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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver tells the story of Raziel,
one of the undead lieutenants of the vampire lord Kain. Jealous
of Raziel's newly evolved wings, Kain tears them apart and casts
his former champion into the netherworld. But something--some
kind of powerful entity that dwells in the netherworld--has
restored Raziel to a semblance of life and has set him on a path
of vengeance.
After this tantalizing movie introduction, you take control of
Raziel in the spectral realm, where your new existence is
explained to you. From there you enter the physical plane, ready
to begin your quest for power and revenge. Raziel's combat moves
are extremely brutal, as you'd expect from a vampire who has
returned from the dead. When he finds a spear, Raziel gleefully
stabs and slashes before he impales his foe, lifts it off the
ground, and feasts on its soul. Doing so enhances Raziel's power,
and devouring the souls of the rest of Kain's lieutenants is the
only way to get the special abilities--scaling walls, phasing
through gates, etc.--needed to reach Kain himself. While fun for
adults, parents should take note: this game is definitely not
suitable for kids.
Review
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Not everyone enjoyed Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, a
top-down action-adventure in the vein of Nintendo's classic
Legend of Zelda. But many were compelled to play it through
because of its remarkable story, told by its eloquent vampire
protagonist. And Kain's vengeful narrative is the solitary
precedent for Soul Reaver, Blood Omen's sequel, which is a 3D
action game focussing on his firstborn son. As a sequel to a
story, Soul Reaver expands upon Blood Omen by shifting the
perspective and complicating, rather than recycling, the
preexisting themes. And as a sequel to a game, Soul Reaver boldy
abandons all but its most essential ties to its predecessor, even
as it conspicuously resolves the original's technical problems.
But while Soul Reaver starts strong, both as a testament to
storytelling and technical achievement in its genre, its gameplay
gradually wears thin and ultimately falls short of the game's
high ambitions.
Kain's world of Nosgoth is teetering on the brink of destruction
by the time his son Raziel rises from an ancient grave in a
watery abyss. However, Nosgoth is an entirely beautiful place
even in its death throes. Gentle rainfall, bleak skies, and
decrepit architecture subdue what would otherwise be a majestic
countryside, one so vividly realized that it often looks real.
Interior architecture is similarly detailed but even more
unbelievable in and scale. Gigantic vents and furnaces,
subterrannean lakes and catacombs, and other mysterious natural,
unnatural, and supernatural vistas abound and make Raziel's
travels constantly impressive to behold.
Raziel's ability to shift from the material plane to the
spectral plane at will is especially remarkable; this transition
bizarrely and beautifully affects his environment, which bends
and twists as its colors warp. Other special effects, including
Raziel's ghostly blade from which the game takes its title, are
equally stunning. However, if you can tear your eyes away from
the scenery, you'll notice that some of Raziel's enemies look a
little plain and that texture s on the scenery can split at
the seams from time to time. The camera angle can get confusing
as well - but all these are negligible nuisances in what's an
otherwise incredible-looking game. Yet in spite of its graphics,
Soul Reaver's strongest technical achievement must be that the
game never, ever pauses to load new scenery, a feature that will
spoil you the next time you try to play just about any other
action game.
Of course, while the scenery around Raziel will change
constantly, he himself remains a constant. Fortunately, he's
animated and articulated so well that you won't mind looking at
his emaciated body and tattered wings as much as you might
expect. Control is tight and responsive either with keyboard or
game pad, and in fact, it's a real pleasure to watch Raziel
lithely jump, climb, crawl, and fight - almost as much as it's a
pleasure to hear him speak. Just as in Blood Omen before it, the
quality of Soul Reaver's professional voice acting is matched
only by the quality of its script. Characters like Raziel and
Kain come alive through their speech, and Raziel's embittered
conversations with his brothers make the subsequent battles feel
all the more meaningful and epic. An appropriate soundtrack spurs
you into action during such fights, while it inconspicuously
plays in the background at all other times, though you may start
to notice it becoming repetitive.
The soundtrack's repetition becomes evident only when the
gameplay itself surrenders to routine, which happens rarely but
with increasing frequency over the course of Soul Reaver. Raziel
has a remarkable array of talents that should have precluded this
game from ever slowing down: He can jump five times his height,
he can practically fly, he has superhuman strength, he drinks
souls, he shifts planes, and he's completely immortal. While
these abilities come into play more often than not in Soul
Reaver, at other times Raziel is reduced to such menial tasks as
arranging blocks in obvious patterns to unlock doors. Some of
these block puzzles are fun, while some of them are not, but
there's really no question that the game has too many of them.
And although you wouldn't expect to lose a fight if you were
immortal, Raziel's few types of foes rarely pose a threat or
present any challenge. Before he acquires the Soul Reaver weapon,
Raziel at least needs to think about how to dispose of his
enemies using appropriate anti-vampire methods, such as throwing
them in water or sunlight or burning or impaling them. But his
spectral lets him slay his victims almost effortlessly, to
the point where you'll reminisce about how you used to get by
without it.
Fortunately or unfortunately, combat isn't frequent in Soul
Reaver. More often than not you'll be working your way through
the environment in search of Raziel's brothers, taking heed of
your powers and weaknesses as you progress. All the while,
Raziel's gifts of immortality and plane-shifting allow for unique
and clever puzzles and challenges, even as they justify the
elimination of frustrating save-and-reload scenarios so common in
most 3D action games, in which death comes swiftly and often.
Raziel gradually acquires certain powers, such as swimming and
phasing through doors, but his basic skills - running and jumping
- are ultimately his strongest.
By the end of the game you'll feel that you're relying on
Raziel's peripheral abilities too often and that the action that
made the first half of the game so outstanding has been almost
completely replaced by badly contrived puzzles. It's practically
obvious that more effort went into the first hours of Soul Reaver
than the last, and it's true that the game's abrupt and entirely
unsatisfying ending sequence was the consequence of a decision to
cut the game short and leave room for a sequel. Apologists would
argue that the game's anticlimax merely enforces your empathy for
the tortured, fratricidal protagonist. But while the steady
decline of the game's initially near-perfect pacing will
assuredly dampen your overall experience, that doesn't change the
fact that Soul Reaver is original, enjoyable, and an excellent
game by any standards except its own. --Greg Kasavin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
