May Millennials 2: Severance: Blade of Darkness (Intro)

I think it was fellow EuroMod @fisk0 that recommended this one, or perhaps aficionado of crusty CRPGs @arbitrarywater, but Severance: Blade of Darkness (known simply by its subtitle in the US) is an action-RPG I'd never encountered prior to this month and took a gamble on it based solely on word of mouth. While set in a vaguely "Tolkien by way of Conan the Barbarian" fantasy world of dwarves that mine for gold, orcs that threaten civilization in huge numbers every so often, shirtless barbarians with enormous swords, and a whole bunch of mystical rune business, Blade of Darkness is more focused towards action and combat than worrying too much about a detailed plot. Even the RPG elements, like raising character levels or finding better gear, are largely incidental: the most you get from the former is more health and stamina (more on that in a moment) and the latter can you find lying around in all sorts of places if you're thorough enough in your explorations.

Instead, the game has you pass through environments in a more deliberate fashion, watching out for instant-death traps or powerful opponents before either can get the drop on you. The game's combat so far has been equally deliberate, where even the weakest enemies are capable of quickly ruining your day if you aren't fast enough with the guard or evade roll. Healing items are sparse - most of the time, you're bashing open barrels and crates and feasting on their instant-use food items until the next level up comes along and provides a full heal - and progress simply comes down to finding keys or switches to open new passageways and occasionally shortcuts back to previous areas. Each map is subsequently built to be more easily traversed in full the further you get into it, though I imagine there'll be some purely linear levels in the near future.

The game's in its element most when combat starts. Not only do you get a musical sting that smartly breaks the quiet level of tension that the BGM has created thus far, making ambushes all that more effective, but fights against tough opponents can be genuinely thrilling. Depending on the character you pick - there's four, each with a mastery over a specific weapon type (spears, axes, etc.) that allows them to pull off powerful special attacks with their preferred weapons - you have to carefully choose your time to strike and defend and avoid. The two mouse buttons are dedicated to attack and jump respectively, and using them with the arrow keys when locked onto an opponent lets you dodge to the sides and away or perform stronger attacks with fighter game style inputs. Hitting an enemy on a certain part of their body will chop that appendage off if it's a killing blow, and there's been multiple occasions where something's leapt out at me and I instinctively sliced at it, decapitating it in one strike to create an inadvertently cool moment. I've been playing as the amazon Zoe, whose spear weapons greatly reduce her defense. She makes up for this deficit with an acrobatic degree of evade rolling - combat with her so far has involved a merry frantic dance of not letting the opponent touch me as I roll to its flank and get in a few good whacks before hurriedly backing away. Each new enemy type has their own tactics and strengths to use against you, so you're always constantly on your toes and trying to read them for opportunities. Enemies also level up like you do, and a fight against a level 4 orc and a level 5 one can go very differently if you aren't prepared. Though Tomb Raider-style platforming action is less the game's strong suit, there are times where you might need to run, jump, climb, and roll past traps and other obstacles also.

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, I'm right there with you. I hadn't anticipated that a 2001 European CRPG would have the same mastery of grim atmosphere and cautious, rewarding advancement that a certain other more modern JRPG franchise regularly exhibits, because I honestly didn't imagine our little continent was capable of it. I've played a lot of pretty janky 3D action-RPGs from the late '90s and early '00s, and most of them are games like Descent to Undermountain or Eternal Ring or Summoner: entertaining enough in their own way, but rarely do they appear on any "best of" RPG lists with good reason. Though Blade of Darkness certainly has its downsides - there's a certain perfunctoriness to the lack of inventory and character customization that makes it feel a bit shallow - I'm kicking myself that I somehow let this one slip by me. I'm going to keep going to see what else the game has in store.

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*nods furiously in approval*

Grew up playing the demo for this a ton. Never thought to compare these to Souls games, but shit dude, you're right.

Happy to hear you're having some fun with this!

Am I remembering right that this is the game where you can use severed limbs as weapons?

Playing this with a keyboard as a child has really made me appreciate modern controls.

@mento: I remember playing this game up until my character became so OP that I no longer had to memorize enemy attack pattern since my attacks produced a projectile when I finished a attack sequence. Also I had the reverse thought that you had. When Demon Souls was released in japan it reminded me so much of Severance that I imported it before DS was released in the states.

The one thing negative thing I will say about Severance is enemies regularly stun lock you if you get overwhelmed or if you time your attacks incorrectly so you just have to wait till they kill you while you are stuck in a hit animation. Every souls game will let you fall down and give you invincibility frames till you get up. Severance will let you sit there and watch your character slowly get killed by a group of skeleton men.

This is definitely a fisk0 sort of game, because while I do own this I’ve never put much time into it and mix it up with Die by the Sword in my head. Something about using keyboard controls for involved 3rd person combat mushes together in my memory.

There’s something pretty fascinating about the concept of Eurojank Dark Souls a good eight years before Demon’s Souls. I can’t imagine there was any direct influence from Blade of Darkness to From Software, but there’s absolutely a shared tradition of making games that outright defy conventional design between them.

This game occupies the same place in my brain as Enclave does.

It was probably me, yeah. If you set up a joystick mapper you actually get the feeling really close to a Souls game to mapping the dodge rolls and inventory buttons to the traditional Souls buttons.

Also, check out the Blade of Light mod that really changes up the lighting system of the game, makes it look pretty spectacular, though the titular blade of light which is a sword that acts as a light source is a little silly in itself.

@theht: Lemme tell ya, there was a moment where I was carefully skulking around the next corner worried I'd get jumped by some high-level mob or another frickin' boulder trap and thought "Hey, this is a lot like Dark Souls" followed by "Oh wait, I'm going to write about this later and the last thing I want to do is compare something to Dark Souls..." I think I almost, almost got away with not making an explicit comparison.

@pete0r: You can, yeah. There's a lot of things you can pick up and swing at people, though random trash like dismembered limbs and skulls and furniture are better used for throwing at switches, or at enemies to distract them (in games and in life, I've found that the severed heads of friends usually make for potent distractions). The only things you can actually keep are four weapons, four shields (quivers count as shields for some reason), a finite amount of the stronger healing potions, and whatever key items you need. It's not one of those RPGs that's really big on inventories.

@merxworx01: I've not had the stun-lock problem yet, but I have been trapped in a corner a few times and the camera freaks out when that happens which doesn't really help the situation. I'm at the point where enemies do so much damage - though I thankfully have way more HP to tank it now - that most of the healing items, especially food, is borderline useless. I needed those 30 HP from a block of cheese when I had around 200 HP total, but not when I have something like 2000 to recover.

@arbitrarywater: Die By the Sword was definitely where my brain was going to early on until I started getting a little better with the combat controls and realized you wouldn't last long in Severance if you ran screaming through every level swinging your weapon like mad (which did for me just fine in DBtS). That said, something embodied by both games is how they rarely distract you with anything resembling a narrative and just let you get on with crawling through a dungeon wantonly chopping orc limbs off.

@relkin: Weird, every time I see Enclave on the GOG store I confuse it with Exhumed (which I guess is called PowerSlave over there? Quite a title). Maybe Enclave is something I should look into for a future one of these.

@fisk0: I'm too used to the keyboard controls now to want to bother fussing around with Joy2Key. There are times where I wish the arrow + attack combos were a little more responsive (let alone the special attack combos, which are about as temperamental as trying to jump across a gap while on a slope). Lighting hasn't been an issue either; though the game can get tenebrous as heck (see above screenshot) I've always been able to make out enemies and such. Something about the way they contrast against the murk, I think.

Oh, this is a hidden gem from my early 2000s childhood. So many memories of those damn orcs with their poisoned swords bringing the 12 year old me nearly to tears. I still play this game from time to time, it's quite excellent!