Tekken 7 was a very special game to me, despite briefly playing Tekken 6 as a kid I never had much interest in the series or fighting games as a whole but T7 changed all of that. Something about the game was just incredibly addicting to me, despite the lack of content I still loved the game and poured in around 1200 hours into it between season 1 and 3, but the pay to win DLCs, questionable balancing decisions and the lack of offline tourneys during Covid ended up killing my interest in it. I still came back to play the game on occasion and I watched the big tournaments, but I just wanted Tekken 8 to come out already.

Now that Tekken 8 is here and I've spent 300 hours on it so far, I can say that the game is polarizing. I do enjoy a good chunk of what's here though. The story is....good? In terms of the quality of writing it's absolute dogshit, it all feels way too rushed so none of the emotional beats end up hitting and Jin's whole arc boils down to him accepting and overcoming his guilt over starting a FUCKING WORLD WAR, and that just isn't something that can be done believably in a 3 hour long storymode. But the story is still hype and is packed with fan service from Azazel coming back, Lars reminding Kazuya of Heihachi to the entirety of the final battle. The story is fun, and that's really all I could want out of a Tekken plot. Other areas of the game that are worthy of praise to me are the stages, there's not a lot of them compared to 7 but that's because they went for quality over quantity and they're all so unique with the variety of old and new stage gimmicks that are added. They also look great, as does the game as a whole, I don't think I can ever play T7 again based on how dated T8 makes it feel with its visuals. What makes these stages even better is that Jukebox is back and I had a blast going through old Tekken OSTs and mixing and matching what themes go best with what stages, though I was tempted to just put Arisa on every stage because it's just that good. In terms of offline content the game is solid, character episodes are enjoyable and much better than whatever T7 had but I do wish there were more serious ones, for me the endings lean too much on comedy for me whereas past games achieved a better balance, but they're still good, especially Steve's ending. Arcade Quest is a fun little mode that I enjoyed going through once but I'm also never playing it again. Replays and tips though, has to be the best feature in this game, it makes the previously daunting task of labbing very specific situations so much more manageable and if you use it enough, you could level up your gameplay really quickly, it really feels like a Godsend for anyone trying to improve at the game. There's also Tekken Ball, Tekken Ball is peak.

So the package as a whole is great, but how is the actual fighting? I loved what I played of the CNT and CBT and I enjoyed the game on launch too, but as time goes on I like it less and less and now that I'm 3 months in and am playing this game everyday, I'm starting to think it's actually shit. Ok so, prior to the games release, the dev team kept pushing this narrative how this would be an "aggressive" game, I was initially skeptical, but I warmed up to this approach over time since too much of Tekken 7s gameplay boiled down to backdashing away, whiff punishing and playing keepout with the plethora of CH launchers that every character had. This was most evident at the highest level with almost every grand final at the end of the game's lifespan just being 2 top tiers using safe pokes with minimal risk, so clearly something had to be done...I just wish they didn't take this approach to such an extreme. Before I dive into the negatives, I just want to say the things I do like. To begin with, sidestepping is better here and backdashes are nerfed, I like this, it's a 3D game, so lateral movement should take precedence and it feels good here to sidestep moves here when I barely ever did it in 7 because it just didn't feel as necessary in that game. I also like the removal of CH launchers for the vast majority of the roster since to me, it's a good way of encouraging offensive gameplay.

What isn't a good way of encouraging offense is everything else this game adds/changes. Chip damage is dumb, I should not be punished for the simple act of blocking a move and my opponent shouldn't be rewarded for not even landing his attack. Recoverable health is an equally stupid addition to me for similar reasons. Low Parries, a defensive option is also heavily nerfed here since you get no tornado spin after them in this game so they do much less damage here. It's one thing to faciliate aggressive play, but when you go the extra mile and punish a player for playing defensively, you create a game where offense is often the best option, in other words, you get Mashing. Mashen 8, that's what this game feels like, you can't land a move in this game without getting hit by a Jin uf2, or a Victor/Azucena powercrush, or a dickjab and it becomes this annoying game of who can lockdown the other player with plus frames first or who can steal their turn back quicker. Then there's throws which are grossly overtuned, CH throws are a thing now which make the break window much tighter which I'm fine with, since in prior games once you got good at throw breaking, throws barely played a role in matches, especially in tourneys where it'd be a surprise anytime a throw was successful, but for whatever reason throws are also homing now? Why remove the counterplay? It makes characters like King an absolute nightmare to fight and it's just too much.

Tekken 7 leaned heavily on defense but you could still play the game offensively without feeling too held back, in this game, if you try playing it defensively you're playing it wrong and poking/turtle style characters like Asuka or Leroy are unanimously considered to be low tier because of it. When almost every character starts feeling like the same rushdown/50/50 archetype, you lose a lot of what makes these characters stand out. No better example of this exists in the game than Eddy, my Tekken 7 main, he was based around poking and spacing in that game with his incredible backdash, but he also had the worst sidestep in the game, for Tekken 8 they couldn't keep the poking style he had in T7 without making him suck, so they completely reworked him into a rushdown character that can sidestep normally and has an average backdash just like everyone else and there's really not much that makes him feel unique here other than the fact that he's got cheesy one button strings and he occasionally crushes a move when in negativa.

So I generally dislike the changes to the gameplay and the direction the game is heading towards and the same goes for this game's main addition, heat. You enter heat in one of two ways, either landing a heat engager which rewards you by giving you back recoverable health or doing it manually via heat burst. Heat Engagers I'm fine with, they reward you for landing a move, it makes sense, and my only gripe with them is some are way too easy to just throw out, safe armoured heat engagers are the obvious example of this. Heat Burst though, should be removed entirely. You press a button, do a move that's armoured, unsteppable and almost impossible to whiff, and you are now in heat, whether it lands or is blocked, or is even interrupted with a low or throw. There's no risk involved in doing it and you get huge reward for throwing it out depending on how good your characters heat mode is. Some heat modes are also straight up busted. When Kuma is in heat for example you might aswell hold back and do nothing else because of his electric having no counterplay. A lot of heat modes also give a character multiple free mixups so you're forced to guess like with Lars' f3+4 or Eddy 3+4 and it just isn't fun, it isn't skill based to lose a round just because you guessed wrong, there's a reason high level players say this game is a Casino. There's also heat smashes and they're terribly designed too, you can't powercrush them, can't low parry them, heaven forbid you could do something other than block in a game that discourages blocking. Most of them are mid and + on block so your only counter is to step them, but a lot of them have the character run so far away that you can't get any meaningful punish, it sucks, I avoid Alisa's or Eddy's heat smash just to get nothing in return. There's also DJin's heat smash, which is probably the most blatant example of a move having nothing you can do against it.

I didn't even mention the scummy way microtransactions were implemented, the battlepass, the limited customization, the pluggers, or the other ways in which this game's balancing feels like a joke at points. I do think this game will get much better with time since unlike other Tekkens, this one had no arcade run that could've been used as a form of ironing out the flaws for the full release. I'm keeping my score as a 9 just because that's what I would have given the game in my first month of playing but it'll probably drop down since playing this game in its current state is hazardous to your health.

Overall, I found Dino Crisis to be a decent PS1 survival horror game but one of my main gripes was that it didn't justifiy its title or concept with how few dinosaurs there actually are and the journey often felt a little stale because of it. Luckily, the same can't be said about Dino Crisis 2 since you fight more dinosaurs in the first 5 mins here than you would in all of DC1 and it makes the game so much more memorable.

Gone is the mixed bag of survival horror elements and in their place is action-packed arcadey fun and I much prefer this approach. The gameplay loop here is incredibly addicting. The vast majority of the game boils down to mowing down hoards of dinosaurs room to room which may sound repetitive but the game manages to keep things fresh with constantly giving you new weapons to play around with and the game has a healthy amount of set pieces to keep things fresh though they're hit and miss, I particularly liked the rail-shooting segments but the underwater segment can go fuck itself. It's a very easy game and it's nearly impossible to not be fully stocked up on healing items with how dirt cheap they are, but that's fine, since the fun part isn't beating it but rather, enjoyment from going for high scores, getting your combo meter up and getting those No Damage bonuses which shower you with points if you're able to get them.

A lot of issues I had with DC1 are rectified here. There's greater weapon and enemy variety (some are annoying though like the Inostrancevia), the arduous mixing system is gone and areas are much more open so there is no point where dinosaurs body block you from moving forward like they did in DC1. You also keep the files and memos you read with you so it's easier to get a grasp on the story and thanks to it, I can say, with confidence, that this story is some stupid ass shit. I didn't really care for it all that much and I found Dylan to just be whatever compared to Gail and Rick, but when you get all the revelations in the last 5 mins of the game, I can't lie, it makes it all worth it through how batshit insane it is.

Unlike DC1, the game uses pre-rendered backgrounds and I'd say visually it's a slight visual stepdown because of it, and the fixed camera often obscures the enemies from your view which spawn anytime the angle changes. With that said, this is basically the perfect sequel. It overhauls the series and puts it into a genre which is more harmonic with its concept and gives it a much needed sense of identity while mending most of the shortcomings of the first game. S'good

Dino Crisis is a decent survival horror game for the PS1 that does change a lot of things from the RE games, some for better and some for worse but it ultimately doesn't do enough to escape the label of it basically being Resident Evil but with dinosaurs.

A few things jumped out at me when starting the game, firstly, the game uses 3D environments rather than pre-rendered backgrounds so visually, I think it aged quite well, same with the voice-acting which is pretty solid for a PS1 era game. It's easier to take characters seriously because of it and on the topic of characters, I think they're pretty good here, the core trio are all distinct with Regina being level-headed and non-chalant, Rick being easy-going and Gail being stern. It's pretty basic but gets the job done in making them feel unique and I'd say they're all likeable, even Gail who starts off seeming like a typical mission-obsessed asshole ended up growing on me. Characters aside though, I wouldn't consider the story here to be very good, the setup is pretty cool but after that a lot of it feels like filler and the fact that you don't keep the files you read in your inventory makes it hard to piece information together so I'd be lying if I said I really cared about Kirk and whatever that whole Third Energy thing he was developing was.

As for the actual survival horror aspects, I think Dino Crisis does a decent job overall with a few short-comings. Dinosaurs here are way more terrifying than zombies in RE since not only are they just way bigger and faster but the coolest part of this game for me is that dinosaurs can break through doors and chase you into other rooms which surprised the hell out of me the first few times this happened. You can sometimes keep dinosaurs out of rooms by utilizing the laser shutters and they're another cool feature adding a bit of choice between deciding to bolt towards the nearest door and risk being chased down or opting to stay and operate the laser shutters to keep dinos out. So that's all good but the problem is that the game is weirdly light on the Dinosaurs. Enemy variety is severely lacking here and with how often you'll be backtracking in this game, dodging the same couple dinosaurs over and over at points, it makes these encounters feel really sterile after a while. When you're not fighting Dinosaurs, you're solving puzzles and I actually really like them here, outside of the DDK passwords, the puzzles are varied, for the most part they require actual thought and they're pretty enjoyable though I would've liked less puzzles and more dinosaurs in my dino crisis but I'll take what I can get.

As for the inventory management, the actual survival aspect of these games, it just sucks here. Regina can carry 10 items with her at all times so you'd think you'll have a decent amount of room to hold items while also leaving spare room. Nope, that's where the mixing system comes in. Throughout the game you get various healing related items, hemostats, med paks, multipliers etc. It's not well explained what combinations create what and the abundance of items you get end up clogging your inventory big time. Aside from healing items, ammo is the only other item that takes up slots in Regina's inventory. Key items and Weapons are just held on Regina at all times and this means that the decision-making of games like RE1 which made those games so engaging is absent here since it's all been simplified. The way you store items is also frustrating with it requiring emergency boxes that need plugs to be opened. This would be fine if not for the fact that unlike item boxes in RE, these boxes are not magically interconnected so if you leave an item behind in one of these and forget about it, it's gone for good unless you can be bothered backtracking a ton which I just wasn't.

The reason why I couldn't be bothered was because of this game's structure. I just didn't find the research facility of Ibis Island to be nearly as fun to go through as something like the Mansion in RE1 because it's much more linear and areas feel very segmented so I never felt like I got the satisfaction of feeling that I got to grips with the areas layout.

The only other part that I want to mention is the replayability which is one of the strongest points of the game. There's 4 endings all of which are different enough to warrant seeing and at different points in the game, you get choices between going with Gail or Rick. The choices you make changes what you'll be doing with Rick's areas being puzzle-focused and Gail's being action-focused. They're different enough to justify a second playthrough and are way better than the choices in RE3.

Overall though, if you're itching for more survival horror action on the PS1 like I was, you can't go wrong with this game. For me it's just a notch below the original RE but it was still a good time.

Much like with Xenoblade, Xenogears was one of the first RPGs I tried playing. I initially picked it up shortly after beating FF7 and I remember loving it back then though I only got up to the stalactite cave. Now that I've beaten it, my thoughts on it are much more complicated, the game was a real rollercoaster and I'm still trying to process how exactly I feel about it.

Upon replaying it again now, it's clear to me why I dropped it back then. Its all down to the narrative and how intimidating it can be at times. Right from the opening cutscene, you are assaulted with questions and for every one that gets vaguely answered, you get like 3 more. Using enigma codes to push the player to keep going on so they can figure things out isn't a bad thing, but I think Xenogears crosses a line where it just became disheartening for me at points with how little of the narrative I felt I had a good grasp of. The worst parts for me are the early scenes with the Gazel Ministry with how terms that haven't been explained to the player yet get flung around constantly and it reached a point where I was mentally checked out during these scenes. The story can feel extremely daunting at times and I initially wasn't too keen on it, but as I progressed through it and more of it started to make sense, it ended up really gripping me. I can't help but admire just how grandiose this narrative manages to be and the wide range of topics it tackles is something to behold. Slavery, warfare, psychology, mysticism, gnostic imagery, nature of humanity and God and so much more. I beat the game but I only scratched the surface of what all the symbolism and motifs mean because it feels like every dialogue exchange and every area is so meticulously crafted and filled with purpose. Despite covering such monumental subject matter, I think Xenogears is equally strong when it focuses on the smaller scale character moments. From Fei telling Elly how he acts the way he does not because he's "heroic" but merely so he can find a place of acceptance, to Maria talking about what Seibzehn represents to her and how her memory of her father is gradually fading. Scenes like this are so powerful, but are few and far between since they get buried under the rubble which are this game's larger themes. Still, whether its focusing on the small stuff or the big stuff, Xenogears' narrative is quality throughout once you start piecing things together. The only area where the story can feel a little questionable is in its handling of the core cast. Fei, Citan, Elly and Bart are all great, playing a role in the story that remains relevant for the whole game, but the same can't be said for the others. Billy and Maria gets introduced in an area, and their entire arc is resolved in that area, afterwards they just sort of hang around and help out but never really feel important. Rico and Emeralda don't even get the luxury of having anything that resembles an arc and they can be taken out of the plot entirely without anything being lost really. I still like these characters, particularly Billy, but this shift to having a more episodic approach in the middle of the game does create a disconnect between the care that went into integrating the first 4 party members and the ones that come after. Also, to me, this game just looks beautiful, the blend of sprites for human characters and 3D models of the Gears works really well and a lot of the cutscenes in this game make me forget this is a PS1 game, particularly Weltall IDs introduction.

All the games cutscenes are beautifully punctuated by the soundtrack. Talking about music is just something I rarely do when reviewing games because I don't think I have the ability to properly put into words what makes an OST good or bad, but what I can say about Xenogears' OST is that it makes you feel things. Yasunori Mitsuda does a wonderful job at elevating the emotions of a scene with his music here and it is easily his best work imo. It's not always perfect though, the music always sound great, but the number of tracks is quite low for an RPG of this length so some tracks end up getting really worn out and there is even the occasional instance where the music doesn't quite fit the scene, or is completely in contrast to it. Luckily, this issue doesn't occur too often.

So in terms of story, graphics and music, this game is beyond incredible, but the problem is just about everything else. This game is insanely uneven. Anything gameplay related plays second fiddle to the games story. The combat is okay at best, it's split into two parts, one where you control human characters and one where you use the Gears but both are extemely simple. There's no strategy involved to either, around 95% of gear battles can be won by turning on the booster function and spamming deathblows on the enemy and human fights are also won via constantly using deathblows and occasionally healing. There is some fun to be had just from how cool deathblows look and using the Combo function to decimate enemies is satisfying but for a 60 hour game, the actual gameplay here feels shallow. It has also got a lot of things that irk me, switching out party members is a little annoying with it usually requiring you to go back to the Yggdrasil every single time, certain characters leave the party for long stretches of time so getting their deathblows is just not worth it and the game makes no attempt at explaining how exactly you're meant to unlock new deathblows, levelling up here feels almost pointless since human fights are too easy and Gears' stats are dependent entirely on their equipment. Honestly, the only time I really loved the gameplay was in Nortune, where the game randomly turns into a 3D Fighter, other than that, the actual RPG elements of this game are underwhelming. Then there are the dungeons, Xenogears' cutscenes can often feel like never-ending dialogue dumps so, to balance this out and not make gameplay feel like an afterthought, the game's dungeons are designed to take as long as possible by being structured like mazes that are exhausting to get through. Except, this isn't a solution, it just makes gameplay sections in this game feel like a chore at points, with the worst offenders for me being the final dungeon, the solaris elevator shafts and the platforming required in Babel Tower. Not every area has a dungeon required to progress, like the section on the Thames which only has like 2 battles total and the rest is all dialogue but this brings me to another issue, pacing-wise, this game is all over the place. Xenogears never reaches a state of equilibrium between its gameplay and narrative so the entire experience feels lop-sided and anytime I had to play the game instead of read it, I just wasn't as interested. Also, there's like no side content here, the only time the game opens up is right at the end and even then, there isn't much to do.

Then there's Disc 2 and it is a little tragic, the fact that a game that up until that point paid so much excruciating attention to detail is now relegated to having to give a rough summary of events followed by a battle at the end is a real shame. It's not all bad though, there's still striking imagery to be found and it does have my favourite part of the game, that being the backstory of ID and "The Coward". I like also like how it's presented with the pendant swinging back and forth while a character narrates, it's oddly relaxing. The fact that this disc is so light on the gameplay is something I'm actually fine with since the story is the best part of this game anyway. A lot of plot threads from Disc 1 end up being either abandoned or rushed through but I'd still say I enjoyed this part of the game almost on par with the first one, which only makes the fact that it's unfinished sting more because I can't even fathom how incredible this story could've been had it been completed.

I complained about a myriad of things here, and I don't think I'm really wrong in doing so either. Xenogears is a fractured, uneven, and incomplete mess but beyond all that, it's also a game with so much passion poured into every pixel that I can't help but ultimately respect and enjoy it even if it took a long time for me to feel this way.

I've beaten almost 200 games so far and none of them made me feel the way Blood Omen 2 did. It's not fundamentally broken or unplayable, but it's like if you distilled the idea of having a boring game to its purest essence, then this game would be the putrid concoction that would come out of it. Anytime I picked it up, I dreaded the fact that I wasn't close to being done with it. I hate this game.

It didn't start off that way to be fair, I had fun for the first two chapters because the game does add some positive changes to combat. The sound design saw a big step up and Kain's claws felt way more impacful and satisfying than the flaccid wraith blade that Raziel used, the lock-on and dodge also feel much more responsive in this game. The biggest thing I liked though, was the lore meter which increased as Kain drew blood from enemies and with enough blood siphoned, Kain's health would increase. This seemed like such an amazing addition since it meant that enemy encounters actually served a purpose now so for once in this series, I felt motivated to fight enemies. I liked the game for the first hour, but then chapter 3 happened, took me an hour and a half to finish and it just felt like more of the same. Then chapter 4 was more of the same, then chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 etc.

Every chapter in this game feels the exact same, it's the videogame equivalent of being in groundhog's day. As you progress through the game you get these Dark Gifts from bosses and I thought they'd be used to spice up level design and offer some interesting puzzles but no, the way these are utilized is so surface-level. You see a big gap? Use the Jump spell. You see an NPC in an area you can't get to? Use the charm spell. You see a green seal? Use Telekinesis on it. It's so bland but you do these in every level multiple times and it's Boring.

When you're not doing the same thing with dark gifts for the 20th time in a stage, you're fighting enemies and almost every enemy encounter is the exact same shit. SR2 had braindead combat where you mashed the square button and could sometimes kill enemies in one swing, it sucked, but was atleast quickly over and done with. In contrast to this, Blood Omen 2 prioritizes defense since enemies seem to be infatuated with blocking Kain's attack in this game so you're best off blocking their attacks and trying to punish afterwards. If you can hold block as the enemy hits Kain 5 times, then dodge out of the way in case they do an uninterruptible/unblockable attack then congratulations, you beat Blood Omen 2 since that's what every single enemy encounter boils down to, even the final 2 phases of the final boss are beaten in the same vein of blocking 5 attacks. dodging their next attack and then attacking back. By the endgame, the game decides to break its own rules by having enemies that can't be punished even when they should be so you're best off hitting them with Immolate, one of the dark gifts that one shots enemies once the bar is full which can only be done by blocking attacks. So most of the time, you're just stood there waiting for the enemies to attack and it's Boring, yet the game has the uncanny ability to turn to being aneurym-inducingly annoying the instant you fight two or more enemies since they'll circle around you to hit you where you can't block and disengaging from combat to get a better position feels so stiff here. Keep in mind you're best off fighting and killing as many enemies as you can to get your lore meter up, and that includes watching the same blood-sucking animation over and over and over and over and over again and I think I spent almost 2 hours of my full playthrough doing nothing other than watching this animation play.

When you're not fighting enemies or using dark gifts, you're flipping switches. SR1 had a hard-on for block-pushing whereas BO2 seems to have a fetish for having you flip switches. Blood Omen 2s idea of good level design is by having a locked door that you need to turn the only switch in the room to open and you do this ad nauseum throughout the game, to call this game's level design amateurish is selling it short. The game does try to have puzzles, and some are okay, but they're extremely few and far apart. The game even has a few block pushing puzzles and they're somehow worse here than in SR1 since you're only able to push them forward and backwards from where Kain is standing. But that's the jist of BO2s gameplay, it's basically like 17 hours of unnecessarily long combat encounters and laughably banal puzzles. It's insane how this game manages to be the longest LoK game by some margin yet is the most empty and desolate in its gameplay.

But okay the gameplay is a travesty but gameplay always felt like an afterthought when compared to the polish and care that goes into the plot of these games so how good is BO2's story? Well, BO2 decides to take the series in a bold new direction by being the only LoK game to have an underwhelming plot. It's set in an alternate timeline and I never got over the dissonance that's felt between this game and the other entries so it was hard to get invested. I also don't really care for how they're treating Kain's character here, I hate the idea of him getting usurped after BO1s ending because to me it just lessens the impact of the first games ending, other than that Kain just doesn't do much here. He spends the whole game doing what the resistance tells him to do like he's an obedient errand boy, even getting betrayed in the process. Characters like Janus and Vorridor make a return here but it's never explained how they're alive so their appearances are more confusing than anything and in terms of graphics, dialogue and cutscene direction this game is uncharacteristically weak when compared to the rest of the games. A lot of the designs look so strange with Kain looking like a rodent and Vorridor looking like a reptile and in cutscenes the models are so wooden, which is made blatantly apparent when contrasted with how expressive SR2s characters were. The shakespearean dialogue of past games is heavily decreased here. Dialogue as a whole is just lesser here, there are no vista markers that have Kain comment on his situation and it's a damn shame because their addition could've really helped these areas not feel as vacant as they end up being.

I wasn't even going to originally play BO2 because I was aware of how this game is viewed by the fanbase but curiosity got the better of me and I ended up suffering through it despite wanting to put it down multiple times. If I could turn back time like I'm Mobius then I would because this game did nothing for me, you're better off just watching a plot recap and skipping straight to Defiance. This is probably the worst thing I've ever played

Soul Reaver 2 is an interesting one, enjoyment of this game entirely hinges on how you felt about about the first Soul Reaver game. If you enjoyed it, then it's easy to view SR2 as a watered down, safe and boring version of it, but as someone who didn't really jive with most of SR1s design, I'm relieved at how simple SR2 is, so much so that I consider this to be my favourite of the series thus far.

Firstly, there's the structure, gone is the metroidvania layout of the first game and in its place is a linear set of hallways that you go through multiple times as you go through different points in time. I much prefer this approach since I don't have to get frustrated with getting lost every few steps but I wouldn't consider it good on its own merits. There's a lot of backtracking involved and the changes in decor as you go through these areas multiple times do little to alleviate how dull they end up being. Raziel does keep his abilities that he gained from beating his brothers in SR1 and they're now his innate abilities here, but with an environment that doesn't require exploration, I feel like these abilities feel sorta wasted here. Another aspect that was simplified was combat. Picking up and using weapons is now all done with the square button and killing enemies doesn't require picking them up and awkwardly carrying them, instead, hitting them with weapons is enough. This is fantastic and no longer having to jump through so many hoops to kill the most insignificant enemy was such a relief. But with the removal of exploration, there is now a greater emphasis on the combat and it's the one smear on what I'd otherwise consider to be a solid, inoffensive entry in the series. Fighting enemies here is just really brainless since you're best off equipping the wraith blade which now doesn't go away after being hit once and mashing the square button until the enemies are gone. Overusing the blade will now sap a portion of your health but it's a really minor amount and losing all your health means you get sent to the spirit realm and making your way back to the material world only takes like 10 seconds usually so it wasn't enough to deter me from having the wraith blade equipped at all times. It also doesn't help that blocking, the lock-on feature and especially dodging just don't seem reliable in this game. Sometimes I could dodge an attack just fine, other times I'd get clipped. Couple that with severely lacking sound design that makes the titular Soul Reaver feel like a limp pointy noodle and you get combat that is the definition of mindless, and with combat being the main thing you do in this game, well then that's a problem. I wouldn't say it's outright worse than in SR1, but the added emphasis on it and the fact that you can't run past pretty much every enemy here really makes it feel like it is inferior.

Luckily, combat isn't the only part of gameplay here, the other are the puzzle-focused forges that give the wraith blade a different elemental power. It's cool that the elemental powers are here since they were cut content from SR1 and the forges themselves are honestly the highlight of the gameplay for me, not just for this game, but for the series as a whole. They're all varied requiring you to do different puzzles from using shadows as platforms to manipulating light sources to using wind to propel yourself and almost none of them rely on block pushing and all of them are just right in terms of length, maybe except the fire forge that one is a bit short.

As for the story, I didn't really know what to expect since I wasn't as familiar with this game's plot as I was with BO1 and SR1s but after playing it, this to me is the best story the series has produced so far. I can't say too much without delving into spoilers but I will say that I think the way the game uses time travel to completely recontextualize events from the past games and completely change the dynamic between characters to be masterful. Another highlight of this story would be what it does with Raziel's character. Instead of being motivated purely by revenge, he starts to question his alliances and the world around him and it makes him much more compelling and 3-dimensional. As per usual with this series, the dialogue is still enthralling and the quality of the voice-acting to me is still unmatched for its time-period.

Overall, Soul Reaver 2 is a decent game that when sandwiched between SR1 and BO2, comes out looking like an absolute masterpiece to me. A lot of the enjoyment that I derived from this game stems from the disdain I had for SR1 and that won't be the case for most people. Perhaps the game is too standardized when compared to how ambitious it's predecessor was but to me, SR1 was a game that tried flying too close to the sun and got burnt, whereas SR2 walks along the ground just fine and it makes for a comfortable and enjoyable experience.

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.

Legacy of Kain is a series I was aware of for over a decade after seeing it in a random Top 10 Bossfights video and it's been etched into my mind ever since I first heard about its concept of basically being a conflict between two characters that spans multiple games told with Shakesperean dialogue. Despite this though, I haven't got around to playing the series properly until now for a variety of reasons, one of which was that, from the outside, Blood Omen seemed so dated. But, after beating it I can safely say that this game was actually a pleasant surprise.

That's not to say this game isn't without faults, because it's actually got a ton of them. For starters, I technically "played" the PS1 version, but I don't feel confident in saying that since what I really did was wait and stare at the screen since this version has loading screens up the ass for just about everything. I got used to it eventually, but it took a lot of adjusting and deterred me from going to the menu and experimenting with different armors, spells, items and weapons since I just wanted to get a move on when I was nearing the end of the game.

The game's combat is another low point, the top down view just leads to a lot of janky hitboxes where I swear I'm hitting the enemy but my sword just goes through them without doing anything. In the early game, combat is just this awkward game of distance management where you're trying to hit the enemy with the tip of your sword so you hit them while being out of their range and it's just clunky. Not too far into the game you get enemies who hit you with homing projectiles that knock you back and fighting them is an absolute endurance test of getting pelted by their attacks while trying to nudge yourself a little closer to them and the amount of times I heard "The Heart of Darkness" when fighting them was driving me insane. If the entire game consisted of this, I'd probably give this 1 star, but you get the Repel spell early on which makes you invulnerable and when combined with the Chaos armor that reflects damage you'd take onto the enemies, it breaks the game in half. It's cheap, and trivializes any challenge that the game would otherwise have, but if it's a substitute for being frustrated with the game's whack combat then I'll take it. There is some fun to do be had though even with combat that feels as stilted as it does here, mainly in the form of spells. They range from something as lame as turning on the lights in a room to shooting lightning to draining the blood and soul of enemies and I did enjoy playing around with almost all of them. I wish I could say the same about the weapons and armors you get but the reality is that the majority of these suck. The Havoc and Malice axes as well as the Soul Reaver prevent you from using spells at all so they're automatically useless and the Bone and Flesh armor might aswell do nothing with how insignificant their perks are.

When it comes to Dungeons, they're pretty bland, occasionally they'll have you utilizing some cool gimmicks that mostly involve mind control, but the majority of the time is spent going through a linear set of rooms, avoiding spikes and killing enemies for a few rooms with very little that's done to make the areas stand out from eachother.

And yet despite all that, I forget all of this games shortcomings anytime I stepped on a vista marker and heard Kain commenting on the world and his own circumstances. Simon Templeman does an immaculate job here and I can't stress enough how much it adds to the game. Particularly to the items, functionally they all kill enemies without much to differentiate them but the descriptions that Kain gives them makes them seem so much more interesting. As for the story, it's pretty good but not what I expected. I thought the game would focus on Kain's corruption as he'd slowly succumbed to his vampiric powers but he seems pretty accustomed to them right from the get go. He's meant to be an Anti-hero but his cynicism and disdain for any creature he encounters makes him feel downright villainous though he's still extremely entertaining and the highlight of the game.

I loved the setting of the slowly dying Nosgoth too with it being a cool blend of fantasy and medieval europe. The world-building is pretty strong and I really enjoyed learning about how volatile the land is due to needing to be maintained by the 9 pillars or about the turbulent history between the Sarafan and the Vampires. The story gets quite convoluted near the end but is still overall really solid and it's all stitched together with an incredible soundtrack that fits the grandiose nature of the game to a T.

So that's Blood Omen, a game I was dreading to check out but ended up being pretty decent all things considered. It's got plenty of poor designs decisions that sully the experience but for the most part they're just minor annoyance and the overall package is held up by fantastic narration, world-building and music.

Haunting Ground is a tough one to review, it's a spiritual successor to Clock Tower 3 which is closer in tone to the first game in the series while also being a very fundamentally sound game in its own right. But even though I liked a lot of the game, it didn't really resonate with me at all.

The setup creates a lot of mystery and intrigue that kept me going through the early parts of the game but my interest really waned in the latter half since a lot of the revelations at that point lean too much on supernatural elements that betray the foreboding and gothic atmosphere that the game has. I also find the game to dip in quality when it came to the chasers, Debilitas and Daniella are both pretty freaky but in completely different ways and are really memorable compared to Riccardo who is just a hooded guy with a gun. I'd say the story as a whole is fine, it's got that PS2 survival horror vibe that I love, some memorable characters and a cool reveal near the end but nothing that really stood out to me.

The gameplay is the main highlight here with the main aspect of it being Hewie, your dog companion who can help with puzzles, fending off chasers and is just all around adorable. When you first get him though I was super worried, he was barely responding to my actions and making him follow you for just a few rooms was an extreme chore, but shortly after you pet him, feed him jerky and occasionally scold him, he becomes really obedient and his behavior becomes a non-issue. The puzzles which utilize Hewie are probably my favourite parts of the game, they range from basic stuff like having him crawl through holes to pick up items to having to pick up the scent of a plant that you need to other neat ways. Other puzzles are decent but some can be brute-forced and a lot of them boil down to writing down blatant words onto a plate and then inserting then into golems but it's still enjoyable.

The other key aspect of the game would be running away from chasers, it works pretty similarly to how it did in CT3 but slightly more refined I'd say. There is no bar that shows you how panicked Fiona and instead her panic state is indicated via visual effects with the screen becoming more blurry and desaturated as Fiona's panic state rises. I really like this since it does wonders in being stress-inducing and is also amplified by how difficult she is to control when in a state of panic. Another thing I like is how each chaser has a completely different theme, it helps them feel more distinct. But with that said, I don't find this game to be very scary, any encounter with a chaser can be solved by flicking up on the d-pad to have Hewie bite them and then running away into a hide spot. The game tries to make it a bit more interesting by having items that you can throw or plant on the ground that can stun the chasers but they're really janky and getting them is really awkward since you have to do this luck-based minigame that's just lame so I didn't bother. After a while these encounters start feeling really sterile, especially when you're trying to explore the castle but have to spend minutes getting away from the chasers first, it just ends up halting progression without accomplishing much else.

But even after saying all this I don't really have any strong emotions towards this game. The negatives are really minor (except the final boss, Fuck Him) and didn't impact my overall enjoyment too much and I like a good chunk of what's here, but I don't really love anything. It's a vague statement that I usually hate saying but Haunting Ground just didn't click with me.