I've been trying to get through it several times, and it wasn't until I got one crucial thing; the chain. In the first game the chain was a tool, mostly for convenience, but for BloodRayne 2 the developers had one of those IDEAS: let's center the gameplay loop around the chain, or "Harpoon", have Rayne fling her enemies far and wide, flopping about with those glorious mid-2000s ragdoll physics, impale them on spikes, set them on fire, electrocute them and throw them around just in general. And while we're at it let's make the process of aiming the damn thing not so much "aiming" as "Please Rayne for the love of god just let me throw this guy on the spike". This is jarring and weird for anyone who just played the first BloodRayne, which focused on a fast and frantic combination of ranged and melee combat. This one is more Devil May Cry on Xanax. It's some kind of mix of lock-on targeting, blocking, dodging, and occationally hitting your enemy, who will mess you right up if you don't have your powers activated. The whole philosophy of the gameplay is hard to understand, during the entire first half of the game it is in your best interest to use your chain to impale, crush and electrocute as many enemies as you possibly can, because, you see, the game sort of has levels as well. When you kill an enemy by throwing them into something you gain Fury, and when you've gained enough you "level up", giving you more health, and your Rage meter goes up, which in turn enables your powers to be active longer, this will be crucial by the latter half of the game, at which point the game completely switches gears and expects you to start fighting your enemies with Rayne's iconic blades. This is also the point where the amount of bosses become a sign of developers wanting to wrap the darn thing up, and the best way to oblige them is to activate Blood Rage and hack vaguely in the general direction of said bosses and hope the game registers the hits. Good game. Weird. Nice graphics.
