Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Recently finished the first Blood Omen, so decided to continue with this. Interesting that apparently the vampire that you played in Blood Omen, is now the main baddie that you fight in this game?
I can't really tell yet whether I like or dislike the game, still trying to learn the ropes how this game should be played. First impressions:
Good:
+ The atmosphere is great, including one of the most exciting intro videos/stories ever. I get goosebumps from "Raziel, you are worthy.". Can you be any more dramatic?
+ I was delighted how well this game seems to run on a (relatively) modern PC with modern Windows. I was under the impression this game has severe technical problems on modern PCs/Windows, but so far I haven't really seen anything. I presume this was not the remake that was supposed to come at some point, as this still offers ancient resolutions like 1024x768 etc.? Not sure why we need the remake anyway, this game even looks quite good on PC.
+ Overall the combat feels kinda cool and exciting at times, like the way you can pick up objects to use them as weapons (e.g. a decorative spear from the wall, or a torch), and finish your enemies with them, e.g. impaling or burning them when you have beaten them enough.
Bad:
- Frankly, the gameplay seems at first quite complicated, hopping between the two realities ("spectral world" vs "material world" or something like that), with lots of buttons to do different things; fortunately the game gives you hints what you can do next, like "press F to impale your incapacitated enemy" etc. But I am still learning the ropes, and it helped somewhat that I actually read the manual, and one Gamefaqs FAQ for this game.
- I still don't quite understand the save game system. You can save anywhere... but if you load your latest save game, you are back to some portal room which is quite far away from the point where you saved the game? What?!? Maybe this will become clearer later but I am kinda irritated I've kept saving the game e.g. to go to sleep (in real life), and next time I load the game from much earlier point and have to play quite a long way to get to the point where I was the last time.
- It appears this is one of those "metroidvania" or was it zelda-like games where you constantly have to revisit areas you've seen before alrready? Blood Omen was like that as well. I don't particuarly like this kind of "freedom" because then I have to keep a mental track of all kinds of places where I've been, like "oh yeah now with this new ability I can finally get to that area which was blocked from me earlier in places X, Y and Z". Should I write all those places down to paper or something so that I remember to revisit them?
I guess I will see later how bad that last issue becomes. OVerall I am still more positive than negative about the game, it has potential to be a fun experience.
Post edited October 29, 2023 by timppu