The Legacy of Kain franchise has always been known for a gripping story and very dark themes, as well as a bitter and cynical protagonist in the form of the vampire Kain, whose personality is surprisingly not as caustic as his description would suggest - in fact, he may even be quite amusing at times.
The Soul Reaver branch of the story introduced a new protagonist to the franchise, also as bitter and cynical, albeit also quite naive and vindictive. Yet, the first Soul Reaver - and Blood Omen 2 - was intended to portray the consequences of Kain's monumental decisions at the Pillars of Nosgoth (pun not intended). The first Soul Reaver would seem to offer little more plot exposition, if not for its cliff-hanger ending.
It has to be noted here that the Soul Reaver plot branch was never intended to be part of the Legacy of Kain franchise, though the first iteration of the first Soul Reaver has the same themes of revenge and plane-shifting game mechanics. Yet, that it was woven into the Legacy of Kain game would suggest that the story-writers were struck with great ideas to turn the Legacy of Kain into an epic.
Soul Reaver 2 would be the entry to the franchise that does just that. It introduces more complexities into the story, namely near-mind-boggling chronological considerations to attempt to tie all of the events that occurred in the Legacy of Kain games together.
Soul Reaver 2 has the player taking on the role of Raziel again, who is still the wraith-like, soul-devouring creature that he was (and detests) in Soul Reaver. Other than this continuity, the game's story takes place right after (relatively speaking) the events in Soul Reaver. To keep spoilers as brief as possible, Raziel and Kain have travelled back in time to achieve different goals; Raziel's is to hunt down Kain, whose own mysterious goals will be revealed as the story progresses.
Soul Reaver 2 is a very story-heavy game. To describe it too much would constitute as spoilers, yet elements of it have to be mentioned here because they have been used as the reasons to introduce certain game mechanics to the sequel and maintain some from the first.
The first mechanic that the player would encounter is the change in the nature of the Soul Reaver wraith-blade that Raziel had obtained in the first game. It is no longer a beneficent (if a bit gluttonous) symbiotic weapon; instead, it is now a risk-versus-reward option in combat, as Raziel would note during a very early plot twist in the game.
It is no longer a handy upgrade to Raziel's attacks and a plug on the draining of health from his corporeal form that only appears when Raziel is at full health. Instead, Raziel can now draw it out at any time for a boost in his fighting prowess, but it leeches Raziel's energy as long as it is active. Moreover, it will greedily devour the soul of any enemy that Raziel kills with it, depriving Raziel of the souls that he needs for sustenance.
This change in the Reaver's properties would have been intriguing and refreshing, if not for a certain repetitive aspect of the game that will be mentioned later.
The assets that Raziel retains (and welcomes more) is his agility, his ability to glide, his capability at swimming, his complete immunity to sunlight and most importantly, his ability to switch between the material and spectral realms. The spectral realm also grants him the ability to circumvent certain obstacles.
These abilities of his will be used in the puzzles and platforming sequences of the game, which like those in the first, make use of different level layouts for the same environment when the player character switches between realms. Upon switching to the spectral realm, the player will be making use of the warping of otherwise normal pillars, ledges, walls and other edifices to make a jump that could not be made in the material one. He will also be phasing through bars and grates in the spectral realm, before seeking out a portal to return to the material realm or find a way to activate one.
This would appear to be not much different from the platforming and puzzle segments in the first game, except for a few new features that make them technically and visually different.
The first, most immediately apparent feature is the use of graphics. Soul Reaver 2 is a lot better-looking than the first game, as will be described later, and the developers have used the new graphical techniques available to them to enhance the user-friendliness of their puzzles, which have more visual cues such as more camera swoops, colour and brightness changes and animations than those in the first game. Watching these puzzles progress can be quite a joy, though it can be a bit disappointing to know that Raziel is too jaded to be moved by the completion of most puzzles.
The second feature concerns the changes in the Reaver itself. The Reaver is now a ravenous creature that can devour many kinds of energies, including elemental ones. By finding forges dedicated to the harnessing of the power of the elements, Raziel can plunge the Reaver into their orifices, thus draining their power away to give the Reaver the ability to drain power from other, smaller edifices known as elemental fonts. They also happen to stabilize the Reaver somewhat, resulting in an increase in Raziel's energy spiral (or more precisely, the restoration of some of his power).
Elemental fonts are vents in the ground or wall that leak elemental energy that can be seen from a distance away (which is a handy visual indication of their presence). Raziel can approach these fonts, summon his Reaver and plunge it into the fonts to imbue it with the elements that are associated with said forges. The Reaver will gain a new form associated with the appropriate element until either Raziel enters the Spectral Realm, which will fritter away said elemental energy, or re-imbue the Reaver with energy from another font.
Each elemental form will have different properties that will be of use in puzzles. For example, the Light Reaver is a mobile light source that makes navigation and platforming easier. It can also activate so-called Light Crystals, which are really only switches that would open certain doors and other barriers.
Of course, a skeptical player will realize that these forms are only there for the purposes of puzzle-solving. They appear to have no other significant purpose outside of this, not even combat.
On the other hand, there are a lot of puzzles that utilize cleverly placed fonts. Furthermore, not all puzzles have to be solved with a rigid sequence in the use of elemental forms. For example, there is a cavernous area in the game where the player can circumvent the use of the fonts and opt for acrobatics instead, if he/she can be quick-fingered enough to have Raziel hopping and gliding past obstacles. There are also segments where a puzzle can have more than one solution involving different sequences of fonts.
The third one is the introduction of time-themed solutions. Raziel will come across Time-Streaming devices that allow him to go back and forth between two eras of the same locales. During these sequences, the player can see the entropic effect of time on the locales, namely what five centuries of neglect and abandonment would do to the places in Nosgoth. More importantly, the layout and landmarks of the locale being explored will be different, allowing Raziel to get across from one segment to the next in another timeline while returning to the other timeline to continue solving a puzzle.
Of course, to the skeptical player, the player character is technically merely being shuttled to-and-fro two different levels with layout-altering scripts that are triggered in one to effect change in the other (namely the version of the level that is in the future relative to the other).
Yet, such level designs allow the developers to show off their meticulous attention to detail and skills at artwork. They also make use of this time-hopping theme to craft segments with especially deep scripting that will have the player dealing with cause-and-effect puzzles across three different timelines (in the relative past, present and future) within the same (very large) area.
The fun to be had from the puzzle-solving and platforming sequences of this game would be for naught if the controls had been inadequate. Fortunately, despite being a port-over of the PS2 version, the controls are satisfactorily mapped over to the keyboard and mouse, though the game is still best played with a game-pad.
The platforming and puzzle-solving segments of this game are the better-done parts. The combat segment is not as enjoyable, unfortunately.
That is not to say that combat is a sloppy mess. In fact, the controls, combat mechanics and camera would be good enough for the player to keep tabs on enemies.
Raziel can swiftly dodge or block attacks from enemies at a tap of a button, make counter-attacks and perform combos on enemies that had let their guard down. He can also disarm those who have weapons, and use these against them. A player that had gotten used to the controls would be countering enemy after enemy quite confidently.
Then, there is the Soul Reaver, which can make very short work of enemies and also happens to blow through their defenses. However, the Reaver would steal whatever souls that these enemies have; it will also gain greater power and control over Raziel's form, and this is represented by ever-faster drain on his health, though it also seems to increase its damage output too. The Soul Reaver's tenacity will ebb over time, but there is a threshold that must never be passed, or the Reaver will immediately destroy Raziel's corporeal form and send him back into the spectral realm. The Reaver can be a nasty choice of a weapon, but the convenience of being able to blow through certain powerful enemies can be tempting.
The Reaver can also fire magical projectiles, though having to draw out the Reaver to fire these makes them a costly method to approach combat with as firing projectiles also happens to add to its willfulness.
The enemies in Soul Reaver 2 are a very challenging bunch. Just about any enemy that Raziel will face is either an inhuman entity with supernatural powers that rival his, or a mortal with plenty of martial prowess. However, regardless of their nature, they can be slain simply by knocking their health down to zero; the sometimes clumsy mechanic of using the environment to finish off enemies in the first game is not in the sequel.
The first sets of enemies are what the canon of the game categorizes as "Hunters", as in those that zealously hunt inhuman things and burn them at pyres.
They wield weapons like swords and pikes, using these to launch attacks on Raziel and block Raziel's own assaults with these. The timeline that Raziel is in will determine how skilled they are; the ones in centuries past have yet to hone their martial prowess, so they are more easily countered and slain than their descendants of centuries later. Nonetheless, a seasoned player would not take long to realize that disarming them makes them quite easy to slay. The pike-wielding ones can be trickier, because of their sweeping attacks and greater reach.
Eventually, such warbands will have fire support in the form of either artillery-wielding soldiers, as well as huge, hammer-wielding brutes. Ranged enemies are often screened by their close-combat compatriots, but Raziel is a very agile character that can roll past them to get at these enemies. However, they will, more often than not, wisely choose to flee, which can be a hassle even though Raziel usually runs faster than most enemies.
These warbands are also sometimes accompanied by trained beasts, attack dogs being the most common. These are quick critters, though they are at best meant to give the player several more targets than he/she would like to handle at a time.
There are vampires to be slain too, though except for their voice-overs and appearances, they fight a lot like the human Hunters.
There will also be undead to deal with. Known as "Thralls" in-universe, they are often found guarding ancient locales such as the Elemental Forges, rising out of the ground to attack intruders. The ones that specialize in close-combat fight better than their mortal Hunter counterparts, but the ones that will be giving the player the most trouble are their mages, which will cast spells that not only harm Raziel, but also stagger him around. Considering that many of the places that they guard often have precarious platforms that Raziel will have to navigate across, they can be quite annoying.
Mutants depict the consequences of Kain's critical decision in the past. They were once otherwise sentient inhabitants of Nosgoth, but have degenerated into hideous creatures. This shows in their creepy looks and animations, as well as their loping methods of fighting.
Raziel will also be sent far back in the past to encounter the Sarafan, a hardline order that persecutes anything that isn't human. These are a lot tougher and durable than Hunters, and also enjoy the support of sorceresses, which provide them with magical fire support.
All of the enemies mentioned above are practically exclusive only to the material realm. Killing them will release the souls that Raziel needs to feed on to maintain his corporeal form, though these souls will eventually flee into the Spectral realm if the player is not quick enough to have Raziel vacuuming them in.
In the spectral realm, Raziel does not have to worry about losing health as he will automatically draw upon the energy in this dimension to replenish his reserves. However, he is not the only entity here.
The Sluaghs, which are wretched things that endlessly chase after souls to devour them, return in this game. They still sound as wretched and pathetic as they were in the previous game, and are still easy to exterminate and devour, though they do return with a bit more combat prowess. There are also Greater Sluagh, which are bigger, tougher and faster than the regular ones. These tend to populate the spectral version of large, expansive locales in the game.
Finally, there are Demons and Shades, which can fight Raziel in both realms. The Shades, in particular, exist in both realms at once and are often found near magical edifices, namely elemental fonts. There can be a lot of them, though they are easily dispatched with wide sweeping arcs. They have no souls to be reaped, though.
Demons are the most powerful enemies in the game. Being from a plane of existence separate from the material and spectral realms, they have no trouble following Raziel into either, though they take a while to manifest, during which the player can attempt to put some distance between them and Raziel. Creepily enough, all of them know Raziel by his name, despite his origins only being known to a few.
There are generally three variants of Demons: the Acid Demons, which are all green and have attacks that are often directed along the ground (thus necessitating some jumping); the Lightning Demons, whose guard is very difficult to break without resorting to counters; and the huge Fire Demons, which have sweeping area-effect attacks and the irritating ability to spawn Groundlings, which serve to give more targets to deal with.
With such varied enemies that can be quite challenging to fight and the controls being quite tight, one would wonder how the combat in this game can go so wrong.
The reason is simple: there is just too much of it.
Like in the previous Soul Reaver game, Raziel does not gain anything from combat other than souls to maintain his corporeal form. However, the combat in Soul Reaver 2 is a lot more challenging and involves more enemies than ever. Considering Raziel's limited and ever-dwindling health in the material realm, the player will find that many battles in this realm will leave Raziel too drained to perform any puzzle-solving or platforming in the same area if the player stays and fight. Yet, he/she has to, because the game resorts to boxing the participants into an arena with magical force fields all too often.
Furthermore, devouring souls is very difficult to perform during combat, as enemies will attack Raziel all the time. Unlike the first game's slow-moving souls, the ones in this game flit around fast and can wander far away from the battle. The player can attempt to sprint some distance away from enemies before attempting to vacuum souls, but close-combat enemies do a very good job of staying uncomfortably close.
Worst of all, mobs of enemies in the material realm will respawn when Raziel returns after being forced back into the spectral realm earlier. Similarly, enemies in the spectral realm will respawn too when Raziel has to escape from the material one.
The player can very easily have Raziel end up in the spectral realm among a bunch of Sluaghs, while surviving Shades and Demons will travel into this realm to give Raziel more beatdowns, which will force him back to one of the too few checkpoints in this game.
As Raziel has to find a portal to return to the material realm, this can have him returning to the same area in the material realm to be forced again into battle with the same mob that had sent him into the spectral realm earlier, only that they are now completely respawned.
Until the player practically commits to memory the most expedient sequence of moves and decisions to defeat this mob with the least expenditure of energy, the player will be forced to repeat this brutal cycle of battles in both realms.
This kind of frustration is especially apparent when Raziel has to utilize a couple of Time-Streaming devices to complete an overarching puzzle in a chapter of the story. These devices are often located at either ends of a stretch of countryside, and there are many battles in-between that can cause the player to suffer said cycle.
That the game lacks a proper game-saving feature other than the use of said checkpoints further exacerbates the frustration.
There are also no boss battles whatsoever. Considering that this is a story-oriented game, having boss battles would have enhanced the experience of progressing in the story. There are some cutscenes and voiced-over story expositions that occur whenever Raziel faces new kinds of enemies or have learned something new about their nature, but otherwise, the bulk of them feel like they are fights of miscellaneous and inconsequential nature, especially when the player has to repeat them when they respawn. (Fortunately, the cutscenes will not repeat.)
Soul Reaver 2 will not satisfy players who expect to gain something substantial from battles.
The endlessly recurring combat will not make back-tracking a pleasant experience, but back-tracking does highlight a more well-done aspect of the game: its level designs and artwork, which are superior to the first Soul Reaver's, as well as better graphics from the technical perspective.
There is a dramatic difference between the environments in this game and its predecessor. The environments in Soul Reaver 2 are more open; even the ones that are set indoors are grand, a good example of which is the hidden abode of Janos Audron, who is the last Ancient Vampire.
The environments in Soul Reaver 2 also do not resort to artificial means to limit draw distance like its predecessor, such as conveniently placed fortress walls and cliffs. Instead, for the outdoors, Soul Reaver 2 uses animated skyboxes to give a sense of scale to the countryside and faraway panoramas. Of course, it does resort to the use of objects that act like fences to limit the player character's movement. Moreover, the wide-open environments also highlight the deficiency in Raziel's movement speed; he may be agile, but he won't be sprinting across plains like the wind anytime soon.
The levels in Soul Reaver 2 are much prettier than those in the first, with plenty of awesome sights like a valley full of crypts and artificial waterfalls. The indoor levels are often adorned with tapestries, banners, stained-glass windows and paintings if they have the touch of civilization, or are caves with brilliant pillars of light shining through and plenty of textures for moss and the occasional cave flowers.
If there are games that make sight-seeing a worthwhile side-tracking from the gist of the game, Soul Reaver 2 is one of them. Of course, much of the artwork and level designs have been ported whole-sale over from the PS2 version, but they benefit from the graphical pizzazz, especially lighting and shadowing, that the PC platform can offer during that time which the PS2 cannot.
The polygons for models and their animations have also been ported over. The graphics designers resorted to sharp vertices and edges to give form to the characters in the PS2 version, and they did no different (or more precisely, did no more) in the PC version. This design choice results in less-than-impressive models for human characters, though they do look better on inhuman ones, especially the vampires. The animations, while unchanged, were already great enough for a game of Soul Reaver 2's time, with a good example being Raziel's set of animations. In the PS2 version, these did a great job of showing the contrasts in his personality, such as how much he unconsciously clings to his once-human status through his conversational gestures and the feral stances that he takes in battle; the PC version is not any more different, perhaps for the better.
However, the models benefit from new sets of cleaner and sharper textures. Raziel is, again, easily the most impressive model in the game, having plenty of decals and textures for his hideously tortured form; he also happens to have baleful eyes (and the wraith-blade) that conveniently show off the lighting and shadowing effects for models in this game.
The models for miscellaneous characters in the game are also impressive to look at, especially the Demons. Unfortunately, having to look at them many times over no thanks to the designs for combat in this game would chip away at any awe and appreciation that a player would have for them.
Much of the sound designs in this game are invested in the voice-acting, which is nothing short of stellar. The Legacy of Kain games may not have been known for well-designed gameplay (in fact, they are usually known for otherwise), but they are certainly more famous for some of the best delivered lines to be heard in video games. The staple voice actors of the series, such as Simon Templeman, Anna Gunn, Michael Bell and Tony Jay, return to give their characters the personalities that they have.
Kurt Harland, who had a hand in the music for the previous Legacy of Kain games, returns in Soul Reaver 2 to provide the soundtracks. Much like the soundtracks in the previous games, the ones in Soul Reaver 2 are intended to instill a sense of dread, awe and stern grit in the player all at the same time. Legacy of Kain has never been a cheery franchise and is loaded with characters that are either embittered or deranged (or both), and the soundtracks that accompany their appearances on-screen are going to emphasize that in Soul Reaver 2.
There are some more relaxing soundtracks, such as those that play after Raziel enters a panoramic location. However, these soundtracks would soon give way to those for battle sequences, as the player will inevitably stumble into yet another ambush or camp of enemies.
The sound effects in this game are just as great. Much of the sound effects heard in the previous game has been remixed, such as those heard during the switching between realms, which now sound creepier than ever. The Soul Reaver is a highlight, as the noises that it makes changes as its tenacity does. At low levels of willfulness, the Soul Reaver makes shrill shrieks as it is swung; when it has fed on one too many souls however, its tune changes in a startlingly dramatic manner - it makes menacing howls instead, effectively warning the player that Raziel is in danger of having his corporeal form dissolved.
The ambient sounds are not neglected either. Environments in the material realm that have moving landmarks or curiosities, like clockwork and waterfalls, will have appropriate noises, whereas the spectral realm, as always, subdues or outright mutes ambient noises to leave only an unsettling silence or sometimes, a subtle, hollow moan.
In conclusion, Soul Reaver 2 is a very beautiful game with a great story and presentation, perhaps more so than any previous entry in the Legacy of Kain franchise. However, seeing the resolution of the splendidly delivered story may not be reward enough for the tedium of one too many battles.