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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered (PC) Review

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Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver

The Legacy of Kain series, based around the myth of the vampire, is a weird series in terms of video games. The first game in the series Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, is an isometric dungeon crawler created in the same vein as Diablo. However, it wasn’t until the series’ second and third games, going under the Soul Reaver title, that the series gained popularity with most game players.

Forsaking Kain, Raziel became the main character in the series and the more popular of the two. Now, 25 years after the release of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the Soul Reaver games have received the remaster treatment. Does this treatment bring the soul-sucking series back from the dead, or should it have been left in its eternal slumber?

Legacy of KainName: Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC (reviewed), Xbox One, & Xbox Series X/S
Developer: Aspyr & Crystal Dynamics
Publisher: Aspyr Media
Game Type: Action-adventure
Mode(s): Single-player
Release Date: December 10, 2024

 

spoilers

Soul Reaver: Saving a Series from Oblivion…

Soul Reaver Story Summary – SPOILERS

Soul Reaver 1 Summary
Raziel approaches Kain’s throne and extends his newly grown wings. In an act of seeming jealousy, Kain tears the bones from Raziel’s wings and has him thrown into the Lake of the Dead, a large natural whirlpool; however, Raziel is resurrected as a wraith by The Elder God to become his “soul reaver” and kill Kain, thus restoring Nosgoth. With The Elder God’s guidance, Raziel adapts to his new form and returns to Nosgoth. Infiltrating a Necropolis inhabited by the Melchahim vampires, Raziel finds his brother Melchiah, who has devolved into a beast unable to sustain his own flesh. After Raziel kills Melchiah and absorbs his soul, he confronts Kain among the ruined Pillars of Nosgoth in the Sanctuary of the Clans. Kain does not appear surprised to see Raziel, apparently having even been expecting him, and implies that he has destroyed Raziel’s vampire clan, which only enrages Raziel even further. When Raziel begins to criticize him, Kain simply launches a tirade against him before noting what has become of the empire and engaging him in combat. Kain quickly overpowers Raziel and attempts to strike him down with the Soul Reaver, a powerful sword that absorbs its victims’ souls, but the Reaver shatters when it strikes Raziel, and Kain escapes, strangely satisfied. Raziel enters the spectral realm to find the blade’s soul-devouring spectral form, which binds itself to him. After this, Raziel meets Ariel, who restores his strength and learns of Zephon’s location from The Elder God.

Raziel ventures into a large cathedral once inhabited by humans and finds the Zephonim clan. After ascending into the cathedral’s spires, he discovers that Zephon is now a large insect-like creature whose body has merged into the cathedral spire in which he dwells. Raziel kills Zephon and uses the gained power to infiltrate an ancient crypt. There, Raziel discovers coffins for members of the Sarafan, a fanatical order of vampire hunters killed centuries before Kain’s rule. To Raziel’s horror, he finds the crypt was designated for him and his brothers; as a cruel irony, Kain revived the Sarafan to serve him as his vampire sons. Raziel ventures through a secret passage under the crypt and finds a flooded abbey inhabited by the Rahabim clan, whose members have mutated into amphibians; its leader, Rahab, has become a merman. Raziel tells Rahab what he has learned about their human pasts, but Rahab is unmoved, claiming that Kain “saved” them, and attacks. Raziel defeats Rahab and absorbs his soul, then crosses the Lake of the Dead to the abandoned fortress of his brother Dumah. The Elder God explains that the Dumahim vampires were scattered following an invasion of human hunters. Raziel eventually finds Dumah shackled to his throne with his heart pierced. Raziel revives Dumah and leads him into a giant furnace, burning him alive and absorbing his soul.

Afterward, Raziel discovers the Oracle’s Cave, where Moebius the Time Streamer once hid the Chronoplast, a magical time machine. Raziel traverses the caves and finds Kain in the Chronoplast’s control room. Raziel is angered over what he has learned but Kain says that his actions are justified due to being subject to destiny. When Raziel confronts him over transforming the Sarafan into vampires, Kain scoffs at his perception of them as noble crusaders defending Nosgoth. Raziel attacks Kain while the latter continues to adjust the Chronoplast’s controls. Although Raziel eventually gains an advantage, the Chronoplast activates, and Kain escapes through a time portal, beckoning Raziel to follow. Raziel complies, ignoring warnings from The Elder God. At the end of the game, Raziel emerges from the timeslip and is greeted by Moebius. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver ends on a cliffhanger by showing a postscript, a verse where Moebius comments on the nature of time and his ability to “plunge the fate of planets into chaos”.

Soul Reaver 2 Summary
Raziel confronts Kain in Nosgoth’s wasteland and pursues him through a portal leading to the past. Moebius, the leader of a vampire-hunting crusade in this age, coerces Raziel to re-embrace his former heritage as a Sarafan vampire hunter by killing Kain. Though Raziel is initially eager to do so, his enthusiasm wanes over time as he witnesses the ruthlessness of Moebius’s soldiers. Kain, who is destined to die at Raziel’s hands in this era, implores Raziel to thwart fate and instead facilitate his quest to restore the Pillars. After he learns that Moebius serves The Elder God and that he has thus been duped, Raziel faces a decision: indulge his lust for vengeance and submit to fate by killing Kain, or defy his cohorts and exercise his free will by exerting mercy.

While exploring this period, Raziel discovers evidence that two ancient races waged war in Nosgoth’s distant past. One race created the Pillars to banish their adversaries, but the enemy race – the Hylden – retaliated with a curse that transformed the Pillars’ architects into the first vampires. Kain explains that had he sacrificed himself, the vampire race—the rightful inheritors of the Pillars—would have become extinct. Raziel chooses to spare Kain, causing a paradox; history reshuffles itself to accommodate the extension of Kain’s life. He, however, refuses to indulge Kain’s plans any further, instead opting to explore his own past. Vorador tells Raziel that the last of the ancient vampires, Janos Audron, held the key to Raziel’s destiny, but Janos was murdered by the Sarafan five centuries ago.

Deciding to speak with Janos, Raziel orders Moebius to send him further back in time. Moebius deceives Raziel, instead conveying him over a century into the future, where he and The Elder God highlight the consequences of the Pillars’ destruction to turn Raziel against Kain. Raziel navigates the future era and finds his own way back to the age of the Sarafan and Janos Audron; there, Janos presents Raziel with the Reaver, a younger version of the physical Soul Reaver blade which will later house a soul-devouring spirit. Suddenly, a group of Sarafan led by Raziel’s former, human self launches an ambush, and Janos sacrifices himself. Raziel swears vengeance as Janos dies, and pursues the attackers. He uses the Reaver to kill them and his former self and renounces his Sarafan past.

The wraith-blade attached to Raziel’s arm, over-aroused after the deaths of the Sarafan, suddenly seizes control of the physical Reaver, and impales Raziel; Raziel, horrified, then realizes his destiny. He has always been the ravenous spirit inside the Reaver, and therefore is fated to be stuck in a time loop; the sword shattered against him in Soul Reaver because it was unable to consume itself. While his soul is being drawn into the sword, Kain emerges and tears the Reaver from Raziel’s body, saving him in reciprocation and forcing history to reshuffle. However, this paradox strains Nosgoth’s history too far, enabling Hylden to return and jeopardize his ambition to restore the Pillars. Amidst Kain’s dismay and warning to not revive Janos Audron, Raziel slips back into the spirit realm and realizes that the wraith-blade is still bound to him, and despairingly laments that his destiny has not been changed, but merely postponed.

Story Review – Some Vague Spoilers

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered would make the story of Raziel into something of a great fantasy epic, with a lot of twists and turns involved as you try to get revenge on Kain. However, from the beginning of Soul Reaver, you quickly realize that you have been thrown into the middle of a story that you can’t find the beginning of. This is one of the biggest flaws with this series as most people won’t bother playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain before jumping into the two Soul Reaver Games.

Since this was a product of the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 eras, you’re going to get a lot of exposition happening through (thankfully) skippable scenes using the game graphics, but you’ll miss out on a lot of the reasoning as to why you are doing what you are doing. Luckily, there is a lore section in the bonus section that’ll help you understand the lore of the Legacy of Kain series, but ultimately you might find yourself getting lost if you just want to play the game.

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Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver

EFFORT! Honest to god EFFORT!! (Graphics)

I know I used it as the title for this section, but EFFORT, HONEST TO GOD FUCKING EFFORT!! If there is one thing that I have come to hate about remastered games is that there is minimal effort put into the process. A lot of games will just run the game through an AI program that upscales the original graphics to 1080p or 4K and call it a day, or they’ll release the PC port of the game with a brighter base setting and claim it’s the upgraded version. True remastering requires you to do more than that, and from the first moment of either game, you can tell Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered has effort put into it, making it heads above the rest of the crap I’ve reviewed this year.

From the outset Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered shows the love and care that has gone into making this version of the game the best-looking version possible. How do we know that? Because with a simple click of a button, you can change the graphics back to the PlayStation versions at any time… and man do those graphics look outdated and horrible by comparison. When in the remastered mode, everything looks textured and crisp, and every character model has been given a makeover to look as good as they could. Switching back, you can see how low-resolution the textures were, and the character models look like ass… How we survived the PlayStation era I’ll never know.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver

Soul Reaver: A Soul-Sucking by-Product of the Past (Gameplay)

If there is something that the developers could not improve, it’s the gameplay and camera for these games. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is still locked into the consoles of the age: the PlayStation & PlayStation 2. Back in this era, the camera was just as much of an enemy as the actual enemies on the screen were.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered tries to do what it can with the camera, allowing smooth movement in pretty much any direction, but the way it moves becomes a hazard since it will snap back to some weird positions, making the 3D movement of the character go all wonky and weird at times. You can avoid a lot of this by using the lock-on feature that helps with combat, but the game does end up making you rely on this too much, allowing enemies to get behind you and attack with you being helpless to do anything.

The other thing that comes with this being originally a Crystal Dynamics game is the fact that you are going to do a LOT of platforming between action moments, with the pace of the game slowing down to frustrating levels, the opening scenes alone are enough to make people quit the game out of boredom and frustration. Otherwise, you do have things mechanically that will annoy you, mostly missing ledges by a few inches due to a badly timed jump or glide… And if you hit the water, then I hope you like fighting your way through the same type of underworld area over and over again as this will happen to you more often than not. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is still as unforgiving as it was back in its heyday.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver

Reviving a Classic for the Fans (Replayability)

To say that Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is a remaster made for the fans, I’m not trying to hype it up. Outside of the amazing graphical upgrade job that the team put into the two games, there is a huge amount of bonus content for anyone who wants to do a deep dive into the Soul Reaver games. You get everything from Galleries, which house not only concept art, background images, and the usual content you would find in an art book, but you also have photos of cosplayers and fan art included, showing respect to the fanbase. There are also full OSTs of both games for you to listen to, along with things like outtakes, demo videos, trailers, in-depth lore and location information, and playable versions of cut content from both games. The bonus section alone is worth the price you will pay to buy this game.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver

Soul Reaver: The Legacy of Kain Will Live On (Closing)

After reviewing so many lazy remasters over the past year, it is great to end the year on a remaster that has some goddamn effort put into it. Not only have the games been given a lot of love and care when it comes to the graphical upgrade, but the depth of the extras that are included makes this version go right up there with one of my favorites: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Cowabunga Collection.

When you see an effort like this put into a remaster, you want to see other titles receive the same amount of love and respect that Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered received. If more developers put this much effort into remastering old titles for the nostalgia crowd, I would look more favorably upon them… However, that does leave me with one question: Where is the remaster of the original Legacy of Kain?

Review Disclosure Statement: Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remaster was provided to us by Aspyr Media for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please read our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy page for more information.

Summary

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is what I expect a remaster to do. Not only did they make the main games playable with upgraded graphics, but they added so much bonus content that has never been released before that it makes the game worth buying for that bonus content alone. While the gameplay and camera is unfortunately locked into the by-gone age of the PlayStation 1 & 2, Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is well worth the return from the afterlife.

Pros

  • Actual effort in remastering the graphics
  • A ton of bonus content
  • The ability to switch back and forth with the graphics

Cons

  • Gameplay and camera locked into its by-gone era
  • Cutscenes are only upscaled, not remade
  • No Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
Overall
4
Karl

The main "Australian arm" of The Outerhaven. Karl primarily spends time playing and reviewing video games while taking time to occasionally review the latest movie or piece of gaming technology.