Developed by Drinkbox Studios, the fine folk that gave us Guacamelee, Severed is a first-person hack n’ slash dungeon crawler that blends elements of games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Fruit Ninja. The combination of these games with the first-person perspective makes Severed easily the most unique game I played the PlayStation Experience. And although the moment-to-moment gameplay may seem shallow at first, Severed is anything but that.
You play as Sasha, a young girl who survives an attack that takes her family from her and leaves her one-armed and bloodied. Driven by vengeance, Sasha is visited by a spirit that gives her the means to exact the revenge she seeks. Now armed with a sword to fight the monsters, Sasha sets out to find her family and eradicate all that get in her way.
Combat in the game is handled by swiping on the PlayStation Vita screen. Standard enemies will themselves wide open to your repeated slashes, but tougher enemies will being to shield themselves for your directional attacks. As you fight, you have to pay attention to which direction your enemies guard themselves. If they block to the left and you strike the left, your attack will have no effect. You can also parry enemy attacks by counter-swiping in the direction they are attacking from. This might sound complicated, but it’s really easy to get used to and feels intuitive.
Severed has a few RPG elements in its leveling up system. As you fight monsters, you’ll fill up a gauge that’ll allow you to stagger enemies and enter severing mode. In this mode, you have a limited amount of time to deal a killing blow and cut the limbs off of enemies. With the enemy defeated, you can then collect their severed body parts and use them as ingredients to level up equipment and abilities.
Speaking of which, abilities are gained by defeating boss monsters and taking their body parts for yourself. Finding your way to these bosses might be a bit tricky, however, because as you travel through dungeons you’ll encounter various puzzles and hazards. But if you keep your wits about you, you’ll be able to make your way through the dungeons with ease.
During my play-through of the Severed demo, I had little to no trouble at all navigating the game world and defeating monsters. In fact, the combat system was easily the most fun part about playing Severed. Navigation, on the other hand, took some getting used to. This, I figure, is because playing in the first-person perspective, I was expecting a greater amount of control in terms of movement. Generally, you can face one of four directions with limited wiggle room between each directional state. But once I stopped expecting a less rigid camera style, I was able to move around competently.
In any case, Severed was by far the best Vita game I played at PSX, and I’m eagerly waiting for its Spring 2016 release to arrive.