An amazing old classic with great gameplay and much fun...I think that this game doesn't deserves its cruel fate...
Story: Basically you need to defeat the Dark Lord of the Chaos and their minions, and as you get deeper into the game, the more bloodthirsty and more powerful enemies you will meet. However, you are also gaining levels (you will become pretty powerful near the end of the game), which helps you to boost your attack's strength and your armor. There are several runes in the game, which are not necessary to collect, but you--enough talking. Since I do not want to reveal much, I keep the story for you, so you can enjoy after you've read this review.
Gameplay: The diamond that shining here is the gameplay itself. You can control 4 characters, each one is different, there is an old knight, a barbarian, a dwarf and an amazon. Each one has their own preferred weapons, and their differences in their stats. The great hack and slash style is also nice and unique. You can also cut off the enemy's body parts, which makes the gameplay more realistic. Maybe there are other nice things you can do (traps, keys, doors and more), but I do not want to go deeply into the details.
Design: The levels are nicely textured, and they won't be forgotten even after many years. The visual appearing is unique, nice shadow and light effects, so overall it's a highly designed game. (And I'm knowing this game since 2001.)
Sound: The music is just touching deeply into your emotions. This was one of those games which succesfully made me to get into the 'fear' feeling and often became scared (I can't say this for many games)..So if you feel somehow, that you would like to enjoy a good game with heartbreaking music and realistic sounds, why not try this one?
Negatives: In my opinion, the game is somehow short. There aren't many maps, but they are usually long, and each one is unique, they are very different, so this shouldn't be short, but if you finish the whole game several times, that's how you might feel.
Also back in its time around 2001-2002, many people has been flamed the game saying that its incredibly required high system requirements (I guess this wouldn't be a problem in the present days).
Another negative that the multiplayer is lacking a little [however, I figured out a method for online gaming made by fans. Forget about this]...
System requirements: Seriously, the most (even weak) computers can run this now, even my old computers, where I've played this game for countless hours, and I enjoyed it all the time, so do not hesitate to buy this game if you can find it somewhere for a good price like Amazon or even eBay for example.
About the game creators: Sadly, the developers (Rebel Act Studios) are out of order, since of their bankruptcy in 2002. Even their official Severance: Blade of Darkness' website has been removed at Codemasters. It's such a shame, because this game was an amazing one, this really has the fun and the meaning in every shape of form, and I think it doesn't deserves its cruel fate to be forgotten. "Life is not fair", I've heard that many times, and found out that it is not true. It seemed like a matter of perspective to judge upon. The truth is that life is fair, because it was the fate itself which wanted this; only a few players can know about this game, who knows why? I will keep it and play with it. I can feel, that the Rebel Act Studios and the good developers are smiling on me for keeping their product :-)
+ There are many mods made by the fans, you can find them if you search at ModDB for the keywords: "Severance Blade of Darkness", click on the first entry at the search and try to install up some mods. Mods are even more amazing for this game, and again I feel a bit shamefully that not much people does know about a good hack and slash game like this one...
+ Thanks for reading this review (at least if you didn't just skipped the texts and scrolled down for here). And have a lot of fun at this game ;)