Other than a few graphical glitches, this game's presentation shines. It blows away the Tomb Raider series. The game starts long after the first one in the "series," Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, but Kain's back and just as naughty as ever. You're Raziel, once the right-hand man of Kain, and now a decrepit walking corpse existing for no other reason than revenge. You are a Soul Reaver, and you must eat souls to remain in the soul of the living. Of course, being dead, you cannot truly die -- you simply get thrown into a parallel world, the Spirit world, when you lose all your health in the real world, and if you lose all of your health there, you get cast back to the starting location of the game.
Of course, trekking back to where you were in the game, "warp gates" aside is often punishment enough. Throughout your travels, you'll slay lots of vampires -- which you need to burn with sunlight or impale, else they don't die -- solve lots of location puzzles How do I get past here? Where is the switch I need to flip? You'll enjoy every minute of it, too. Even when you're stuck as to where to go, it's enjoyable to just roam around the world and slip into the Spirit world and see the differences between the two.
In fact, quite a few puzzles require you to slip between the two to get past certain obstacles. True to the nature of the game, as you progress, Raziel gains new attacks and abilities, such as the ability to slip through gates or touch water unimpeded. His tattered wings also allow him a limited gliding ability. The world is pretty big, pretty detailed, but unfortunately, the game ends a touch too quickly.
After doing a touch of research, it seems that the game wasn't really supposed to end where it did, but getting the game out necessitated a release. Quite alright, though -- the game's still a ton of fun, "full" or not. Its depressing, dark setting does nothing more than add to the ambiance, and really gets you into the feel of the game, to feel what it is to be Raziel. The rather common voiceovers help to move the plot along as well, as you search for your brothers and Kain himself in your quest for revenge.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver isn't too hard, but it's not too easy, either -- it all depends on where you are. The occasional jumping puzzles may frustrate you at first, but once you master the game's controls, they're not that bad. Same thing with combat -- mastery breeds excellence.
It plays much like the first Soul Reaver game. If you got your fill the first time through, be warned that this might feel like more of the same. Save platforms are separated by as much as a thirty minutes of play, mostly thanks to those unending dialogue sequences.
Monster variety is limited, and the game is devoid of the bosses that gave Soul Reaver some of its character. About Games Box. Combat is hack and slash against the same villains, over and over again. You also have to do a lot of backtracking to move the plot along, and your route is often confused by rough textures and recurrent architecture.
Raziel and his boys, who sit on Kain's high council, watch the lesser lads with bored vampires' eyes, hoping for a savage battle to break out just so they can have some fun. Purgatory sounds a lot like Iowa. But soon Kain has a new passion.
He takes his trusted upper-crust vampires, including Raziel, to a distant place where their bodies evolve into higher forms. Baziel sprouts wings, but makes the mistake of showing them off to Kain. In a fit of jealous rage, Kain rips them off and casts Raziel into a magic vortex of water-and H20 is the only thing that hurts a vampire more than a root canal. Razicl loses face literally watching his pw disintegrate , dons a cowl and a scowl, and meets up with the mysterious Elder to plot the demise of Lord Kain.
What Kazicl doesn't realize, however, is that while he took his mystic dunk' ing, several thousand yean have gone by in Nosgoth.
And as anyone will tell you, things change with the passage of time. Being a vampire can be such a pain in the neck. Reaver, you're totally hooked the minute the beautifully crafted computer-generated scenes start running. You soon become familiar with 10 classes of vampires who are out to rid the underworld of Raziel, along with almost a dozen grim and feral bosses.
In their design stages, these bosses looked more frightening than Congressional impeachment prosecutors. Additionally, 20 different types of enemies will haunt your world. Not surprisingly, throughout the dark and sinister levels, you'll engage in extensive hand-to-hand combat using a variety of weapons to slice, dice, torch, and, of course, impale your foes.
To bring all this vampire vamping to It went Lara Croft's route, using a super-charged version of the Gex 3 game engine to give Raziel a 3D playing field. The games visual tour de force, however, is based on Raziel's ability to shift between two realities: the material realm and the spectral realm.
If you imagine the light and dark worlds of The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening, you'll get the idea. When Raziel shifts from one realm to the other, the environments are physically changed so that solutions to otherwise dead-end puzzles may be revealed. For example, if a chasm appears to be too far to jump across in the spectral realm, morphing to the material realm may reveal a helpful stone ledge.
This terrain morphing is an innovative and effect that brings depth and nuance to Soul Reavers gameplay. Of course, when it comes to vampire slaying, it's good to be prepared. After Raziel steals the awesome Soul Reaver weapon from Kain, he's more than up to the task. The Reaver actually attaches to Raziel's arm like an organic lightsaber, and when he finds special forges, he can upgrade the Soul Reavers potency.
Raziel also will be able to build up other powers in several ways. In some locations, he'll find magic Glyphs. These mystic stones serve as power-ups that enable him to command potent forces such as earthquakes and rings of fire. He'll also steal powers from boss vampires. For example, if a boss climbs up walls or swims underwater as a tactic against you, you'll acquire that ability if you defeat him.
If you're wondering what's going down or rising again in Kain's world, you'll definitely want to play Soul Reaver when it hits the streets in late March.
Blood Omen fans and newbies should get ready for a vampires feast that definitely does not suck. It's been a long time coming, but I think it's safe to say that Soul Reaver has been worth the wait. Mix vampires, Lovecraftian nastiness and Tomb Raider with a sprinkling of comic book fave Spawn and you have a mix that is very compelling. What's most impressive is the incredible design--both to the levels themselves which all stream seamlessly from the CD so there are no load times and to the puzzles which make up the bulk of the gameplay.
From seeing early demos of this, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a runny-jumpy-killy thing with you hopping about, looking mean and nibbling on bad guys. It's not like that though, and in fact the majority of the gameplay comprises of exploration and puzzle solving.
Noteworthy examples of this are the bosses--you don't really kill any of them with real brawn, but instead you'll find yourself solving a puzzle that will lead to their demise. It's all terribly clever stuff, and some of the environment-based puzzles can get very complex. Fortunately though, they never seem too convoluted. The story is excellent, and it's supplemented by some tremendous performances from the voice actors. Soul Reaver Is truly an impressive video game.
The graphics, animation and level design are amazing. The story is told in such a way--by some topnotch voice talent I might add - you can't help but become involved in Raziel's quest. Yeah, the camera gets whacked-out at times, and there's some slowdown, but you'll get past it. The game's so immersive, you overlook these little problems.
If you buy it, be prepared for a game of epic proportions. This monster was really worth the wait--and I do mean monster, it's huge. You'll be playing this until Christmas. The environments are really pretty, lots of rich color and shifting light effects. That and the suspenseful music make quite a freaky atmosphere. Like Akuji, there's a fair amount of unmolested free roaming.
You never feel overwhelmed with enemies or hopeless situations. I agree with John, Soul Reaver is a very tastefully done game.
When it came down to it, I had a hard time believing I was actually playing Soul Reaver I've waited and waited, and then waited some more for this game. It lives up to expectations in terms of graphics and presentation, but I wasn't expecting all the puzzle-based gameplay in Kain. It felt like I was playing "Tomb Reaver," having to push all those blocks around. But you want to know how good the graphics are, don't you Soon, gamers everywhere will be able to see for themselves what all the fuss was about when the game finally hits store shelves next month, courtesy of Eidos Interactive.
The events of Soul Reaver take place 1, years after the conclusion of the first game. A vampire apocalypse lead by the evil Kain has transformed the world of Nosgoth, interrupting the cyclical flow of life energy. The player assumes the role of Raziel, a former lieutenant of Kain's out to restore balance to the universe as well as to wreak revenge against his former master for severely mutilating his body.
One of Soul Reaver's most unusual play mechanics is the ability to "shunt" or travel to a parallel Spectral World, a warped mirror-image of Nosgoth.
The laws that govern physical reality are vastly different in the Spectral World, allowing Raziel to perform feats he wouldn't ordinarily be capable of. Only by traveling between the two worlds can Raziel solve some of the game's more perplexing puzzles and ultimately defeat Kain. Unlike Legacy of Kain's protagonist, who fed on the blood of the living, Raziel feeds on the souls of Nosgoth's living dead, which he sucks through the cavity in his deformed face.
Should Raziel run out of this life energy, he is automatically transported to the Spectral World, from which he must find an exit. Soul Reaver's expansive 3D levels spool directly from the disc, eliminating the annoying disc access that plagued the original. The elimination of save points and inventory screens also should make Soul Reaver one of the most seamless, immersive role-playing experiences to date. A millennium has passed since Blood Omen, when Lord Kain set his capital in the ruins of the Pillars and began his conquest of the world.
By dipping into the underworld and snaring souls, Kain has been able to build a cadre of vampires who have in turn helped him to pillage Nosgoth and subjugate the humans. The vampires revel in their new world and evolve in their powers, Changing into higher forms. Always Kain would Change first, followed a decade or so later by one of his lieutenants, until Raziel had the audacity to evolve first, becoming gifted with wings. For his crimes Raziel has been cast into the Lake of Lost Souls, the execution ground for traitors, burning at the touch of the water.
After a time he could hear a voice through the pain, the voice of something primal, desperate, righteous, ancient. The Elder had always fed on the souls of Nosgoth, but the vampires had deprived it of sustenance.
The Elder offered redemption to Raziel, if he would slay his former brethren and avenge himself against Kain. Let me start off by saying that I will be sending Eidos a bill for the replacement cost of my sidewinder gamepad.
This game made my hands sweat so much that I think I shorted it out. But I guess after sitting in front of the computer for six straight hours playing the game, even the best player would have sweaty fingers. But seriously, Soul Reaver is so addictive that you will lose track of time and you will definitely build up any calluses that you might have on your thumbs. The game is easy to grasp and even a person without very good eye-hand coordination will be able to pick it up within about 10 minutes.
At the very beginning of the game there is a little tutorial on how to do some simple moves. One of the things that made the game so enjoyable was the fact that I didn't have to memorize 32 combinations to beat the enemies. I can't stand games that make me contort my hands into pretzels while I try to master the double lindy.
Do not think that Soul Reaver is just an action, hack and slash game. It also has some really good puzzles in it. They are not as hard as Myst but I found that they could be quite challenging. If you find that you can't do anything in a level just go into the Spectral world and sometimes the world changes enough for you to figure out what the objective is. I wish I had a quarter for every time my wife told me to go to the Spectral world and that solved the problem I was having.
Anybody who has played the Tomb Raider series can tell you that the graphics from Eidos are always cutting edge. I was simply blown away by how the game looked. The graphics were so good that my wife actually came over to the computer and watched me play.
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