Thank you for saying what I held back on. This dude's basically been responding to every thread with "I have a solution, but I'm waiting for the okay from some other random site to be able to disclose it to the public at large". It's not even a mod or anything, based on what he's said, and seems to just be a series of instructions he could easily post for everyone's benefit if it actually does work. Otherwise it just comes off as being kind of pretentiously blowing smoke up everyone's ass, honestly.

So has GOG actually responded to any of the issues people have been having with an official solution? As someone mentioned above, I'd rather avoid modding this game because I expect it to run fine out of the box, which some people have managed. I'm a bit surprised they didn't find a way to incorporate the additions Verok had for his mod, but yeah, if I absolutely have to, I'll jump on that.

The game does indeed run perfectly fine for me out of the box without the need for the mod, albeit at a slower speed. I believe the speed thing was actually intended by the original developers of the PC port, for some reason the game is locked to 42 fps and that's why it runs slower. So in order to run it at 60 fps like the PS1 original, you'll need to use Verok's mod (that's the only reason I'm using it - well that and the higher quality cutscenes).

The only solution I know is to use Verok's ddraw.dll. It works better, much better than the one from GOG.

I found a simple solution. It appears that this issue appears if your max desktop resolution (no matter what your current one is) exceeds 1920x1080. I had Nvidia DSR enabled, so I had a very high max resolution. After turning it off, my max resoluition was my monitor's native one, which is 1920x1080. The game works fine now. The videos are showing properly and controls work fine.

Every single GOG release has issues for a percentage of people, I don't think "run fine out of the box" 100% of the time is a reasonable expectation. You can refund the game of course.

How did you turn it off?
It shouldn't be unreasonable to expect considering it's supposed to be one of GOG's main selling points. If they can't deliver on re-releasing decades old games that can run on modern systems, then what even is the point considering so many of them are practically abandonware at this point? Sure, I expect a few hiccups here and there attributed towards certain variables between each person's gaming setup, but to not take into account this business with DX wrappers or screen resolutions past a certain limit when community mods have already done so years ago seems incredibly shortsighted. If anything, they could've paid said modders to contribute their work towards restoring the game and tweaking it to run better, they've done as much in the past.

I don't want to refund the game if there's a way to get it to work, the point of me paying for it is to continue to support the development and release of all these retro titles and to encourage it further. I'd very much love for GOG to just be a massive library of games from my childhood and adolescence and a testament to what made PC gaming so great in the 90s.

(You may already be aware, but GOG doesn't stand for "Good Old Games" anymore, that's not necessarily a major focus for them these days.)

Old games on GOG are for people who want DRM-free (well, aside from the recent Hitman fiasco) legal copies, since "abandonware" isn't a true legal term/state. Sure, GOG can add decent fixes and I think in general they do a pretty good job, but it's not like they have Steam resources - or Nightdive's focus and lesser expenses - to spend on these titles and they aren't doing remasters. I don't want to encourage piracy, but if you aren't happy with GOG's work, may well want to use "abandonware" sites and do the fixing yourself.

Also it may be Square Enix won't let GOG use fan fixes, legal issues and whatnot. But perhaps you're right about paying the modders (though I doubt GOG is expecting to make much money in general, income-wise they're like less than %1 of the billions spent every year on gaming. Plus GOG will lose money when the game goes to Steam.).

Also also, contact Support for help if need be - they exist since "working out of the box" for 100% of the people isn't possible.

Bro, these games didn't even work 100% of the time when they were *new* back when they were first released. Expecting them to work 100% of the time now decades later, on hardware and operating systems that are many orders of magnitude more powerful than they were originally designed for is unreasonable. I think for the most part GOG actually does an amazing job of making these games playable out of the box or with very little tweaking for the majority of users.

There's always going to be outliers with PC games, especially older ones - someone, somewhere will have issues running the game. It's always the vocal minority that come onto the forums to complain, but if you check out the game's store page (https://www.gog.com/game/blood_omen_legacy_of_kain) you'll see the overwhelming majority of reviews are of users that had no issues running the game.

When I first tried the GOG Blood Omen, I'm not going to lie, I was totally expecting it to not work and I was preparing myself to need to do some fiddling around to get it up and running. But it started up straight away and was 100% perfect and true to how the game originally looked and played. To say I was impressed was an understatement. Yes, it runs at a slower framerate than the PS1 original, but that's because it was deliberately designed to do so back then for some reason.

I have the original PC version on CD, and getting THAT version running before Verok's mod existed was an extremely complicated process that I'd wager not many people here would be bothered to go through. Not only was there a series of steps required that included making the game think it was installing on a smaller hard drive and using hacked executables, but you even needed to use an application to force your PC to slow down as the game couldn't handle how fast modern CPUs were and soft locked after the scene in the tavern.

The fact that games like this from GOG just work for the majority of people is pretty incredible, to be honest.

I actually looked at the reviews first to see if anyone had any issues and found that most of them were praising the game itself, not the actual GOG release. I only saw one or two that talked about the release itself and discussed how well it worked for them, which gave me the impression a lot of the reviews were either premature or just fluff from people who didn't even buy the game (because only on GOG can you review a product you don't own).

Either way, I'm not complaining about games not running 100% of the time out of the box, I'm just saying it shouldn't be an issue more often than not and one of GOG's main selling points is accommodating for modern systems. They *have* worked with modders in the past to get games running better, so it was surprising they didn't bother with this. Anyway, someone mentioned a fix earlier and didn't clarify, so I'd really love to hear how they got it sorted.

Psycho-Werefox
There is already s suggestion above. Here you can find (in general topics) some official solutions from GOG staff
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us?
But ofc you shouldnt restrict yourself with only GOG support site. Ms one, Square Enix Eu.

I can give another suggestion. Trivial one exist for 30 years - close every other applications. I guess both black screen and input problems are come from one source - some Input decive plugged + tools for them. GOG support site refer to LogiOptions.exe that it have silent overlay (that make even appearance glitches, not only input).
Kill that process (i hope everyone here can use task manager properly).

GOG staff refer to this in specific article for specific game:
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019811033-Diablo-missing-menu-text?product=gog
but as i say - it is trivial solution work for 30 years. It should be mentioned also somewhere in general solution.

Just replug input or other usb devices and kill (uninstall entirely) that applications. They not needed and NOT GAMINS tools.

Also headsets can cause problems. Or sometimes fix. Nowadays headsets is for smartphones that use one plug for speakers and micro. Nowadays 3'5 audio jack be same - one for both sound input and output.
And still better... usually better - to use USB headset made only for using on PC. or very simple headphones.
Check sound settings also. Keep an eye on differences when you plug even audi-jack phones - current Windows can recognise even simpelst phones as differ audio device. Ofc USB is differ as well (that phones have audio chip build-in).
Check output quality, exclusive mode and else settings when you plug and unplug any headsets.

Same for every MSI\etc tools. And even GeForce Experience. This is not needed and harmful software for gaming PC systems. Ofc especially for old games. If you cant just configure game settings - you better switch to console gaming.
...........
Also, GOG put own GOG DX DirectDraw wrapper (old wrapper actually, but updated in silence with differ games\catalogue updates; some wrapper builds are made for specific games some if general). It is came with DXCFG.EXE tool - you should go to game folder (always should) and start as - as admin of course.
GOG also put DX DirectInput wrapper (i see that for fisrt time, of course i can miss it) - but it didnt have config tool, just dixi.ini file.
I cant say what it in there - check yourself.

it it still better to use legacy DirectInput devices for old natively Dinput games even if game prepacked or you download some wrappers.
................

What the matter pointing to reviews that they about game itself and not GOG release?

EVERY... E-V-E-R-Y games on Steam and GOG have threads where everyone there complain that game DO NOT WORK AT ALL!!!111 speaking for everyone. Literally. When you faced them that at least for someone game work, they continue complain "no, it is broken release!!!" and "broken, refunded, wait for update from GOG" reviews.

They also blame soft for Microsoft broken hands and stupidity. It is OK when Microsoft staff or volunteer mods on community.microsoft.com say that every apps devs should make them soft compatible with every "security updates" that no one needed and not a security at all (real security hotfixes do not broke any applications or backward compatibility).

But we here shouldnt speak in that way. Every updates builds of Win10 - is like differ OS with so many broken things each time. Most of them made even for purpose.

We cant expect any tweaks on devs\publishers\GOG side to make our PCs work properly. If some app didnt work - by default it is PC(hard\soft) didnt handle it. We should find why. Very rare it is because of game itself... and that not for such old games. It even made not for WindowsNT OS. Back in Win9x there some requirements-specification for fullscreen 3d-application (some of them are stupid ones even back then) that never be compatible with NT OS (again, because of Ms stupidity - initially NT is not for home PCs and not for gaming). And that old games work nowadays sometimes because devs back then DONT follow that specifications.

Can you provide such solution for the Soul Reaver 2? With support of Windowed Mode if possible.