O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Legacy of Kain has been one of the most important franchises for me personally. While it has not been a series I replayed very often, unlike a lot of survival horror classics, it has remained a benchmark of worldbuilding, character writing and storytelling. The incredible work Silicon Knights did when creating the world of Nosgoth for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain still holds up. As do the stunning writing and cutscene direction of Amy Hennig and her team with later entries, as Crystal Dynamics became the owners of the franchise. There has been only one dud in the main series (Blood Omen 2), and even that game had its moments. Franchise consistently had incredible music, some of the best voice acting in games and one of the most cleverly written storylines… That to this day remains unfinished. Legacy of Kain: Defiance, the final “proper” entry in the series was released in 2003 and was an ending, but not the ending to the incredible tale started in 1996. And since then only cancelled projects, including some incredibly misguided ones, followed. By now, with almost all of the original team spread across the industry (or sadly not among the living) getting a sequel is not just unlikely but may even be preferable. The industry is too different and Legacy of Kain requires a strong vision and choices that development studios and especially publishers would simply not risk to make.
So, given that getting no future games in this wonderful franchise might be the best outcome possible, let’s look at its past with the recently released Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered.
As a franchise, Legacy of Kain has always been most influenced by The Legend of Zelda titles. Blood Omen is unquestionably structured around A Link to the Past, whereas Soul Reaver and its sequel take this structure into 3D, with unsurprising influence of Ocarina of Time. Even the more stealth driven Blood Omen 2 or the Devil May Cry inspired Defiance still kept a lot of the Zelda DNA in their general structure and mechanics, especially for puzzles and exploration. But lets focus on the two Soul Reaver titles as they are the ones being remastered. Even if it is a shame that Blood Omen isn’t getting this treatment first, being the introduction to the world of Nosgoth.
Both Soul Reaver titles are third person perspective action adventure games with emphasis on platforming and combat. The general movement and controls are in-between the grid based and methodical classic Tomb Raider titles and the modern context sensitive platforming. And while the combat also feels a tad outdated by modern standards, its basics are not that dissimilar from typical hack and slash adventures of today, with the ability to lock onto enemies and a collection of simple combos and dodges. Soul Reaver 2 also adds block into the mix, but otherwise the controls and general abilities are almost exactly the same between the games.
That includes the defining feature of Soul Reaver titles – ability to shift between realms. Originally envisioned as a game with no ties to Blood Omen, what became Soul Reaver was always meant to feature a protagonist who can “shift” between a world of living and a world of the dead. Raziel, the main character and the “reaper of souls”, is an unkillable being who can exist in both the “material realm” and the “spectral realm”. Material realm is the normal world where you can interact with things as you normally would and switching to it is only possible using specific portals when at full health. Switching to the spectral realm (the world of spirits), on the other hand, is possible at any point and it always happens when Raziel runs out of health while in the material realm. And in there things take on a very stylish twisted look, but a lot of the things become immaterial and impossible to interact with. However, there are things that can only be done in the spectral realm and as such, a lot of the puzzles, especially in the first game, are centered around this shifting mechanic.
Though, that’s where the games start to differ quite drastically, so it’s time to describe them on their own.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is, in my opinion, the best “Ocarina of Time”-style action adventure game. The development of the game started before Ocarina, so Crystal Dynamics had a chance to find their own way of transferring the Blood Omen ideas into a 3D world and the results are fantastic. While the world of the game is significantly smaller than in Blood Omen, what’s lost in size is often compensated in details. Soul Reaver features a completely seamless world, with no visible loading screens, that also remembers almost every single change you make in it. Take a weapon and use it to kill an enemy and the weapon will remain in that exact spot forever. And so may the enemy if you don’t eat its soul (or it’s designed to respawn no matter what). Change the position of a moveable block – the exact position is remembered. Exploring this world is still so exciting and rewarding as each new ability you gain unlocks something somewhere as it would in the best metroidvanias. And even more shockingly – the world never closes up, so even if you save at the very end, you can still explore and re-explore every single area if you want to.
It looks and sounds amazing too, not just for a PS1 game. The gameplay mostly aged well… It does rely a bit too much on block pushing puzzles and camera can get in the way of platforming. But all of it is easy to excuse. Even the combat, that has never been the strongest suit of Legacy of Kain games, feels quite solid and the main gimmick of it is quite neat. Essentially, since you’re fighting nigh immortal vampires most of the time, you must first get them to a weakened state and then use stage hazards to finish them off. Impale them with something, set them on fire or throw them into water and only then will they die, leaving their soul behind. Being almost immortal, however, allows them to get their soul back and then be stuck in stasis until whatever special element killed them is taken away, when they will rise up again. It’s a cool system that can be finicky at times, but is easy to excuse because of how exciting the whole experience is. The story and voice acting is top notch, the music is great and the fact that the game ends on a “To be continued” (because originally it was supposed to have a different ending that the developers didn’t have enough time to finish) is no longer frustrating, because the story was continued in the sequel.
The remaster is, for the most part, absolutely perfect. Updated models and textures look great and fit the original look of the game with only Kain looking a bit out of place. There is now a map that shows upgrades if you’ve found all the upgrades in the area and even the compass from the second game. There are interaction prompts as well if you want them. And if not, you can disable these additions and ignore the map. The original fully dynamic soundtrack system from the PS1 version has been recreated (it was completely cut in the old PC port) and the game fully supports analogue controls for movement and camera. All the original versions of the game used two buttons to move the camera left or right. Levels that were unfinished and cut from the final release are included in the bonus features, so if you were following the progress on the cut content via wonderful fan sites like The Lost Worlds, you can finally experience the cut content for yourself. The widescreen support is also mostly perfectly realized. Almost all cutscenes are now skippable, which is also true for the sequel. And weirdly enough, a real-time day/night cycle has been re-implemented into the game, despite not being enabled in the original release, though it has been disabled by default with the first update…
Why? Well, because it was implemented very poorly. During darker times of the day some levels were almost impossible to see. And that’s not something that could be tweaked in settings either. You see, a lot of the development team here has previously worked on the Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, which has the exact same issue – there are no video settings for the game. No resolution, no brightness, no nothing. And it’s far from the only issue of the remastered version. The way parts of the levels stream in is clearly not working correctly in the new version, so at best you will see parts of the level appear out of nothing in clear view. At worst, you might get into a section of the level that simply didn’t fully load in, which may make the game permanently unwinnable, if a key item simply falls out of bounds. Though for that you would need to save after it happened, because for some reason the saving is still manual only. So be sure to save your game unless you want to lose your progress. Luckily, you can do it at almost any time.
Once you go through the overall amazing experience of the first game, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 will feel very different. On one hand, this remains one of the greatest story-driven titles out there. The way the story is expanded and told in this game is just incredible. It still holds up unless you’re the type of person who likes their games to talk less, even when writing is amazing. Originally being a PS2 game, it also looks better and the soundtrack has more layers to it, while the voice acting sounds cleaner and has even better delivery. The puzzles are more varied and some of the puzzle mechanics from the original game are expanded to be themed around the key story elements better.
However… It’s also a much smaller and completely linear experience. It takes about twice less time to complete the game, most of that times spent inside “puzzle dungeons” that unlock new elemental powers and cutscenes. There are no optional upgrades or even optional exploration in the game. And the world, despite now having a map and a compass even in the original release, feels extremely small and fake. On top of that, combat was somehow made more frustrating, as enemies love to block all of the time and their blocks cannot be broken. All while having even more enemies thrown at you all the time. It’s normal to just run and jump around enemies in the first Soul Reaver from time to time, only engaging in combat when it prevents you from solving puzzles. But in Soul Reaver 2 you will be doing it even more often as fighting enemies is unfun.
Frustratingly, the remaster release doesn’t fix much over the older PC port of the game. The widescreen works a bit better, however until the first update the 2D elements were stretched, supposedly because the game didn’t consider 1440p a 16:9 resolution. The FOV in the gameplay and cutscenes feels off, even after the update that fixed the above issue with the widescreen, so elements may be extremely zoomed in and framed incorrectly. The motion blur effects that emphasized space distortion during specific parts of the game in the PS2 original, are still absent. The updated models don’t always fit the old animations, game sometimes exhibits very odd visual bugs. Though, on the other hand, this release does fix a lot of audio issues and does not seem to suffer from the same world streaming issues as the first game. Still – this does not feel as meaningful of an upgrade over the old PC port as the first game does.
The overall feel from this Remastered collection is very strange. On one hand – it’s easy to see the work of all the fans involved. People who kept updating fan sites over the last few decades, who created texture packs and model updates. Who fixed the games, made them compatible with modern hardware. It’s easy to see the love and care of these people, but a lot of that passion is often poorly presented and managed in this release. Bonus menus are a confusing mess that will be hard to decipher and understand for newcomers and weren’t all that clear even for me. The general presentation of the collection, as a complete package, also feels as if it was managed by people who simply didn’t care. Who had access to all the hard work made by fans, and cobbled it together just so they can have a product to sell.
On top of that, Aspyr has yet again decided to partner with russian tax-paying citizen and organizations and added russian content, made specifically for this release. Thus potentially financing war crimes that russians commit daily for years now using the said tax money… Plus, if Saber are the managers of this collection just like they were for the Tomb Raider games, they’re probably the reason why so many elements are so lazily done. Why there are no video options and proper settings, why there is lack of quality control, why this collection feels like it was managed by people who do not care. The contrast now felt especially eye opening, as I’ve recently played The Thing: Remastered – a not very good game that had so much effort put into its remastering that the end result felt like a modern title and not a PS2 era game. If NightDive can remaster a crappy title from the same era with that level of quality, why are we not getting a huge cult classic series like Legacy of Kain get the same treatment?..
Yet, the sad thing is – Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered is still the best way to play these games. The first game, even with the potentially disastrous bugs of the remastered version, simply does not have a better version available. While the second game works better than the old PC port, which is the best you could get apart from playing on PS2. It’s just a real shame to see Crystal Dynamics throwing their legacy to such cheap remastering jobs, instead of doing them a solid. Because no matter how hard working the fans who helped bring this collection together worked, all of their distinct efforts suffer from the general implementation made by people who seemingly don’t care in the slightest. So yeah, this revisit was somewhat bittersweet. But it didn’t detract from the fact that I still love playing Soul Reaver and experiencing the story of Soul Reaver 2. And you should play them as well.