Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered Review – The Legacy of Kain is Back!

It has been over 20 years since we last saw a game in the Legacy of Kain series — Defiance came out all the way back in 2003. While it wasn’t a huge series, it had a strong following that wanted to see more of Kain and Raziel, the two central characters of the series. Then, earlier this year, we finally heard of the series coming back, in the form of remasters of Soul Reaver 1 and 2, arguably the two most popular games in this series.

The Soul Reaver games have you take control of Raziel after Kain betrays him and tries to kill him. After awakening, he is hellbent on killing Kain and stopping his reign over the vampires. Throughout his journey, he learns more about how the world was changed while he was gone, and about his own past. Soul Reaver 2 takes place immediately after the first game, with Raziel traveling back in time to stop Kain from destroying the Pillars of Nosgoth, an event that started a catastrophic chain of events. However, he begins to learn about the motive behind Kain’s actions and his role in the grand scheme of things.

Very similar to the Tomb Raider remasters that came out earlier this year, this release bundles both games together and essentially recreates the original experiences with a few new features, meaning the gameplay is mostly untouched from when the Soul Reavers first came out, for better or worse.

Upgrades & New Features

The biggest and most obvious upgrade to these remasters is the graphics. All models and textures are upgraded across both games, giving them a fresh new look while staying true to how everything looked in the original release.

On top of this, if you’d like to compare the graphics, or just see things as they originally were, you can swap between the remastered and original graphics at the touch of a button — you simply need to press the right analog stick. This can be done at any time while you’re playing the game, with the only exception being during the opening cinematics. I like that this feature allows you to have the best of both worlds as far as the graphics go.

Another quality-of-life feature was adding camera controls to the right stick, allowing you to freely move the camera instead of having to constantly center it to face forward. This is a very welcome convenience added to help with navigating and exploring. To further assist during exploration, a compass has been added — you’re given nautical directions frequently throughout the game when characters are telling you where you should go, so this is a huge help and a much-appreciated addition.

Finally, the much-loved Photo Mode was added to this remaster. This can be activated at any time during the game by pressing both analog sticks at the same time, freezing everything in place and allowing you to capture what’s happening in the moment. You can use this to save some of your favorite scenery, or preserve a cinematic moment from one of your battles!

Added Content

While nothing was added to the games themselves, there are plenty of bonuses that were added to the Collection. This includes staples such as a gallery and music player, as well as things like a Lore Reader to show you various locations that appear in the world, and a way to view the script of the game’s cutscenes.

Arguably the coolest bonus the devs added was the Lost Levels. These were areas that had to be removed from the original, but they have now been added to the remaster! While there isn’t anything you can do within them, you are given control of a fully powered Raziel to freely explore these previously unreleased areas — it’s worth noting that these levels do not come with the remastered graphics, just the original ones.

While these are nice additions to the game, these will mostly only appeal to fans that want to dive deeper into the game’s lore, and experience this world in any way that they can. The average player probably won’t look at these much, or for very long.

Replayability

The original Soul Reaver games didn’t have much replay value, and unfortunately leaving the games mostly untouched doesn’t help with this for the remasters. It will probably take a little over 20 hours total to complete both games, but there isn’t much reason to play the game again once you finish. There is no New Game+, or no alternate endings or modes. You can go back through Soul Reaver 1 to find any Health power-up pieces you missed, but that’s about it.

Verdict

Overall, I would recommend these games to both old fans of the series and anyone new and interested to try them out. While preserving the gameplay from the original releases means the gameplay can still be clunky at times (particularly in the combat), these are still two great games with unique mechanics and an intriguing overarching story — having to shift between the physical and spirit realms constantly puts a neat spin on solving puzzles and navigating, while having to absorb souls to restore your health help the health management feel unique compared to just drinking potions or using an item. At $30 for both games together, you will absolutely get your money’s worth with this collection. This is a great way to bring the series back into the spotlight, and hopefully, this will lead to new entries for the Legacy of Kain.