As a little kid who was just randomly trying PS1 games, this was my Demon's Souls.

The dark atmosphere, the lack of explanation, the crypticness of progression ... I never quite got far in this game, but it was so damn cool. Throwing enemies into spikes, picking up weapons and piercing through foes, the banging soundtrack on top of it ... It all resulted in a short, but intense time that I never forgot after over 20 years. It seemed like everything was possible in this and that there was this epic adventure ahead of me that I never quite got to.

Finally having played and completed it now almost feels wrong. It's a really good action adventure with some creative bosses and a rewarding story (if you played Legacy of Kain) but it also erased all the mystique surrounding this game for me and the constant box pushing even makes it look a little silly, lol.

There's lots to love in this game, but the lack of direction and sometimes frustrating jumping drags it down. It probably would've been more fun if it was more fighting and less puzzle solving oddly enough. Even all of the bosses are puzzles. Some really neat ones though. The teleporter mechanic and realm changing is still pretty damn impressive!

I'd always enjoyed the LoK series, but had never actually beaten any of them growing up. I decided to change that and played through the Blood Omen games, and now Soul Reaver. The game holds up decently well as far as presentation and level design with lots to unlock and explore. But the shining beacon is the voice acting and the writing for the characters. Besides Metal Gear Solid, this was one of the first games I played as a kid that felt like something made for adults with the professional sounding cast. The game does leave you on a cliff hanger that goes directly into Soul Reaver 2.

The game definitely has its problems but the writing, voice acting and atmosphere are second to none. The back and forth between Raziel and Kain is super entertaining and it's really fun to work through this story bit by bit. It's also the only open-world game in the Soul Reaver series so far, a bit like a 3D Metroidvania, the later games were much more linear. So I like both approaches to world design, but here I got lost from time to time or didn't know where to go. Still, it's super satisfying when you uncover a secret, which doesn't happen so often in the later games. The camera and controls can sometimes suck, but they're fine most of the time. What else can I say, a fantastic game and the prelude to one of the best game series of all time.

"Mom, can we get The Legend of Zelda?"

"We have The Legend of Zelda at home."

The Legend of Zelda at home:

Imagine The Legend of Zelda right.

Only with amazing, trailblazing writing, which respects your intelligence. Godlike presentation in general, especially for 1999 and voice acting which holds up better than most voice work today.

Paired with tedious godawful gameplay, which is so incompetent at times that it's almost like a joke.

Can't recommend a playthrough but do watch the cutscenes on youtube. It's honestly astounding for 1999. Amy Hennig is fucking cracked man.

If replaying Blood Omen was bittersweet, this was an emotional roller coaster. I started out as enthusiastic about it as I had been during my first playthrough, but as it went on my heart slowly started to sink.

"Were the controls really this fucked when I played it all those years ago," I asked myself.
"Was the camera this unresponsive?"
"Were the jumping and combat this awkward?"
"An open-ended adventure game with no map? What is this, fucking Simon's Quest?"
"WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO, GAME?"

Then around the three-quarter mark when all the cool moves are unlocked and you're free to explore the splendidly dour land of Nosgoth, draped in its oppressive atmosphere backed by a sublimely moody soundtrack, we were so fucking back.

I can't bring myself to hate this game, even with all its egregious shortcomings. It's just too brilliantly presented with too many great ideas that, despite not always reaching their full (or sometimes even half of) their potential, are so commendable, especially for its time. It's "soul" in its purest, most distilled form, no pun intended.

When deciding to marathon the Legacy of Kain series, it was Soul Reaver that I was looking forward to the most. At points I even thought about starting with it and skipping Blood Omen entirely because I was just that eager to finally play it. It's generally regarded as the best in the series but I knew every LoK game has underwhelming gameplay so I didn't go into it with high expectations, only moderate ones, and this game still managed to be a let down in almost every aspect.

Generally though, what Blood Omen did well, is still done well in Soul Reaver. The story is again, the best part of the game and it starts off with what might be my favourite CGI Opening to any game I've played. I need to gush about it, it's so good, It establishes Raziel as essentially being Kain's favourite son and then has him killed by Kain in the same scene which does a perfect job in emphasizing just how fargone Kain has become. The image of Raziel having his wings ripped off by Kain has been branded into my brain ever since I first saw it and it was my main motivator for starting the series. The rest of the story is good too, narration is still strong here and listening to Raziel's musings on how twisted and decayed the world he once knew has become were the best parts of the game for me. Problem is, there's just not as much narration this time around, compared to Blood Omen, Raziel barely talks here and yeah, it makes sense for a guy whose basically been tortured and scorched for 500 years to not be very talkative but it's still disappointing. Still, the conversations that Raziel shares with Kain and his lieutenants are great and it's what kept me going right until the very end even when I just wished the game was over. Too bad that when the game is finally over, it doesn't end with a bang, not even a spark, just an absolute dud of an abrupt To Be Continued screen.

Okay so why don't I like this game, well let's start with the minor stuff. The combat at the start is awful, enemies have 0 windup to their attacks and Raziel's attacks will whiff randomly leading you to just getting interrupted in the middle of your string, killing enemies is also a hassle since it requires using the environment to your advantage by grabbing the enemies when they're stunned and throwing them into something lethal like sunlight, fire, spikes etc. Cool idea for sure, but in execution it just feels inconvenient. But this is only a minor issue since you can run past about 99% of the enemies in this game and once I realized this I did just that for the whole game and I think there's only one instance where you're forced to fight enemies that aren't bosses.

This leads me to another problem, Soul Reaver tries to be a Metroidvania style game that puts you in the middle of a huge area and allows you to learn the ins and outs of the environment on your own. A good metroidvania should facilitate exploration with rewards to make going through it feel worth it and Soul Reaver doesn't do this. If you go out of your way to find hidden areas and rewards, you'll usually get 2 things. Either Glyphs that function as AoE attacks that drain a bit of your health or 1/5th of a health upgrade. Getting Glyphs feels Worthless since they only help with combat which you can almost entirely ignore here, that and they cost Health to use which means you lose your ability to use the wraith blade when activating them which is the way you kill enemies without relying on the environment. As for the health upgrades, it's a personal gripe of mine but I hate when games have you collect X amount of an item in order to get any benefit from it. It's just so lame when I find an item and think "Oh if I get 4 more of this I'll actually get something out of it". So with exploration that just doesn't feel worth it, I ended up just trying to get through the game's story without doing much else and that leads me to my biggest problem with this game, it's too damn big. It's so easy to get lost in this game with how huge it is and without having hidden items that make it worth it, it just leads to so much frustration. The amount of time I wasted aimlessly wandering around Nosgoth with no idea if I'm going in the right direction pissed me off to the point where I had to bust out a guide since I just wanted to get this game over with. I mentioned before how you can run past most enemies with no issue but the one enemy you'll be fighting throughout your entire playthrough will be the camera, oh my Lord it's so bad with how it's glued to Raziel's back and it often obscures the paths above you that you're meant to go to. What doesn't help is that the game has No map feature and the fast travel mechanic is so awkward to use. Each area is marked by this symbol that you use to identify which teleporter leads where and memorizing these is just needless busywork. I'm so baffled at how Blood Omen did all these things better, that game actually had a map feature with a fast-travel mechanic that was easy to comprehend and gave you more reason to explore since exploration there led to you getting items and permanent health upgrades that upgraded your health Immediately.

When you're not fruitlessly parading through Nosgoth's remains you're usually solving puzzles here. Some are pretty cool, I like the one where you ring bells in succession in order to break glass that lets you progress further or the one where you push pipes in order to allow for air to flow that you can use to hover up to your destination. Puzzles that rely on the gimmick of swapping between the real and spectral realm are also pretty enjoyable. But majority of the puzzles are just relegated to consisting of mindless block pushing, these aren't bad per se but surely they could've thought of something more interesting, this is just lazy. The bosses are also puzzles and they're hit and miss. Melchiah is pretty simple and fun, Zephon is even simpler but very fun and he's got a sick design that looks like something that H.R Giger would design, Rahab's bossfight requires platforming which is clunky as hell in this game but it's still decent and Dumah is just a worse version of the Melchiah boss with how tedious it can be to have him follow you. The real appeal of these bosses isn't in their levels or bossfights though, it's in finding out about their relationship with Raziel, how they feel about Kain's actions and how they metamorphosed and adapted to the changing climate all of which is done well but again, I wish we got more dialogue to flesh these things out.

Maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic regarding some of its shortcomings, and there is some other stuff I like here such as the fact it loads in real time and therefore doesn't require loading screens which feels like an absolute Blessing after Blood Omen's stop and start gameplay and the music is once again really good. But still, the majority of the time I spent playing this game was me bored out of my mind waiting for it to be over. Soul Reaver is a real Paradox. I don't get how a game that's so light-years ahead of its time in terms of characters, narration and story-telling can be so dated and archaic in terms of almost everything else.

I will admit I didn't have any expectations coming in that I would enjoy this, because I find the general aesthetic of this game to not be very appealing to me.

I trudged through the almost completely awful gameplay for a solid hour before dropping it. It's some seriously tedious shit, with spam x combat and a uselessly easy impaling system and block puzzles and platforming puzzles galore that only pad out the content to a ridiculous amount. That's fine though, people do not think even slightly positive thoughts of this game in terms of gameplay, so I did myself a favor and watched the cutscenes.

Of which, left a rather goodish story impression for me. It's actually a rather light read overall, which makes the game's length and padded out content so retroactively worse considering that the story here could be told in less than an hour quite cleanly. But what is played around here are some interesting themes and perspectives of one's own fate, with two characters giving completely different sides of how they consider the knowledge of everything being predestined.

It doesn't develop anywhere in a super interesting fashion unfortunately as far as the first game is concerned. Kain and Raziel are entirely set in what they think of their fate being determined off the bat, and there isn't much added development other than the histories of their lives being grey and riddled in blood. It leaves a very unsatisfying impression overall, clear setup for a sequel that I might play (but will most likely watch instead).

That's as far as it goes in terms of positives though, because other than I guess the decentish music there's very little here. The game almost brutally breaks off any sense of emotional attachment, and the aesthetic while very decently set in gothic horror has not aged very well at all.

If you can tolerate the garbage gameplay you will find a rather alright story to consume that is very clearly setup for a greater sequel, but overall I'd just read the script or watch the cutscenes like I if you are even slightly interested. Limit your suffering.

I think it is the best allegory of what a good adventure game is why it is so hard to do.
It has 3 main gameplay cores, all of which remain on the character controller, essentially moves and navigation. Theses 3 gameplay cores are all solid (like snake). 3D platformer first, relies on a lot of verticality, 3 initials moves (a quick but not high jump, a crouch jump that goes way up and a glider) and some additions spread all along the adventure. Then, an action-combat game, that benefits a lot from the theme : both a clever way to design an health bar, a power up related to this health bar and a final blow system that adds a lot of dynamism by cleverly using the level design. Eventually, a very varied puzzle game relying on very different aspects, even the sound and music design.
On top of these 3 very cool gameplays, Soul Reaver adds :
- A metroid-vania structure based on power ups that open the map. That adds a lot to the level design
- A deep and well treated theme, which has a lot of different layers to its language
- A generous artistical direction, that hits the top in world building, music, dub, graphisms, colors, chara design at a point that it is still interessting nowadays.

That's the catch with adventure games. Beyond necessitating a lot of ideas, mastery and talent, all these elements necessitate a lot of money. Doing an adventure game is expensive, both artistically and monetary speaking, and that might explain why I don't like this genre.
Very few find my favors. On PS1, you can also play the first Spyro games, which are really cool. Medievil deserves to be cited too. More recently, Pumpkin Jack or A Plague Tale:Inocence are worth playing. Unfortunately, i never felt anything for Uncharted or Tomb Raider. I guess it's a matter of tastes.

For your information, french version of this game is... Pretty much above anything. 5 stars cast, 5 stars art direction, 5 star writting. I think it might have not been reached in videogames since.
"Tu te perds dans les méandres de ta morale relativiste, Kain !"

Loved the story, love the music, love the a e s t h e t i c s, great ideas at play...

But I got lost billions of times and when I found ANOTHER room full of puzzles that consist in pushing and shoving giant cubes, I abandoned it.

Really annoying, can't believe it's so loved.

Ein Spiel das ich in meiner Jugend hatte aber nie sonderlich weit kam nun endlich mal durchgespielt. Schieben wir's auf Parappa der ein paar wundervolle Videoreihen über dieses Spiel gemacht hat und ich dem nun endlich mal nachgehen musste.

Ein Spiel das auf den Tugenden von Ocarina of Time aufbaut, sie mit etwas Metroid verbindet bevor diese Reihe in 3D ging und dabei eine düstere, eigene Welt ohne eine einzige Ladezeit schafft.
Ich muss echt sagen, dass der technische Aspekt mich am meisten beeindruckt hat. Die Welt von Nosgoth bietet feinste 90s goodness an gothischer Architektur und einem Hauch Technologie dazwischen. Dadurch dass das Spiel so viele Jahre auf dem Buckel hat sieht die Umgebung teilweise glaubwürdig, teilweise aber auch einfach weird verformt aus, was dieser Welt nur noch einen weiteren Layer an Persönlichkeit verpasst.
Besonders den Wechsel muss man hervorheben. Heute haben wir Titanfall 2's Zeitreiselevel das on the fly zwischen zwei Maps umherwechseln kann, wir haben das neue Ratchet & Clank das angeblich die Power der SSD brauchte um zwischen den Rifts zu wechseln. Aber ein Dimensionswechsel der in Echtzeit die Umgegung verformt funktionierte nur in einer Zeit in der du die Polygone des Levels noch selbst zählen konntest.


Das Spiel hat allerdings ein recht komisches Pacing. Der Anfang ist super, super gemacht, bringt dir Mechaniken und die Welt in guten Portionen näher, lässt dich einen Scale der Spielwelt erwarten der Lust auf mehr macht und lotst dich recht natürlich zu den ersten zwei Bossbegegnungen. Sobald du den Soul Reaver dann aber erhalten hast, bleibt es beim simplen von einem Boss zum nächsten rennen, ohne die nötige Füllmasse und die Kontextualisierung zwischendrin die zum Beispiel ein Zelda hat. Hier ist die Welt vielleicht sogar ein Stück ZU verbunden, weshalb sich das betreten eines Dungeons nicht anfühlt wie das betreten eines Dungeons, da man ja einfach nur der Schlängellinie gefolgt ist. Und auch wenn ich die Grafik gerade noch gelobt hab, fehlt es durch die Weitsicht am Aufbau der Orte. Du siehst nie die Größe eines Komplexes von außen, Informationen über Orte gibt es nur spärlich und es gibt nie stimmungsaufbauende Establishing Shots.

Wenn man nicht gerade auf der Suche nach allen möglichen Geheimnissen ist von denen es tatsächlich einige gibt, wobei ich sie dank fehlender Karte kaum wiederfinden konnte, rennt von einem Boss zum nächsten, kämpft hier und da mal, hüpft hier und da mal, schiebt hier und da mal hunderte Blöcke umher und kommt dann irgendwann bei schwach erklärten Bossen an bis es irgendwann endet.

Trotzdem hat das Spiel durchaus was faszinierendes an sich und wirkt in so vielen Punkten, besonders für seine Zeit, erstaunlich fortschrittlich, während andere Aspekte wie z.B. die Sprungphysik auch für PS1 Verhältnisse unterentwickelt wirkt. Erstaulicherweise haben mich die haufenweise Blockschiebepuzzle nicht so sehr gestört wie erst gedacht und auch der Kampf war für die Hälfte der Spielzeit unterhaltsam, egal wie simpel er ablief.
Aber ich hab einfach häufig beim spielen gemerkt wie andere Studios langsam beherrschten wie man Puzzle, Rätsel und Bosse richtig kommuniziert, während Soul Reaver hier noch arg kryptisch und an vielen Stellen auch einfach unsauber ablief was all die Ambitionen und technischen Achievements etwas unterbutterte.

Enttäuscht bin ich eigentlich eher davon, dass die Nachfolger es scheinbar versäumten auf all den guten Konzepten aufzubauen und mit stärkerer Hardware, mehr Erfahrung und einem höheren Budget das beste draus zu machen und dies hier schon der Höhepunkt des Franchises ist. Ich hätte gerne VIEL mehr davon in etwas besser.

I have been playing this game off and on since 2011, and it's finally finished. What a great game. It's like Ocarina of Time mixed with the exploration of Metroid. A really interesting story about the illusion of free choice and fate. It was written and directed by Amy Hennig, and in my opinion, her prose here, while flowery, is way more interesting than what she penned for the Uncharted series. Graphics were unparalleled for the time. It technically shouldn't even be possible to have these graphics on the original Playstation, but they were able to push past the limitations of the console. I played on Dreamcast though, and in my opinion, it's the definitive version, at least until the PC port comes back to Steam and GOG. The soundtrack is incredible. One listen to the game's theme song "Ozar Midrashim", and it will be in your head for the rest of your life.

So if I liked it so much, why only 4 and a half stars? Well, there's no in-game map, and in a Metroidvania, that makes it really easy to get lost. Super Metroid figured that out in 1994, so there is no excuse. The combat, while fun at first, lacks depth, as once you've figured it out, it stops being engaging and becomes more of an annoyance. Outside of the bosses, which are more like puzzles than actual fights, the combat does nothing of real note to add variety to its encounters. The game relies far, far too much on block puzzles for its own good. And lastly, there's the matter of the ending, or lack thereof. Anyone that's beaten this game can tell you Soul Reaver doesn't end so much as stop, with all of the payoff reserved for the second game. The narrative was nothing but buildup for a climax that just isn't there. Thankfully, it was good buildup. Perhaps, if Soul Raver 2 manages to stick the landing, I might come back and revise this to a perfect score.

As it stands now though, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a solid action/adventure game with an engaging story, well-rounded, tragic characters, a gothic setting and world that is fun to explore, both in-game, and with analyzing the lore, fine combat and puzzles, and music that will keep you coming back for more. Play it on Dreamcast, Playstation, or PC. Play it any way you can, but just play it.

Super cool Raziel adventure where he monologues a lot and stabs the everloving soul out of things that used to be people.
It's very atmospheric and it genuinely feels like you're in a world that's way past it's prime and dead in every sense of the word.
There's a lot of fun exploration and puzzle solving, mostly involving your ability to shift through the material and spirit realm, i remember being blown away by watching the architecture and surroundings warp and twist at the press of a button, even by 2022's standards i think it's a cool and rare mechanic.
Then you get more neat abilities which mostly add to what you can do in the puzzles, except for the one where you just run around in a circle.
But yeah this is your game if you want a gothic wraith adventure where you do neat puzzles and find hidden abilities and slowly uncover a mystery of why your creator has forsaken thee.

I struggled to get into Soul Reaver initially. I wouldn't say I was wrong to, either. There's a lot of issues, and most stay for all of the game. The combat isn't terrible in theory but since you're almost always fighting vampires, who are immortal, you will have to pick them up and throw them into something that kills them (water, fire, spikes, etc), which is sluggish, unresponsive and very difficult to do while their friend is clawing your face in. There's some ways to mitigate that, such as remaining at full health to use the Soul Reaver or just bringing a spear into the fight, but they aren't always reliable, and overall the gimmick ends up making basically all fights a drag whenever it isn't just negated by one of the above.

Really though, I could get past that. I could also get past the block puzzles, which I honestly ended up enjoying a bit, and the platforming, which kinda sucked but I had save states so who cares. I was mostly confused by the exploration, and I think fairly so. Soul Reaver is an impressively open-ended game, and while you're always given vague directions on what to do next, they're difficult to interpret: the world is big, teleport points are infrequent and most damningly there is no map, which means I really barely had any idea where I was going for most of it. There were even whole completely optional areas, which while extremely impressive kept confusing me even more because I kept wandering around them without realizing that they weren't where I was supposed to be. Eventually, though, Soul Reaver began to click. The puzzles and exploration of the dungeons all fell into place, the bosses, while of mixed quality, were all at least interesting, and I started to get a hang of the game's structure. I'd say that the latter half of the game was definitely the most fun I had with it, overall.

That initial reaction, I think, is what most players will have, and that's a shame because under that layer of poor communication and confusion lack of direction lays a rather well-made 3D Metroidvania, not something you'd see often in this generation, or the next, really. Raziel constantly acquires new powers and the world expands as a result, which is quite great because every level's different atmosphere is absolutely Soul Reaver's greatest strength. The adaptive music (absent from the PC version, for some reason) is extremely well-realized, shifting between different instruments and vibes when Raziel enters a fight or switches to and from the spirit world. Unfortunately, exploration is somewhat discouraged by the awful combat and a complete lack of a map (I can make do without one in games with simple or extremely memorable layouts, but Soul Reaver doesn't really fit either description), which meant that I still mostly just made a beeline to the end, with the occasional help of a guide.

The story is perhaps a bit in the background compared to Blood Omen, unfortunately there isn't as much dialogue, and Raziel doesn't do the Kain thing of commenting at length about every single location he enters and ability he gets (which I loved), but I think he's still a great protagonist, maybe not quite as charismatic but very very fascinating, and I loved it every time he did speak. The final confrontation between him and Kain is great, but without getting into spoilers, I have to admit that the story doesn't really ever feel like it's... getting anywhere? Blood Omen had one hell of a climax, a pretty drawn-out one too. Soul Reaver just ends, and with a cliffhanger at that. Still, I had a good time. I would say that it's probably not worth it to play this game if you're not interested in the LoK series as a whole, which I am, but personally, I had a pretty good time, and am definitely looking forward to playing the next game, Soul Reaver 2.

Unfinished and flawed in some core regards, it's nonetheless hard not to love Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver at least a little bit. This is an action game before its time: cinematic, story-rich, and awing in a scale that pushes the hardware of its time to their limits. It's impossible not to see flashes of both Dark Souls and God of War in Soul Reaver's DNA now.

The writing and worldbuilding are equally rich in their attempt to build an epic both gothic and Miltonian in tone and themes. The quality of the voice acting was peerless in 1999 and still impressive as hell today; there's never been a narrator more suited to a story like this than Tony Jay. Other aspects of the game's presentation do their best to rise to these standards, and while the primitive PS1 graphics engine can't quite produce emotive characters on this register, it produces a convincing impression of both them and the colossal, decaying landscape and swooping camera. The Dreamcast port helps a bit with its smoother framerate and detail, but in some ways that just emphasizes the muddiness of the texture work.

More dated than the visuals, arguably, is the gameplay. It's mash-to-win combat and block-pushing puzzles all the way down here, and while the game's dimension-bending design and puzzlebox bosses can be uniquely clever, they also get tiresome really quickly. God of War would improve on this formula by finding a way to make mindless combat so kinetic it becomes engaging by sheer force of spectacle; Soul Reaver cannot. Every enemy is defeated by mashing square, then either impaling them with a weapon or throwing them into one of any number of vampire-killing environmental hazards.

More egregious than any other flaw is the one that most betrays Soul Reaver's ambition: the story is unfinished. Soul Reaver doesn't just end with a sequel hook; it ends without any kind of conclusion to its narrative at all, at what clearly was intended to be the middle act climax of the game, not a finale. Luckily there are sequels. Less luckily, their returns are diminishing, as the Legacy of Kain series falls further and further into history with its failure to improve on the core mechanics. It would take a full decade for another action RPG set in a ruined, decaying world of the undead to do the epic tone established here justice.

One of the worst games I've ever played that is held up so hard by every single thing surrounding the actual act of playing it that I have to give it a 4. Drakengard is more fun to play, I'm dead serious. On PS1 the framerate makes me feel fucking sick, i sought out the Trapezoid box PC version so i could play without a headache

But goddamn, the atmosphere is thick, the writing is unbelievably good, the voice acting is fucking untouchable, Kurt Harland's soundtrack? Bangers. I love this game for the experiences it gives, but I never want to play this shit again.

Everyone has that one game. The one which they have started to play but shelved at some point. But it doesn’t end there, as you will continue to think about it. The only thing stopping you from continuing your journey is you making up excuses from picking it up again.
For me that game was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, a game whose existence has fascinated me way before I ever got the chance to play it, just as it does now after finally completing it; my playthrough spanning around two years.

My fascination of Soul Reaver sprung of, from another fascination of mine. I was born in 2004 and thus barely missed the time Sega was a competitor in the console business. They might just have the most interesting history in videogames and that is what made me suddenly really want to own a Dreamcast in 2021. Browsing through some of the more well received games for the console, I came across a relatively little-known game with maybe 500 logged players on this very website and a respectable rating, you probably know where this is going.
Looking up “Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver” on YouTube, I found a ton of people singing its praises, especially when it comes to its story; it was then that I realized I needed to play this, and I eventually did.

Back in January I released a Blood Omen review (which I don’t recommend reading), in which I stated multiple reasons, of why I might’ve stopped playing Soul Reaver and while they may have been a contributor as to why, they weren’t the main reason. Truth is, I didn’t enjoy the game very much.
While I could derive enjoyment out of the technical prowess and it’s devotion to telling it’s grandiose story without having to read a single word of text, it was the gameplay that kept the game from actually clicking with me and reading some of the reviews at the time, this wasn’t just an issue I had with it.
The game just isn’t nice to people who are conditioned to all the modern QoL improvements the industry has been blessed with, combat being the biggest offender to me back then.

So during the last hours of last year, only a day after completing this games predecessor, I sat myself down with my phone on a “tripod”, which I had constructed using a selfie-stick, when I was 12 years old and wanted to become a YouTuber, recording my whole journey through this game (which I unfortunately can’t share as I also used it as a form of a video diary) and most importantly started from a new profile, as I thought I might’ve missed something with the combat-system back then and therefore wanted to experience that opening hour, which made me shelve the game, a little more than a year ago, again.
And I was right, the moment I started playing Soul Reaver again, I couldn’t stop doing so and do now really enjoy what they tried to do with its combat and its way of incentivizing the player to scour your surroundings.
Every encounter you have with an enemy at the beginning of the game will play out like its own little puzzle, as for any non-human enemy-type you will not only have to beat them up, as they cannot die, but when they are stunned, find an object to finish them off and devour their soul. Said object of interest may be a spear, that skewers them, but it can also be a light source, a spiky part of the walls surrounding you, a campfire, an accumulation of water and many more.
Your creativity is only aided the longer you play as you might find enemies immune to one of these methods together with others that aren’t and now plan your fight accordingly.
The moment I got the titular Soul Reaver, which is basically able to defeat any enemy, I was worried that this would be detrimental to the combat-system, but rather than relying on it further on it would only proof as a new option in Raziel’s kit, as it will only be available to use at full-health (in the Material-Realm) which isn’t always sustainable.

Talking of which, the game incorporates a system of switching between realms. Not only are both loaded at any given time, but the game will remember every location of everything you have/haven’t ever interacted with. I cannot start to think what kind of sorcery this would’ve needed to be pulled of in the 90s, or even today for that matter. And when I see every object, I really mean that. During backtracking, which is mostly optional, but you are really missing out on some amazing side-content if you chose not to engage with it, I found myself thinking “oh I remember putting that there.” or “oh yeah that enemy followed me here back then, didn’t it?”, more times than I can count.

Outside of combat your gameplay will be spend exploring the landscapes of Nosgoth, which have changed a lot since your last adventure. If I had to compare the changes to anything, it would be how Gotham City changes during the Dark Knight trilogy, with it basically functioning as its own character in Begins, and existing as a background to the narrative of The Dark Knight, the only difference being, that I didn’t see this as detrimental in this case.
Nosgoth is definitely more videogamey here in the sense that the game starts you of with a platforming tutorial at a place that only exists, because you need to learn how to platform at some point, but these extreme cases are few and far between, as the game also has its high points of its world-design at pretty much all the major locations.
For example, the entrance to the Human Citadel is flooded to keep out vampires and only houses one of Rahab’s’ tribe, which evolved to swim over time. But if you change to the Spectral Realm, it will be the home of many more Sluagh than regular, which feast on all the lost souls.
The Human Citadel is a masterclass in level-design for a 3D-Zelda like game in general. I got there shortly after defeating Melchiah, at the beginning of the game and spend almost an hour just exploring and thinking I had seen most if not everything it has to offer. I then went on going back there after each new acquired ability and not only realized that my previous assessment was totally wrong, but that I had yet to explore the majority of its content. I have rarely seen a, dare I mention totally optional, location that opens up so much after each new chapter of a game.

This serves as a microcosm of Lok’s design, which is built around the fact that you may save at any time. But as I already mentioned, saving will not bring you back to your previous location, no it will bring you back to the beginning of the game, where you can select between fast-travel points; but rather save the location of every object, which serve as shortcuts.

This is demonstrated best with this game’s dungeons, which are in my opinion far better designed than any 3D Zelda dungeon, I have experienced.
Now they also aren’t close to being perfect. The Silenced Cathedral has an intentional softlock, if you enter the Spectral Realm in the wrong room, but said softlock, funnily enough, also signifies the biggest strengths of Soul Reaver’s non-linear dungeons, as even if you get trapped in a room, you can always save your progress and therefore barely lose any progress.
Was it still demoralizing? Yes, of course, you can observe a big gap in my playtime after it happened, after it happened to me, but the second I started to play again, I realized that what had taken me half an hour to get to last time, only takes around five now, as you can see (epilepsy warning) here, because every puzzle was already solved and serving as a short-cut, I never really lost my progress.

I won’t argue that softlocks are good game design of course, just saying that they would be more detrimental when they occur in any other game, because of how good this one is designed to accommodate that issue.

The dungeon design in general is more akin to a Metroid-Vania, as you will go through it without any new abilities, and see many points of interest, which you will then later check out after acquiring said ability after defeating the boss, which also uses it against you.
I won’t spoil any of the secrets, but the way your view of the Drowned Abbey changes, just by you being able to traverse the waters in the Material Realm could be a whole paragraph on its own.

Now the game (still) isn’t perfect, and I still have my own gripes with it, withholding me from replaying it anytime soon.
For one, this isn’t a game I can just sit down and enjoy, as you really must lock-in and search any nook and cranny for maximum enjoyment, something helped by the fact I recorded my playthrough and could easily rewatch any points of interest. If I didn’t have that, I would’ve probably had to look up a guide at some points, due to the lack of an in-game map.
Combat also can still be a bit tedious and it’s often just better to right-out ignore any enemies. The glyphs were more fun to hunt down, than use. The boss fights, while cleverly designed to be puzzle boxes where you must find your enemies weakness, and use your surroundings, to defeat them rather than hand-to-hand combat, still mostly don’t put up much of a fight.
The drawing-distance and camera are hurt by the hardware and unfortunately the fact that the world is constantly loaded twice, which probably is no issue when playing the fan-made HD-remaster, which was good enough to get the people responsible for it noticed by Crystal Dynamics and got them to work on the recent Tomb Raider remasters.

And that is not even touching on this games story, which is expectingly great coming off such a great basis, being Blood Omen.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is not just a cornerstone of the medium as a whole and one of the most technically impressive games ever made, it is also one of the best games I have ever played and made me even more happy with my recent acquisition of a PlayStation 2, including every sequel of this game.

Soul Reaver will now, and the foreseeable future, be that game; that one game I always continue to think about and will always remember.