The first Legacy of Kain game, Blood Omen, had two endings that the player could end the game with. In this next game in the franchise, the decision that Kain had chosen is now canonized.
It would be clear to wiser players that Crystal Dynamics had considered that one of the endings would pretty much end the saga for good - that is not a good outcome for the franchise considering that one of its greatest selling point was its fantastic story-telling. Hence, the main protagonist, who is Blood Omen's anti-hero Kain, had chosen the more morally dubious action: to let his world, Nosgoth, rot in the corruption that he had deliberately allowed to run rampant while ruling whatever is left of it as its overlord.
Of course, such a decision would not solve problems that had beset Nosgoth, and this canonized development of the story of the saga provides a good excuse for Crystal Dynamics to work on it some more.
Some time into his rule, Kain had acquired several lieutenants, who aspire to be vampires as powerful as he is. As they expand Kain's domain, they grow and develop more powers that would place them in echelons of being that are much higher than the mundane vampires that Kain once knew and whom himself apparently once was. One of the lieutenants, known by the name of Raziel, happened to have evolved powers beyond that of Kain's; he grew wings.
In what seemed like a fit of rage that may have been borne out of jealousy, Kain attacked his most favored 'son', and cast his broken body into the mysterious Lake of the Dead.
True death was not to be the end of Raziel, for he was mutated into something far more insidious and very, very wretched.
This is where the game begins. The player is trust into the role of Raziel, who awakes in a very twisted realm that he barely recognizes. This is where the game makes use of its camera to show off its surroundings, clearly informing the player that this world is fully 3-D and is definitely not the sprite- and texture-based 2-D world that Blood Omen was.
(Blood Omen was criticized for having such graphics when much of the rest of the games industry had moved on to full 3-D polygon-based realms. In the case of Soul Reaver, it uses the same engine that was used to run Gex 3, which was another Crystal Dynamics game.)
The next matter that was brought to Raziel's - and the player's - attention was that he has a voice in his mind. This belongs to the Elder God, an enigmatic being who seemingly has a body in the mortal realm yet is capable of looking into both the mortal realm and that of the one that Raziel has fallen into.
The Elder God acts as a guide, informing Raziel (and the player) how to make use of any of his new-found powers and his limitations. For most parts of the game, he dispenses advice that is generally quite useful, and this usually concerns new moves that Raziel earns and any items that he comes across. Otherwise, the Elder God acts like a player behind the scenes (in the dramatic sense, that is).
Raziel is given a new purpose: hunt down his former 'brothers' and Kain, and slay them.
The game first starts off by having Raziel (and the player) getting used to how he can move about. Much of the superhuman vigour that Raziel had as a fully fleshed vampire is gone, but he is compensated with unholy and utterly supernatural physical prowess. He can jump high and glide with his tattered wings (which while damaged, have the advantage of being able to benefit from a slight but satisfactory unnatural wind that Raziel appears to be able to conveniently conjure regardless of anywhere that he is at), as a default.
There are other actions that he can perform, such as scaling certain walls with his claws and swim, but he only gains the abilities to do so as the story progresses; there will be more on this matter later.
Many of his physical feats which are associated with motion will be used to navigate around obstacles in locations in either realm, and he will be doing so to solve puzzles that are otherwise barring the progress of his vengeful quest. In other words, there is a lot of platforming to be done in this game, as well as the physical manipulation of a lot of objects.
It is worth noting here that Crystal Dynamics have made several games in the Tomb Raider franchise before, and they would appear to have learned lessons from them. The controls needed to maneuver Raziel around the environments that he has to navigate through are satisfactory; it is very difficult indeed to have Raziel unwittingly run off cliff faces, and even so, Raziel cannot die through a long fall, a benefit that comes from his supernatural state.
Of course, games with platforming and puzzle-solving sequences had been done long before Soul Reaver. Its innovation in this game design, however, involves Raziel's ability to shift between the aforementioned two realms of existence.
One of these realms is of course the mortal one, in which Raziel is able to manipulate things and is generally subjected to immediately logical laws of physics. However, Raziel is no longer a creature with an anchor to the mortal realm, and therefore slowly but surely loses his life-force while he remains in it.
Fortunately, death of a corporeal body is not an end to a creature such as Raziel. He simply returns to the other realm, which can indefinitely sustain his existence. Being present in this realm also allows him to regenerate, though this occurs too slowly to be of any significant benefit. (Even if he dies in the other realm, he simply reconstitutes his being elsewhere in it, that is, at designated checkpoints.) The player can also have Raziel shifting from the mortal realm to the other realm at any location, though the opposite does not work in the same way (more on this later).
The other realm is the Spectral dimension, which is a mockery of the mortal one. It imitates the physical realm, but twists the spectral counterparts of some structures in the mortal realm and adds mind-bending (and sometimes grisly) details to the surfaces of objects. More importantly, these additions and 'adjustments' can be exploited by Raziel (and the player), because, as a mimicry of the mortal realm, some laws of physics apply to the Spectral realm.
Platforms that have been warped by the twisting that occurs when Raziel enters the Spectral realm can be scaled and moved on in order to reach places whose counterpart in the mortal realm cannot be normally reached otherwise. The game happens to use this mechanic a lot in interesting ways, and also accompanies all that twisting and warping with animations that may be entertaining to watch (though it may nauseate some, but then this game was never meant for the queasy anyway).
While Raziel can enter the Spectral realm at will, he cannot enter the mortal realm as easily. He has to locate portals which can recreate him in the mortal realm, and these are usually located at the start of a platforming sequence.
As for the puzzles themselves, the themes of their designs are influenced by the storyline. The process that turned Raziel into what he is did not happen in the mere moments as he had perceived it, but had actually occurred over hundreds of years. He returns to the mortal realm to find just about every locale that he and his erstwhile cohorts had reigned over had crumbled into ruins, or worse. Therefore, most of the puzzles fittingly involve mechanisms, both mechanical and magical, that had lost their function over time and have to be restored to (somewhat) operational state.
These puzzles would be quite dull to solve, if not for the reminiscing monologues that Raziel makes whenever he recognizes a locale and any mechanisms in it. These monologues also happen to contain some helpful hints on what he needs to do, and the camera (along with Raziel himself) also happens to look at locations that are critical to the puzzles.
The innovation to puzzle-solving in this game can be seen from how the puzzles require the utilization of Raziel's plane-shifting abilities. The Spectral version of the locale will have strategically located portals, while either realm will have structures oriented in such a way that they can be used to reach places in the other realm, and often in an alternating manner. Successfully completing a platforming sequence or solving a puzzle in this manner can be a very satisfying endeavour.
Of course, with a protagonist that is keen on vengeance and being set in the cruelly desecrated world of Nosgoth, the game is not just about platforming. There is also combat to worry about, and unfortunately, at least to this reviewer, it is not as well-designed as the platforming and puzzle-solving is.
Having Nosgoth under the grip of unholy corruption for hundreds of years have wiped out most of its mortal inhabitants, leaving its inheritors as only near-bestial monsters. Raziel's former kin, the vampires, in particular suffered greatly. Instead of evolving into the almost-divine creature that Raziel would have become, they have degenerated into feral creatures who prowl and hunt for those not of their kind.
The Spectral realm is not any safer either. It is populated by creatures who feed on souls that had left the just-deceased in the mortal realm, and Raziel, who while not technically a disembodied soul, is also on the menu of such creatures (who also devour each other when they have the opportunity).
For most of the game, the player will have the camera looking at Raziel's back and whatever that is ahead of him. During combat, however, the camera will change angles a bit. It does not do a good job of showing which direction that they are facing relative to their surroundings. The only thing that the player knows to be certain during combat is that Raziel can lock onto one of his enemies to always face it and that they are doing the same to him. This is not convenient when there is more than one enemy to worry about.
It does do a good job of showing the distance between Raziel and his focused-upon opponent, however. This is handy, because certain enemies have short-ranged attacks or lunges that can carry forward a certain distance that is quite easy to figure out as the player has Raziel fight more of the same kind of creatures.
Raziel can use his claws (on his feet or hand) to cut enemies down, or he can opt to pick up and use ancient weapons that had been left hanging as (long-neglected) decorations on walls or within (long-abandoned) weapon racks. The latter can make short work of most enemies, but due to their ancient state, will eventually break under repeated usage.
(Raziel can also choose to throw these, turning them into spears that can impale enemies.)
Speaking of impaling, regardless of the kind of monsters that he has to face in the mortal realm, he usually has to deliver the killing blow by one of several ways that typically involve exposing the monsters to hazards which are typically deadly to vampires.
Raziel can impale them on spikes that had been mounted on walls as baroque decorations (or on pole-arm weapons that he is using), chuck them into patches of sunlight (which cause them to burst into flames spontaneously - and which also apparently hurt Raziel as well though to a much lesser extent), throwing them into water (which they are apparently catastrophically allergic to) or torching them with a source of fire. There are also a few environmental hazards in the game that can instantly obliterate anything caught in them (in the case of Raziel, he gets sent back to a checkpoint in the Spectral realm).
Most encounters with such 'regular' enemies tend to conveniently occur near such hazards. This expedient game design would have caused some disbelief, if not for the consideration that Nosgoth has indeed become a ruined world full of danger.
The design of the enemies in the mortal realm are dependent on the theme of the stages in play. Each of these stages is associated with one of his brothers, who have grown into monstrous creatures which while still having sentience, have their minds already irreversibly savaged by their transformations and the passage of centuries.
For example, the first brother to be encountered has turned into a huge brute, so conversely his minions are similarly direct and witless in their aggression towards Raziel. However, not all creatures are like the progeny of the first brother. Another brother and his minions have learned to overcome their weakness towards water, so they take to the water like fish.
After the relatively easy first brother, Soul Reaver offers a range of interesting enemies to battle, much to the contribution of the sense of variety of mortal enemies in the game.
However, enemies in the Spectral realm are less impressive in comparison. Most of them are just of only two types: the clumsy, troglodyte-like Sluagh and the creepy, flight-capable Wraith. It can feel very tiresome to fight the same kind of ghostly monsters every time Raziel has to enter the Spectral realm, for they populate just about every location in it.
As for the performance of enemies in this game, it can be said that they cannot be defeated with mere single-minded button-presses (unlike the first Blood Omen, in which all fights are practically battles of attrition with enemies who have only one pattern of attack). Many of them are capable of parrying, dodging to the side, and pulling off special moves that are difficult for Raziel to defend against.
Furthermore, all enemies in the mortal realm will eventually regenerate health, even the ones that have been hurt to a dazed state. Moreover, if they are slain with a tool (especially spikes) and the tool is removed too soon after death, they simply return to (un-)life. Therefore, if Raziel has to return to the Spectral realm without finishing his mortal enemies off properly, he will have to face them again at their fullest strength.
To ensure that they are truly dead, the player will have to wait until their souls are released from their ruined body; these souls can be seen by Raziel, and he can vacuum them into his maw to restore his life-force, as well as make certain that his slain enemies remain slain.
These souls will escape into the Spectral realm after a while, however, and they will be at the mercy of the creatures of that realm. Gameplay-wise, this game design can be a bit inconvenient if there happens to be a lot of enemies to deal with, for vacuuming souls makes Raziel vulnerable to attacks from any enemies that are still around.
Still, the design of mortal enemies are still fair, compared to those in the Spectral realm. Every time Raziel returns to the Spectral realm, the enemies in that location respawn, which can be a big problem if Raziel happens to shift back right next to the spawning point of a Wraith, which is one of the toughest enemies in the game. Coupled with Raziel's ever dwindling health in the physical realm, sequences in the game that require a lot of shifting can be very frustrating if there happen to be tough fights that have to be fought every time.
Moreover, if Raziel returns to Spectral realm, his health pool reverts to the original default maximum. This reviewer is not certain if this is a bug or an intended game design, but this can result in significant frustration if the locale happens to have plenty of spectral enemies to be dealt with.
As mentioned earlier, Raziel does regain health by simply staying in the Spectral realm, but this regeneration occurs so slowly that it is only of use during platforming sequences, and even so, Raziel may still not have enough health for the battle in the next segment.
In return, the Spectral realm tends to spawn a lot of "loose" souls automatically (every locale will have a pre-determined maximum number of souls that can be present), so after clearing the area, Raziel can recover all of his health, which will be raised proportionately when he does return to the mortal realm. This does ease frustrations a bit.
If it is not apparent already, Raziel's former brothers double as the bosses in this game. Being powerful (former) vampire lords, they were particularly affected by the corruption that sickened Nosgoth and have turned into the primogenitors of monsters. Many of them cannot be slain in the same way as their progeny, and have to be defeated with the clever use of environmental hazards, or (painful) manipulation of their own brood. As a consequence, boss fights do feel somewhat methodical once the player has figured out what to do, but to this reviewer, this design of boss fights does not lessen the satisfaction that would be received once they have been dealt with, due to Raziel's musings on their passing.
Soul Reaver is indeed a story-driven game, and this can be seen in how Raziel's versatility increases as the game progresses. Every defeated boss grants him a new ability that allows him to traverse through levels in different ways, such as the aforementioned abilities to scale certain walls and swim.
These abilities are not only used to solve puzzles and perform some mandatory platforming to reach the next place that is important to Raziel's quest, they are also used to reach collectible items, such as glyphs that increase his maximum health and increase a different pool of energy that is used to power his mind-over-matter abilities (that he will gain at one point in the story).
These collectibles are located in places that are optional to reach. They are, appropriately enough, challenging to get to. There is certainly a sense of satisfaction when the player does get to collect these items, as they help greatly in the long run.
The game uses a combination of a checkpoint and game-saving system. Generally, every distinct locale, regardless of its immenseness will ever have only one checkpoint, which can be a huge bother if Raziel is required to scale several platforms in a series and a slip would mean that he has start all over from the bottom again. Likewise, saving a game at any time merely creates a copy of the game-state when Raziel has passed through the latest checkpoint.
The game does nothing to inform the player of this quirk, so a player who knew no better would be wasting time making unnecessary game-saves that, once reloaded, will send Raziel back to the last checkpoint that he had reached and with his progress only up to that point in time.
Some time into the game, Raziel will eventually retrieve the name-sake weapon of the game, which is the Soul Reaver, but only in Spectral form. While its inclusion in the game is pivotal to the story, its design with respect to gameplay does not have enough polish; the Soul Reaver is a powerful weapon that can be imbued with elements like fire for damage bonuses, but it can only be summoned when Raziel is at full health, which is not often. The Soul Reaver does preserve his health from leaking away while he is in the mortal realm in return, but this does not diminish this reviewer's suspicion that the traits of the Soul Reaver's Spectral form had not been well thought out.
Graphics-wise, the game does look a bit disappointing, especially if one considers that this game is made by the same developer who made Tomb Raider games, which are known for their variety of themes in level design. Most of the level designs in Soul Reaver look dull, dilapidated and grim, though this can be attributed to the state of Nosgoth during the timeline of this game in the Legacy of Kain saga.
The textures used to map surfaces in the environments of this game particularly deserve mention of dubious worth. They tend to look washed out and stretched to the point of being blur.
The Spectral realm fares a bit better, what with additional details like sickly veins and tentacle-like weed being smoothly added onto environmental surfaces as decals whenever Raziel shifts. However, the Spectral realm does use an entirely different colour palette (which is mostly hues of green and yellow) for the Spectral realm, which results in reduced contrast among objects of interest in that realm, especially platforms that Raziel needs to hop across.
Enemies in this realm also blend into the background, and if not for their glowing baleful eyes, they would be difficult to spot especially at a great distance.
Models that populate these environments fare much better in detail quality and contrast, fortunately. Raziel's own model has plenty of polygons, and despite how ghastly everyone in this game looks, there are no other models resembling his. Models for enemies and objects of interest - at least those in the mortal realm - also have textures and colours that are intended to provide appropriate contrast and thematic appeal (i.e. being clearly ghastly and horrible to look at).
The animations for models in this game are probably the best and most effective component of the graphical designs. Unnatural creatures move in a creepy manner that would rival those in games of the horror adventure genre, mechanical mechanisms grind and churn as one would expect them to and magical sparks and bursts move in a manner that is intended to startle anyone not used to magic - as magic should.
What the graphics of the game lack, its sound design more than shores up.
The quality of voice-acting should be apparent to the player from the on-set, especially to a player who had played Blood Omen. The cast includes veteran voice actors and actresses for video games, including Michael Bell (who voices the appropriately embittered and tortured Raziel), the late Tony Jay (who voiced the insidious Elder God), Anna Gunn (who had starred in a few live action drama series) and Simon Templeman (who reprises his role as the devious Kain).
Every voice actor/actress brings forth his/her line that effectively gets the message across with enough emotional depth to pay tribute to the themes of the Legacy of Kain saga. After this game, a player would be hard-pressed to identify any other game (outside of the Legacy of Kain franchise) that has a voice-acting cast with greater potency.
The sound effects that accompany noisy occurrences and the sounds that inhuman creatures make in this game are much less sophisticated than the voice-acting (of course), but they are no less effective than emphasizing the themes of Legacy of Kain, specifically that of the regression of civilization.
The ruins in this game yawn, creak and moan, as if protesting the neglect that they had fallen into. All creatures that look bestial sound suitably so, and getting rid of them often results in satisfying howls of pain that they deserve.
The musical soundtracks appear to be re-renditions of the ones in Blood Omen. Many locales appear to share the same soundtrack, especially that of the Spectral realm, so they can get a bit repetitive, yet they are not terribly dreadful to listen to in the first place.
In conclusion, Soul Reaver may lack some polish in its designs, especially in its graphical presentation and its pace of combat, but its other aspects that are more well done compensate for its flaws.