Soul Reaver and by extension the Legacy of Kain series takes me back in more ways than one. Back when I first heard of, "video games with great stories". Soul Reaver and LoK by extension were one of the games that always popped up. I tried to get into SR1 over a decade ago and was turned away by the initial lack of hand holding in the game design. I did finally beat it around 2014 through PS1 emulation and I enjoyed it but apart of me wondered if I liked it because it was one of the first "older video games" I played where it rarely held your hand and was able to mostly play it without a guide. I've beaten many older games since then and the recent remasters of the first two SR games convienently released as well. As a whole, I'd say SR1 while a very ambitious game for it's time and even now, it's hard to not overlook a lot of the design shortcomings it has which were there even for it's time.
When it comes to story and presentation Soul Reaver delivers...in some ways but feels lacking in others. The opening cutscene is easily one of if not the best in gaming. It follows the idea of stories creating attachment in a quick period of time almost down to the letter. The music, the narration and dialogue by Michael Bell, the cutscene cinematrography, the hints and foreshadowing within the scene itself and it's implications later in the LoK series is impeccable. If you want to open any video game with a single cutscene and create a strong first impression, you can't get any better than this. To top it all off, Soul Reaver is a sequel to the first Blood Omen game yet it never feels like you ever needed to know the latter to get into this.
The voice acting as it's been said many times over the years by Simon Templeman, Tony Jay and the aforementioned Micheal Bell is fantastic and is easily some of the best voice work at the time especially in terms of mainstream console games. There are other good things the story does well like how you learn about Raziel's Sarafan brethren as the character kills them one by one throughout the game. There isn't much in the way of exposition but they reveal their characters through dialogue and Raziel's inner monologues as he explores each other their domains. I felt bad for Melchaiah the most since he seems to geniunely regret what he did and is revolted by what he's done. This is a well presented story for it's time especially.
However, with that said, SR1's story can feel like a prologue to later events and is more step up for Soul Reaver 2. With some plot twists and the ending especially playing a bigger role in the latter than the former. Much of the amazing dialogue and thought provoking moments happen in SR2. SR1's plot is framed as a revenge story and it isn't until 2 where it really starts to become something much bigger. As a result, SR1's story feels like a solid first season or protracted prologue to a TV show where it sets up an amazing second season. I'm talking about story so much because this was Soul Reaver's biggest strength.
Gameplay is where things are ambitous but lacking. To describe Soul Reaver it's basically Core Design Tomb Raider meets Legend of Zelda meets the Metroid(before Prime and metroidvanias were even a thing).
One big defreniating gameplay idea is that Raziel can't die by conventional means since he's a spectral husk and thus there are no fail states. Crystal Dymanics at the time seemed to be aware of this since much of SR1's challenge is figuring things out rather than combat.
Combat itself is a puzzle where every enemy is immortal but by burning, staking or throwing them in water, you can kill them. This starts to not matter in the long run since once you get the titular Soul Reaver, this can be trivial but not completely. Damage enemies and stun them and you can get a one shot kill if you get hit the sword dissolves but then comes an issue that there will always be a material realm portal nearby with souls avaliable to absorb to get back to where you were.
The spectral realm is interesting but it's mainly just there to extend platforms to make jumps and to bail the player out of redoing content upon failure, it is possible to lose all health in the spectral realm but the enemies in that realm are so easy to defeat and die in a few hits that you will back in the material realm in no time.
This leaves platforming and exploration. The former felt awkward and unrefined even for it's time. One could criticize the aforementioned Tomb Raider games for not having traditional analog controls. However, once you slowly learn the rules of the TR games or TR 1996 at least, the rules of platforming are very consistent and doesn't feel floaty. SR1 despite having analog controls and the modern remaster having right stick to turn the camera, I still felt like getting jumps right especially in some sections felt like a game of luck than it felt like I was good. The camera can get too close to Raziel in tight spaces, being precise while using the glide ability feels like I could undershoot and overshoot my landing on the platforms and there are times where I missed a jump where it felt like I could've grabbed the ledge or landed on the platform.
There are dungeons and bosses. The opening necropolis dungeon was the best and it never reaches that point again. The puzzles and clues felt like it was slowly guiding the player. Silenced Cathedral was a terrible follow up level and has all of the aforemention platforming issues of I mentioned as well doing x amount of something to progress at least twice in the same level. The rest of the dungeons while not as terrible don't like up to Necropolis. The bosses' biggest challenge is figuring how to defeat them but the clues to beating them aren't hinted at very well especially in Dumah's case.
The metroidvania elements while novel add little to the game. There are no traditional fail states meaning there is no need to get them and you don't need to use them on enemies or bosses. The latter especially since they are puzzles and can't be beaten through combat so the abiltiies give you no edge over them. In Metroid for example, health tanks are needed to give the player more hit points so they can help defeat bosses but since Soul Reaver's enemies and bosses are puzzles, on top of no fail states why would you want to find health upgrades?
Much has been said about the block pushing puzzles but a big issue is the game overly relies on them without much to spice things up. Tomb Raider had it's block pushing puzzles but there were other aspects to exploration like finding keys and plot progressing items, pulling switches, avoiding traps, and doing timed puzzles. The last dungeon of the game has so many of the same tedious puzzles especially regarding block pushing that I wanted things to wrap up already.
The abilties you get by killed bosses do open up the map and the game does a decent job without spoonfeeding you where to go next in the overworld making the map in the remaster sort of redudant. The abilties do get decent use like the projectile attack, climbing and spectral realm phasing through walls so there is some interesting level scenarios here so it isn't all sub par game design.
Powers earned by defeated bosses do open up the map and the game does a decent job without spoonfeeding you where to go next in the overworld making the map in the remaster sort of redudant.
Overall, while ambitious Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver crumbles under it's weight and is mainly carried by it's story and presentation. Still, it did introduce me to the wonders of backtracking and non hand holding game design so I can give the game credit where it's due even there many games before and after that has surpassed it. SR1 is still worth looking into since in spite of this game and by extension the series' gameplay shortcomings, it earned the cult following it has for a reason.
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