Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2

I absolutely loved Blood Omen 1, and I was a little bit soured by Soul Reaver 1 but I was still cautiously optimistic about Soul Reaver 2 and hoping it would improve on it’s predecessor. And I’m glad to say that, at least in my opinion, Soul Reaver 2 was better than Soul Reaver 1. The combat is... rather tedious and not particularly fun, at least for me. It mostly comes down to the fact that it’s actually POINTLESS. You gain nothing by defeating enemies, no experience, no gold, no loot. The puzzles were generally an improvement over Soul Reaver 2 – gone are the repetative blocks, you mostly deal with thinking about how to traverse the enviroment and remove obstacles using the different elemental Reaver powers. But what elevates Soul Reaver 2 over SR1 in my opinion is that it seems to have a significantly better ratio of story/lore/dialogue to combat/puzzles than SR1 in favor of the former. There’s still a bit of backtracking, but you can skip most of combat with no consequence and the puzzles are generally more engaging than in SR1. And the story is quite interesting, with lots of twists and turns, and lots of recontextualizing previous events, casting them in a new light. It seems to contain some retcons, although that might just be misremembering things from SR1 and BO1. Generally even if they are retcons they weren’t that obtrusive, and the story answered a couple of questions. It also brought up many new ones, and while the game ended on a kind of sequel bait again it was less aggrovating than in SR1. The voiceacting is still very good. While I find Raziel himself not that compelling, Kain’s and the Elder God’s voiceacting is pure audio gold and I savoured every one of their lines. If you think you’d enjoy watching a frist timer going thorugh the game blind and trying to decipher what is it about, you can see it here on my channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mr4KYNThOk&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWWZeilRSU5S8aWhI9TuOTUz

Great facial animations on some cutscenes and the story seems to be interesting, but the lack of subtitles impacts negatively in the gaming experience. Battle system has aged poorly. Great voice acting too.

seriously. this game looks prety old, but the game mechanics and the story are fantastic. but beware: if you use win 7, it could happen that you dont hear voices while someone talks. to fix that, just set the compatibility-mode to win xp service pack x (i use 3) than it works.

An amazing continuation from the first game, although it is rather a long one. Soul Reaver is and will remain a classic series for 5th and 6th generation gamers. It has a very good story and memorable characters. Voice acting is top class for all characters. Combat is simple but can be repetitive. Puzzles are not too difficult but, I feel that there are too many. Game drags on in the later half due to all the backtracking. If the game was condensed a little it would be perfect. Now for the reason I picked 2 stars. There is a very bad glitch when switching between realms. The animation does not always complete and you get stuck. You can run but can't move and everything around you will be frozen. You have to jump a whole bunch to complete the transition between realms. This happened very frequently and I got very impatient with this! I eventually had to watch a playthrough on YouTube because of this horrible issue. I would say if the game did not glitch to the point of unplayablity it would be a 5 star, even with the backtracking and long puzzles. I would say get this game, but that one glitch alone prevents me from recommending it. Just watch a playthrough and enjoy the story, because the story is good.

I edited this review 'cause I found the way to elude both the freezing and the bugs issues. For the bugs: search with google d3d8.dll, download the file and attach it in the game folder For freezing: opening with windows 95 compatibility or setting mono-core in the Windows Task Manager during gameplay So, now I can freely say that this is the best of the four games (still, blood omen 2 doesn't exist... don't try to convince me of the contrary), regarding the focus on the story. The saga finds his most profound sense in the eternal, circular struggle of a son searching for vengeance against his father, and finding instead the truth behind his view and each of his actions. Unlike the other games of the saga, here we don't have secret locations, or optional powerups and collectibles. Everything is set for the story. You can also flee from most of the combats... but in the final rush I find myself WANTING to combat even if was unnecessary: emotions and symbolic meanings that accompany you throughout the game are enough to enjoy it, and all the usual action gaming elements (including bosses) are knowingly sacrificed to not disturb the deep immersion that this story is capable to give. Definitely one of the best games of all times for who loves epic and deep stories.