Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2

Starting right where Soul Reaver left, the game continues the story of Raziel, but this time with a few new twists and turns. Greatly improved graphics, mechanics and weapons are what await you here. The Soul Reaver weapon actually plays a lot bigger part in this game than it did ever before, and elemental enhancements will give you even more satisfaction from killing or open your way to progress. The music believe it or not has also been improved, keeping the same style of the original. Many MANY puzzles await you aswell. More complex, yet very intuitive. The only thing missing from the original are optional areas and optional powerups. If you liked the first Soul Reaver game, you will love this one.

This game is a steal at 6$. It's more puzzle-oriented than the first one, and it has a little more backtracking than the first one, which was criticized by a few people. Still, this is an incredible game, with some of the best voice-acting ever, sublime graphics not just regarding the technical aspects but also the artistic direction, which is superior to all the other games of the series. Buy it, buy the first one as well if you haven't already, and enjoy one of the greatest experiences gaming can offer.

Alright, this game has probably the best story portions of the whole Legacy of Kain series, and that's saying a lot. The brilliant writing ties the events of Soul Reaver back to the events of Blood Omen 1 so beautifully, it deserves a medal. Aside from awesome writing and dialogues, the presentation is top-notch - the cutscenes are great , the art style and character models are great and the soundtrack is awesome. That's the good stuff and that's what makes the game worthy of the purchase. Now on to the bad stuff. The gameplay is linear as hell. There's no sidequests and nothing to explore. The game is fairly short too: it took me around seven hours to beat it. The Soul Reaver upgrades are fairly useless in combat and serve only as keys to the next part of the story (considering the arc words "Reaver is the key", that's kinda ironic). The combat is a mess. All the abilities Raziel got from his brethren in the first game reappear, save for Dumah's Constrict ability. There are no bosses in the game, save for the short rush at the end. Most of the game consists of solving puzzles in the Reaver forges to get upgrades - but those puzzles are awesome. PC version supports widescreen resolutions natively, but only in stretch-o-vision. There's no known fix at the moment. The controls by default are fairly bad, but are fully remappable and the game supports mouse and mouselook, so you can make yourself a nice layout.

People who play Soul Reaver are divided into two camps - those who love the entire franchise and are deeply invested in it, and those who just don't get it. If you're the latter, you'll find the combat bland, the puzzles annoying and repetitive, and the gameplay as a whole tedious and chore-like. Not recommended unless you already have reason to think that this is for you.