The main thing to mention is that the game as-is has an audio bug that can crash your PC, requiring a reboot. Checking the forums led me to a downloadable DLL file that fixed the issue and also corrected a few other smaller issues, such as level title screens flashing by too quickly. So it's unplayable as-is but a simple mod fixes it.
Once that's fixed, the game is quite good. For its era, at least. The puzzles evolve as the game goes on, so they're trivial in the beginning but require a bit of thinking in later levels. Nothing too challenging; just enough that you don't completely steamroll through everything. Exploration is rewarded with EXP points which expand your life gauge, but the maps are never sprawling enough to feel like any exploration is going very far out of your way, and if you didn't feel like exploring, it's easy enough to get EXP through combat. You're not gonna get lost in this game.
The combat is a mixed bag. Limited-durability weapons keep you weighing your options whenever you find a new one, but later enemies are so inclined to block everything you do that sometimes a sword will only last long enough to kill a single enemy. Getting around enemy defenses can be frustratingly time-consuming, although you get an ability later in the game that mitigates this. When there are multiple enemies you really have to plan your approach.
A key element of the game is that your health is always going down, as Kain needs to constantly feed on enemies to keep his health up. This was never an issue during my playthrough as it's easy to keep feeding, but it's cool that the game forces you to not dawdle.
The gameplay is only just challenging enough to not be a cakewalk, but the main reason to play this game is the story. The voice acting is first-rate, and there are enough plot developments to keep your interest piqued.
Overall it's a fun game and if you liked the Soul Reaver games you'll probably like this.
