Pros: You’re an immortal, upgrades like new abilities, magic, lots of weapons.
Cons: You can get lost, this game is like a maze.
The Bottom Line: Bad game due to needless puzzles, most people would bail out on this one, only if your a die-hard fan probably. Some action, small variety of enemies. Highly detailed.
morris64468's Full Review: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver for PlayStation 1
A sequel to the games of KAIN, be a child of Kain named Raziel, you receive the gift of wings before Kain,(you're creator, he is supposed to get a gift then you and your brothers get the gift after Kain). Which makes him very angry and he has you killed by your brothers. You are brought back by some elder god (Zephon) who gives you a chance at avenging your death.
You immortal, sort of, you can run out of energy and get sent back to this elder god's room (who brought you back) but after you run out of energy you go into another world, the world of the dead, first, (looks similar to where you were at in the world of the living area, with some changes, like structures damaged). If you run out of energy there, then you get sent back to the Zephon's room.
After a while you'll receive the Soul Reaver after a fight with Kain, never do kill him though, you eventually kill of your brothers though. Fight or protect humans, have humans worship you depending on your actions.
Not really filled with action and fun, more for strategy and puzzle players. The puzzles are not real fun and I found that they were not all that fun at all, more like a waste of time to me, move a heavy block across the room which is slow moving. What is this ? Kindergarten ? We all could figure these puzzles out. The designers are just trying to make us mad and frustrated. Maybe this game is more for people with a lot of patience, willing to wait for what lies next in the game. The CG (computer generated) movies are good, good detail, runs quiet smooth, even has voices in the movies which something new for the time of which the game came out. Fight against bosses of different types, really big, to real weak and small.
Abilities to be learned from bosses, (brothers), skills that the boss and enemies in the area use. Climb, swim, etc. When you get the soul reaver, try it out by swinging it in fire, changes the color from blue to fire, temporary shoot fire balls at enemies, using killing button, triangle.
Pick up weapons at all times like spears for impaling enemies, torches to set them on fire, (lite torch on fire from a fire, you have to after setting a enemy on fire every time). You can throw weapons at enemies or whatever you want. For example if you need to pass through a gate through world of the dead, you usually can't take a weapon with you, I found it is possible to cheat this, just simply throw your weapon through through the gate and possibly impale an enemy at the same time, going back ?
Throw the weapon back through the gate before you switch to world of dead. When you switch to world of dead, you will not be able to switch back to world of living until your life is completely full. (In the world of dead, you regenerate, you're undead, in world of living you're life goes down). When fighting bosses if you go to world of dead, you will still see the boss and still it's possible to receive damage from boss, so beware. You can find magic upgrade spots (the magic is called glyphs, like fire, water, earth glyphs and so on, five total).
The appearance of Raziel, your playing character, is that he has dark hair, purple skin, wings; rags (appear different colors, red and yellow), thrown over to cover his mouth and arms a bit (no bottom jaw), white eyes (looks like some marvel comic character). Big feet (show a flaw in the games appearance, makes it look like he's always walking on his tippy toes). Big claws, not nails, vampires should at least have some finger nails.
Since this is a newer ps one game, the graphics and details are well done (non-pixled, textures look realistic, rocks and stones look rough textured, like they should, the floors, walls, and ceiling are highly detailed down to the last.) But sometimes when enemies are coming after you and there is a gate between you and them, they sometimes come through a little bit, but also rarely, I found a spider vampire actually some how came through the wall. The controls are quite easy to learn, jump, swing weapon, kill, (either by impaling or blowing up, or setting on fire). So the learning curve is a few minutes.
The enemies are zombies, scary looking vampires, they run after you sometimes, different variations of vampires appearnces depending on clan areas, humans, nothing to be affraid of, different appearances like in suit of armor, peasant clothed, women. Sometimes there can be a lot of blood depending on number of enemies, enemies looks change on account of damage, show blood on bodies more and more. Limbs can be shot off.
This a type of game you could pick up and play very quickly, good for people who don't care for reading the manuel for the game, but it's the gameplot that's very complicated as you have to find a place to save, and make sure you remember where you have to go next and where exactly you are at in the game, you have to activate a lot of switches to make progress.
The voices are (the quality of the voices sounds is really good, deep toned voices for a game that involves an evil and dark side), (unlike syphon filter games, or spider man on psone, to give an idea that the voices are far from that quality). The introduction movie was very good, and it gives you an idea of how well the cg movies are put together.
The disadvantage is that there is so many puzzles, the designers of this game have over-relied on these puzzles, just adding stupid stuff to the game so they can get the game out of the way and start on something else, but when you play you may not notice this for a while. There is different parts in the world, with different ones belonging to different vampire clans (one for each leader, including your character, "Raziel," but once you find it, you find you clan people had betrayed long ago. Each clan has different vampires, like one clan is known for their climbing ability, spider vampires.
One bad remark on this game is that you can not kill an enemy, (except humans), at least in world of living with out a weapon, you have the claws and can beat enemies to near death, but never kill, and they regenerate if not killed. What if you don't have any near by weapons and there are several enemies after you. Well I guess you could run, that works... I bailed out on this game towards the middle, when everything got complicated, so I had to look for strategy guides, (I will never quit, unless the game is pointless). If you have trouble don't be afraid to ask or get help, but save it as a last resort, and are completely lost. Save often, you'll pay dearly if you don't.
To look at some screenshots and look at the into CG movie and see what great quality is put into this game vist:
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,...More at eBay
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