Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered Review
Pros
- A fantastic story with deep lore
- Excellent cast delivers fantastic voice acting
- Some great puzzles in Soul Reaver 2 especially
- Performance is steady
Cons
- Far too dark at times to see anything
- Save system in both games leaves a lot to be desired
- Dated combat system feels like a chore
- Some bugs and glitches
- Not much modern guidance with puzzle solving
It’s been a long time since the Legacy of Kain series has been mentioned; it’s last appearance as an IP was back in 2003 when Legacy of Kain: Defiance was released on the PlayStation 2, which featured the end of a five-game storyline and tried experimenting a bit with the tried and tested formula that was beloved by fans.
Despite the main storyline ending, however, the world of Nosgoth had so much more to offer with its violent gothic themes mixed with a tale about vampires out for revenge and defying fate. 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the first title included in this remaster package, and is the perfect time to revisit some cult classics that haven’t seen daylight for a long time.
Draw the curtains, dim the lights, and prepare to return to the world of Nosgoth.
The character models closer match the CG movies in Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1
Where better to start than at the beginning, with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver that originally launched in 1999 on the PlayStation. Despite being the first of its namesake, Soul Reaver is actually the second title in the Legacy of Kain series, taking place after the events of Blood Omen. However, unlike its predecessor, you play as a new protagonist, Raziel, while Kain takes the place of the antagonist.
As Kain’s empire grows, he and his sons rule over Nosgoth following the events of Blood Omen, and as Vampires are like to do, they evolve over time. Raziel, one of Kain’s most trusted confidants, is the first to bore wings but Kain’s resentment sees him mutilate them before casting him into the abyss to endure an age of torment. Fate, however, would have another plan for Raziel, as the now disfigured Raziel survives and meets the Elder God, a being that would set him on his path for vengeance against Kain.
The story and lore of the Legacy of Kain series is perhaps its greatest strength, and the Soul Reaver duology delivers it at its very best. It’s no surprise to learn that these games, then, are penned by Amy Hennig, who would go on to provide her talents to Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series. All of the hallmarks of what would later feature in these titles are here to see, albeit limited by the systems they were released on.
(1 of 2) The new map made alongside the community is a great addition to Soul Reaver 1.
The new map made alongside the community is a great addition to Soul Reaver 1. (left), This also makes the Warp Room a lot easier to use now you can see what each symbol relates to. (right)
Soul Reaver‘s storyline is an engaging one that keeps you involved throughout with a voice cast that was well ahead of its time; Kain and Raziel’s actors especially delivering fantastic performances. Indeed, Soul Reaver was ahead of its time, releasing just at the end of the life of the original PlayStation, featuring an open world with hidden loading (via opening doors) and an attempt at a cinematic adventure.
So, in 2024, how does this classic hold up? Unfortunately, age has not been kind to Soul Reaver.
The remaster makes a remarkable attempt at trying to modernize it, bringing a fresh coat of paint that you can freely change between with the press of a button, adding camera control to the right stick, and adding a map that will tell you your next objective while displaying all of the locales.
When playing in the remastered mode of Soul Reaver, you can notice a massive difference in textures especially, with walls that are blurry and hard to discern, now featuring the detail it was always meant to have. Perhaps the biggest improvement, for the most part (there are a few exceptions, unfortunately), are the character models. These are far more detailed and have greater personality, bringing characters such as Raziel and Kain to life. A few of Raziel’s brother’s monstrous forms, however, are a bit hit-and-miss, taking away from some of the grotesque forms they were meant to have.
(1 of 2) You can see the differences with the original vision here.
You can see the differences with the original vision here. (left), And the remastered mode. (right)
The visuals, however, do hide an even larger problem, and that is the brightness of the adventure. Soul Reaver (and its sequel) were always dark games, and with the options and balance in the remaster so dark at times, it can be hard to even see where you’re going. This is especially troublesome in areas such as the Cathedral, or at times when it is overcast or at night, which, unfortunately, is quite often. Despite being overjoyed to replay these titles, this is my largest issue with these remasters, and there are no options to alter the brightness to try and rectify it. Modern screens have a wider array of colors which is why brightness options are critical. Older TFT screens of which these games were originally designed for had naturally higher contrast so it wasn’t as problematic then as it is now. It’s surprising this wasn’t considered.
The camera, then, is also hit-and-miss, and even though the new changes makes it much easier to navigate and use compared to the original release in 1999, it’s still incredibly cumbersome by today’s standards. The camera sits close to Raziel’s back by nature and will track him as you run, sometimes getting in the way of your own manual control. This becomes a problem when you’re in areas where you need to look around the environment, as the camera will not phase through walls and objects, and instead, zoom close behind Raziel’s back.
Soul Reaver is a game that does not hold your hand, something that newer players are going to struggle with a lot. With the Remaster, you can bring up a beautiful map, created with the community, to display your next objective, and after that, you’re on your own. Even the puzzles, of which there are many, give very little in the way of hints beyond a quick panning of the room to show where you need to get to. The map won’t help too much with navigation, but it does display the warp gate symbols of the area, helpful when using the warp station then, as it will only display the symbols rather than the name.
This brings us to another issue with Soul Reaver that has not aged well; the save system. There is no autosave here, and although it appears you can save the game at any time by bringing up the pause menu and hitting save, when you load it, you’ll appear at the game’s opening area, regardless of where you were when you saved. This means you’ll want to avoid ending a session when you’re not near one of the game’s warp rooms, as you’ll have to get back to where you were when you next load the game.
Combat was never a highlight of Soul Reaver at the time of its original release, and it’s not aged well here at all. You can only do basic swipes with the weapons you find, and then impale any vampires to drain their souls. This is incredibly clunky however, as it can be difficult to target the enemy you want; they or Raziel may get stuck on the geometry (this made one boss fight particularly fiddly), and you get very limited time with the Soul Reaver itself unless you’re at full health. Fortunately, for the most part, you can get away with simply running through most encounters; there are only a few battles where you’re forced to fight (aside from the boss battles).
Where Soul Reaver does shine, however, is its exploration and puzzle-solving. As you traverse Nosgoth’s wasteland, you’ll find all manner of puzzles, with a larger emphasis placed on block puzzles. Newer players may struggle with the lack of direction here, and a lot of your playtime may center around the trial and error of many of these puzzles. Still, exploring areas never gets boring as you’re not far away from the next one and it always keeps you thinking.
(1 of 2) Combat in both games is very clunky and better off avoided unless necessary.
Combat in both games is very clunky and better off avoided unless necessary. (left), The first Soul Reaver has an over-reliance on block puzzles. (right)
A lot of the first Soul Reaver is also optional, be it seeking health upgrades or Glyphs; magical powers that you can use against your enemies. These often take you to areas you never have to visit for the main story and feature some of the game’s best puzzles but it’s just a shame that their use is never really needed as the game never truly calls for them. Still, if you want to get the most out of Soul Reaver, you should seek them out.
On a technical note, the game never dropped below 60fps for us, regardless of whether we were using the original look or the remastered mode, which was a pleasant surprise. We also had very little in the way of bugs or glitches aside from a time when Raziel got stuck walking into a wall and being unable to free ourselves, forcing us to reload the game.
A lot of the elements of the first Soul Reaver are also optional…
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver isn’t the longest adventure out there - those of you seeking to go for a completionist run and obtain all of the Achievements may get around 15 hours out of it, but if you’re familiar with the game (or following a guide), you can easily knock this out in around 6-7 hours. This is ideal as it prevents the game from getting stale, and there are enough new locales to visit or puzzles to solve that you’re never without something to do.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
This brings us to the other title in this collection, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2, which originally launched for the PlayStation 2 in 2001, a year after the release of the console. Taking place directly where the first finished, you’ll instantly recognize the heightened focus on cinematic storytelling, with the first game’s ending being redone as an intro movie for the sequel. Kain has fled through the Time-Streaming device with Raziel following him and an encounter with Moebius, the man who set Kain on his original, grisly, path.
With the added power of the PlayStation 2, Soul Reaver 2 places a larger focus on its storytelling, with longer cutscenes and better cinematic direction throughout the adventure. As such, there’s a noticeable step up in both the graphical prowess and art direction in the sequel, and you can see this effect in the Remaster too.
(1 of 2) As you can see from the remastered mode here.
As you can see from the remastered mode here. (left), And the original vision here, not as much has changed with Soul Reaver 2 outside of the character models. (right)
Unlike Soul Reaver 1‘s remaster which changed the way every part of the game looked, there’s much less of that here in Soul Reaver 2. For the most part, the textures on the environment have changed very little between the two modes, and instead, the majority of the work has gone into the character models again; this is worthwhile, as there are a greater number of major characters here.
There are some noticeable changes to the way that Soul Reaver 2 plays over its predecessor, be it from the greater focus on combat (which is not necessarily a good thing given the combat system), a variance of puzzles, and the way the Soul Reaver itself works. While your time with it in the original was far more limited, you can now call the Soul Reaver at any time, noting that swinging the Wraithblade will cause a gauge to increase and start draining Raziel’s health when full.
Throughout your adventure, you’ll visit a small number of areas that you will backtrack through a lot, with subtle differences each time.
Raziel will retain all of his main abilities from the original, such as the ability to swim, but Glyphs are removed entirely. In its place is the Elemental Reaver system, which the whole game revolves around. Raziel will travel to areas throughout Nosgoth, complete elemental forges, and then imbue the Reaver with these properties, allowing you to get new puzzle-solving abilities. It places more emphasis on its namesake and is a welcome change for Soul Reaver 2.
While the areas in the sequel have improved with their detail, there’s surprisingly very little in the amount of them. Throughout your adventure, you’ll visit a small number of areas that you will backtrack through a lot, with subtle differences each time. This means that the general navigation around the world will get tiresome very quickly, especially as Warp Rooms are now a thing of the past and removed entirely from Soul Reaver 2.
Soul Reaver 2 has a greater emphasis on the story with better cutscene direction.
Along with that, the save system has completely changed here. Gone is the save anywhere feature that started you at the opening when loaded, and instead you can now find proper save points to record your progress. While this is better in theory, these save points can be spaced quite far apart, often causing you to clear dungeons and an hour plus of puzzle-solving before you get to the next one.
This was a particular issue with this version of Soul Reaver 2 as, unfortunately, we ran into some bugs and glitches here, one of which caused us to have to reload our previous save, losing all of our progress in a dungeon. There were also other glitches where in the Remastered view, a corpse that we had to interact with was just a black polygonal square. This was fixed if we switched to the original view, but nonetheless, a bit of a disappointment as the rest of this package had been great technically.
The issue with the game being far too dark rears its head again here, too, unfortunately, with the adventure’s second act in particular being a massive issue. It became such a problem at one point that I was navigating based on memory, rather than what I could see. Fortunately, this was only in the “field” areas of the game, and elemental dungeons were fine for the most part.
(1 of 2) Both games can be incredibly dark and hard to see at times.
Both games can be incredibly dark and hard to see at times. (left), The elemental forges feature some fantastic puzzles. (right)
Although combat has improved a little in Soul Reaver 2, it still shares that clunky style from the original, only here you’re forced to engage in it a lot more. Often the game will block the way forward unless you defeat all of the enemies first, and this can get tedious in the later stages of the adventure when enemies are tougher, but your tools are still the same.
Where Soul Reaver 2 does shine, though, is in its cinematic presentation. It has an interesting story that will keep you engaged, and much better puzzles in the elemental forges especially, compared to the over-reliance on block puzzles in the first Soul Reaver. There is, however, a complete removal of bosses entirely in the sequel, which is odd, given the greater focus on combat. Likewise, Soul Reaver 2 is far more linear than its predecessor, removing optional health upgrades and the Glyphs. As with the first Soul Reaver, expect around 7-8 hours if you know what you’re doing, otherwise around 15 hours for completion for those new to the puzzles you’ll find here.
Two Halves of the Same Coin
You can see that Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered is a labor of love from developer Aspyr, with a whole host of bonus features that include lore explanations, maps from the Soul Reaver community, concept art, and fan art, along with even cosplays from the fantastic fanbase this series has. You’ll also find that some of the lost levels, parts that never made it into the first Soul Reaver, can be accessed and viewed here.
The package, as a whole then, is perfect for those of you with fond memories of the series and want a way of replaying them on modern systems. Some of the gameplay systems are dated by today’s standards, which newer players may find tough to get to grips with but persist with them and you’ll get a fantastic storyline with some deep lore. It’s unfortunate that the conclusion to the storyline, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, is missing from this package, but understandable considering the differences in the way the game plays from the Soul Reaver duology. Still, Raziel’s story is one of gaming’s best and one that everyone should experience at least once.
A Dated, but Welcome Return
The Legacy of Kain series has long been missed, and it’s fantastic to get a chance to return to them on modern systems. Unfortunately, many of the gameplay systems feel dated, and there are a few bugs in Soul Reaver 2 that holds this collection back a little.
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