Severed Realms has some good elements, and some bad elements. In the end, it wasn't my cup of tea, but I can certainly see why many folks would enjoy it.
Pros:
- Beautiful rendering: The characters look really good (I have a thing for red-heads which doesn't hurt) the queen and twins are especially well done.
- Creative use of assets: I don't want to get into spoiler territory, but the setting provides a clever way for the developer to merge modern and medieval.
- Side Character stories: A few of the side-characters have intriguing backstories that help world build. Again, I will try not to spoil, but the 'uncle' the queen and the older sister all come immediately to mind.
So starting out, despite a bit of a narrative dump in the beginning, I was very much on board. Unfortunately now I must discuss a few cons.
- The Main Character: You are playing as a saint/super-hero type personality with no flaws who every woman is immediately interested in. If you are into that, and I know many are, you can stop reading this now and ignore my rating, you will love this VN.
- No meaningful choices: I admire a developer who has their story and wants to tell it, but it would be nice to make a few choices here and there. I will give one example (EARLY GAME SPOILERS FOLLOW)
The character Erin asks if I am interested in a relationship, two options show up. I choose the one that indicates the MC is not. Then the MC promptly enters a relationship with Erin. Why bother offering the choice?
- No weight behind the antagonist: Let's just say that I was pretty sure my MC wasn't going to have to make any hard choices. Pretty early on I kind of wished I was playing as the uncle, at least he had some internal conflicts and backstory to hold onto.
Finally, not a con, but make sure you read the developer notes as well as checking out the tags. Many of them are representative of themes that appear mainly 'off camera' if you will. Again, this is clearly stated up front by the dev, so caveat emptor.
In the end, this was a VN I wanted to love, but where the 'V' part delivered, the 'N' fell short for me. I wish the dev all the best of luck, it's clear they are putting a lot of effort into it.