Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Sega Dreamcast
Nostalgia Factor:
I first played Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver back in 1999 for the Sony PlayStation. While it was only a weekend rental, memories of this game stuck with me long after I returned it to Blockbuster Video. I had not been able to beat the game. In fact, I'd gotten lost so many times, I had barely begun to scratch the surface of the game. I'd end up buying a used copy of Soul Reaver for the Dreamcast a year or so later. This is when I really dug my claws into the title.
I used to stay up late every single night playing this. My gaming sessions would begin after dinner and last until three or four AM. I scoured every inch of this game's world. I got lost. I got stuck. I got frustrated. But I persevered. I don't know how I did it, but I beat this game. And I did it by myself - no help from the internet or anything. Remember, this was back in 2000 or 2001. My household didn't even have the internet yet. It was just me and the game.
I can't even fathom the dedication it must have taken. Just now I finished playing this game, trying to do it without any outside help, and I just couldn't do it. Too many places to get lost. Really unclear directions as to what you are supposed to do next. It has almost Simon's Quest levels of obscurity to its direction. I consider this 100% a "guide game" - meaning a game that's almost impossible to beat without online help or a guide manual. Like I said, I don't know how the heck I did it back when I was a teenager.
Anyway, young Dan always had a reverence for this title in his heart. It was a dark and disturbing game, and it was such a challenge with some of its puzzles that beating it felt like a real accomplishment. I'd been looking forward to revisiting it after so many years. Would it still hold up in my mind? Let's dive into the Lake of the Dead and find out.
Story:
This is the second title in the Legacy of Kain series. Normally I won't play a video game if it isn't "from the beginning", as I'm a stickler for playing things in order. For some reason, Soul Reaver has always been one of my rare exceptions.
This game takes place after the events of the first game, whatever those events may be (I plan to go back and play Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen sometime in the near future). I take it that game was focused on Kain's rise to power. Anyway, Kain is the ruler of a world dominated by vampires and other supernatural beasts. You play as Raziel, one of Kain's inner circle. Kain becomes jealous of Raziel when he sprouts wings, in essence evolving to a higher form of being faster than Kain himself. Kain rips off Raziel's wings and throws him into the Lake of the Dead, where eternal torment awaits him for the crime of daring to surpass his master.
Raziel is resurrected an indeterminate number of years later, little more than a rotting shell of his past self. He has one goal in mind: vengeance on Kain. Raziel learns that he can shift back and forth between the plane of the living and the plane of the dead. This becomes a key gameplay element moving forward.
As Raziel tracks down his former master, he is taken aback by the fall of civilization since his death. Everything is in ruins. In order to gain access to Kain, Raziel has to battle his former brethren who have been twisted by evil and the passage of time, stealing their powers to advance to areas he couldn't access before.
Spoiler alert: the game ends on a cliffhanger. After spending the entire game tracking down Kain, your confrontation ends with Kain jumping into a portal and fleeing from Raziel. The game ends with Raziel making the decision to leave this world behind and move into another one, entering the portal behind Kain.
I can't believe that after beating this game 20 some years ago, I still haven't bothered to play Soul Reaver 2. I want to know what happens next!
Let's talk about the controls first. Back in the late 90s or early 2000s, this game's control scheme was pretty normal compared to other games that were coming out around the same time. Unfortunately, they haven't aged very well. My main complaint is that they are a little loose. Raziel's momentum seems to be an issue with the sensitive controls. If you're trying to line up a jump near a ledge, you have to tap forward a little bit at a time. If you hold it down too long or tap it just one time too many you'll go over the edge. Your character moves in a herky-jerky fashion that takes some time to get used to. There is nothing smooth or fluid about these controls.
The camera is another huge issue. You can move the camera left and right. You can also aim the camera in any direction when you are stopped. But many times you will need to change direction, which makes you run towards the camera. Sometimes it adjusts itself properly, sometimes it doesn't. The camera just kind of swings slowly around you in a very wide arc. It's often worth coming to a complete stop and adjusting the camera yourself, which feels a bit slow and clunky. When you are trying to jump from platform to platform, the camera can become a major problem.
This game's jumping and platforming sections show no mercy. In other games like this, you can quickly climb back up if you fall. Or if you just half-assed jump in the direction you want to go, your character will find a way to grab the ledge and pull himself up. Not this game. You have to be pixel perfect with your jumps. Which, combined with the jerky controls and the camera issues, is easier said than done.
Combat is not very refined or polished. You can hold the shoulder button down to lock onto an enemy, but there's no strategy in combat other than running in and swinging at them once you are locked on. An interesting wrinkle to the game is that your enemies can't be killed by regular means. When you stun them, you have to kill them with the environment - like throwing them into campfires or spikes hanging from walls. If you pickup weapons like spears (or later on the Soul Reaver), you can impale them and kill them that way.
So yeah. The gameplay is a little sloppy with the bad camera, the loose controls, and the simplistic combat. But this is one of those titles where I've always been able to overlook those flaws, if only because of how unique the game is.
The main twist of this game is that you have to feed off your enemies' souls in order to fill your health bar. I always thought this was so fun and unique when I was a kid. Basically, once you have defeated an enemy, you hold down a button where Raziel turns his mouth into a vacuum, and he sucks the escaped soul into his gullet. This fills your health meter.
Your health meter ties into the other big twist of the game - and the thing that makes Soul Reaver one of the most unique titles for its time: the ability to shift back and forth between the material world (the world of the living) and the world of the dead. If your health meter runs out in the material world, you are sent to the world of the dead, where you have a new health meter. Die while in the world of the dead, and it is game over and back to the last save point you go. Or at least I think that is what happens. I actually never died while in the world of the dead, since devourable souls are so easy to come by.
If you're familiar with games like A Link to the Past or Metroid Prime 2, you should be familiar with how these dual worlds work. You have two worlds that are mirror images of each other. Things you do in one world affect what happens in the other, so you will often find yourself shifting back and forth between worlds in order to solve puzzles. This acts as both a good and a bad thing in Soul Reaver.
For the first few hours of the game, it works beautifully. I was having a good time and enjoying the game. Most of your time spent playing takes place in the world of the living. You really only shift to the world of the dead when your health bar runs out, you jump into water, or when you shift manually in order to solve a puzzle. Sometimes an area may appear to be blocked or inaccessible in the world of the living, requiring you to shift to the world of the dead.
While this gameplay mechanic works fine in the beginning stages of the game, it quickly makes everything very confusing. There is no in-game map. There is no navigation system. The game only gives you a vague idea of where you are supposed to go next. It's hard enough traveling through one world and trying to figure out what the heck you are supposed to do, but two worlds? That's twice the ground to cover. I got lost SO many freaking times as I played this game. I don't need my hand held, but please dear god give me some idea where to go next. Give me some idea when I am finished with an area so I can move on. I wasted so much time unnecessarily searching through areas that didn't need to be searched, because I was already done with them - but I didn't know it. On the flip side, you don't want to under search and head back to the main hub, because you could be missing something that unlocks the next area of the game. With no map and little in-game direction, this happened to me quite a bit. I wasted so much freaking time both thoroughly searching areas that went absolutely nowhere, and giving up on areas that I thought were useless but in the end were not.
This is my biggest issue with the game. The aimlessness. The lack of direction. I thought that I would breeze through this game as an adult, because I am used to Metroidvania titles like this. I've been playing them all my life. I also thought that because I am smarter now than I was as a teenager, that this game would come easier to me. I chalked up all my struggles from when I was a kid to lack of experience.
No, turns out it is just crummy game design.
I know it sounds like I'm being harsh on this game, and I am, but overall I do have to say that I like the game. Or maybe I should say that I like the concept of the game, along with its graphics, story, and presentation. The execution leaves a bit to be desired.
Graphics:
Visually this game looks really good. Everything is so dark and sinister and atmospheric. They really nailed the gothic horror look they were going for with this game. The Dreamcast version of the game smooths out a lot of the rough edges of the PS1 version - so if you have both at your fingertips I'd suggest playing the Dreamcast version instead. As far as gameplay goes, I don't think there's much of a difference.
I can't talk about this game without talking about how awesome it is when you shift between the light and dark worlds. Everything morphs and changes around you. Buildings elongate, colors change, enemies vanish into thin air. Pulling this off was a marvel for the late 90s and early 2000s. Even now, over 20 years later, it still manages to impress.
Sound:
The voice acting in this game is superb. It's not corny or cheesy like other games of its time, such as the Resident Evil series. It fits the dark tone of the game perfectly. Fun fact, the actress who played Skylar on Breaking Bad, Anna Gunn, is the voice of Ariel in this game. The more you know!
The music is really good. The atmospheric sound effects are nice. Soul Reaver does a terrific job at bringing this eerie and ominous world to life. I often found myself completely unsettled as I played this game, even when nothing was actually happening onscreen.
Overall:
Let's get the good out of the way. The voice acting, the music, the presentation, the graphics, the story, the whole unsettling atmosphere of the game: this is all top notch stuff. As a result, I really wanted to love this game, despite all its shortcomings.
It seems like I've complained a lot about Soul Reaver's gameplay, but I can assure you, I don't hate the game. In fact, it does a lot quite well. But I look at this as more of a concept of a good game than an actual good game itself. Kind of like Simon's Quest when I was a kid. It does things differently. It is a trendsetter in a lot of ways. But is it any fun to play? Debatable. I've come around on Simon's Quest. This one? The opposite.
I was really excited when I started playing this for the first time in over 20 years. I thought I was going to have a great time with Soul Reaver. Things started out okay, but very quickly the game became a chore to play. I was getting stuck left and right. I didn't know where to go. I had to resort to looking up walkthroughs on the internet in order to make any decent kind of progress here. Very quickly, Soul Reaver became a chore for me to play - to the point where I would dread playing every time I'd fire this up. The only reason I kept going was to get it out of the way and over with.
I'm so disappointed that I didn't have a great time with this game. I liked it so much when I was a kid. But as I said, I didn't necessarily hate it. It was fun at times, a chore at others. Mainly a chore, however. And that sucks.
I feel as if I'm doing my childhood memories a disservice with this low ranking, but to be completely honest with you, I just didn't have a great time playing this. And I'll likely never play it again. That says all you need to know right there.
THE GRADE:
C-
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