Legacy of Kain™ Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered

-I buy the series about two years ago with every intention on playing through the entire story, -Soul Reaver 1 is taken off for 'important updates', -Buy the available entries anyway while they're on sale -Hold off starting the series while I wait patiently for it to come back. -Still waiting. -Finally available again; remade and at a stupidly ridiculous price for a 25 year old game, and no option for the original to begin with. And the original Soul Reaver 2 is still available.

While I'll admit that it doesn't quite live up to the hype, it's serviceable. This is what the original port of the game to PC should have been. It's been updated with upscaled textures and corrected controls, and the sound has been remastered, of course... but if you came looking for improvement on the scale of Nightdive's System Shock, you're going to be disappointed. The Good: - The controls have been updated from "crippled schizophrenic" to "drunken hobo," although they didn't quite make it to "modern standards." - The upscaled textures look gorgeous for the most part. - The dialogue is where they spent all the money - it sounds magnificent. The voices are clear and the subtitles are easily legible. - A map, complete with collectible tracking, has been added. - The lighting has been updated a little - the spectral realm, in particular, looks amazing. The Bad: - While the dialogue is fantastic... the other sounds, such as combat, water, and flame, sound just like they did back in the day on PS1. Not great, but not horrible. - The camera is ATROCIOUS. Routinely clips through the terrain or objects, struggles to follow in close quarters. Makes combat a chore. - The textures have been updated, but the models and terrain have not. Seams and vertices abound. Most of the enemies look as chunky as they did back in the day. Additionally, the lighting glitches out fairly often, especially with puzzle blocks. The Bottom Line: It's worth getting on sale, and definitely worth reliving a part of your younger gaming years. But bring your rose-colored glasses.

Not only do we get Soul Reaver 1 & optimized and patched for modern systems. The games are given a very gorgeous makeover along with being able to toggle the original graphics on the fly. But wait, there's more. This release is also filled to the brim with behind the scenes content. From VO out takes to the 1998 E3 demo being playable. There's restored cut content you can explore as well as old tech demos. You're not buying just a game here, it comes with a historical archive of a time long forgotten.

The reason I gave this game a 4 , its not because i don't like it, all the contrary, I love the LOK Series. Overhaul I love the series and Keep them coming! I like to see things like this happen! The game has great visuals, and quite similar controls to the original, nothing bad with a little clunk. I gave it a 4, because i feel like this studio could have incorporated better graphics while still retaining the original aspect, it threw me off at first and im getting used to it, but there are certain enviromental lighting that could have been adressed. One example is the torch lighting, like i know what they were trying to do, but the torch effects looked somwhat dated, and looked like water reflections rather than torch lighting. looks goofy, but i know the intention, touch of the old, touch of the new. Also the water rendering could have been improved along with some of the lighting, add maybe reflections in the water make it more fluid and light in the enviroment. I love that they took out that awful motion blur inside the water and brightened it up a little in SR2, Making it less tideous to navigate the water at the beginning and coming back.

Recommend, its a good remaster