a choppy movement that is a simple 3D emulation. This is especially relevant when you go into structures or down into dungeons. Whoever thought this up at Drinkbox surely had Phantasy Star roots.
As for those actual role playing game elements, you have a nice leveling tree in the backend of this that encourages your efforts to push forward. You can upgrade items, such as health, and grow the character into more than how she started. In addition, you also gather items to use later, such as health related material, as well as severed arms, and you get a nice upgrade arc as the game progresses. It’s nothing too technical, certainly not on the same scale of a Skyrim or a Final Fantasy, but the inclusion of these elements for what is a small-to-medium indie title really offers up some depth to the overall package.
With all this said, the gameplay isn’t completely perfect. The only one that sticks out in my mind is the actual movement of the main character. You can go forward with her through areas, choppily moving between segmented zones. Regretfully, sometimes you might overshoot your intended stopping point during your movement and, sadly, you can’t physically go backwards without turning all the way around (doing a 180). It sounds minor, but it’s quite annoying after more than a few times. Of course, if that’s the worst part of the game, then you should take it.
The rest of the game is balanced out with action (sword play), puzzle solving (not simple), creative enemies that can be alarmingly grotesque and an engaging storyline to keep all of it warm and happy/unhappy. For a $14.99 game, that’s impressive. You wouldn’t think so much effort would be put into it, but there was a lot of love and care in this one.
Anyway, onto the summary.
