Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

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• ASIN: B00001ZWMV
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Product Description

Editorial Review
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 a 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. --John Cocking

Pros:

• Agile, fluid character animation and combat moves
• Beautiful scenery
• The Soul Reaver (think "vampiric lightsaber")
• Ability to glide using the tattered remnants of Raziel's wings

Cons:

• Convoluted topography
• Sometimes awkward camera angles
• Lack of direction

GameSpot Review
Crystal Dynamics' long-awaited sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is a far different animal from its predecessor. Instead of being a top-down RPG, Soul Reaver is a 3D adventure game similar to Eidos' Tomb Raider. And Kain? This time, he's the main antagonist.

The game begins hundreds of years after Blood Omen and works from the premise that when you, as Kain, were given the choice of sacrificing yourself to save the world of Nosgoth or ruling it, you chose the latter, plunging the world into darkness. Over the millennia, Kain and his vampiric lieutenants evolved new abilities, with Kain always developing them first and the others soon following. When Raziel, the "hero" of the new game, grew wings before his leader did, Kain saw it as blasphemy, tore them from Raziel's back, and cast him into a giant swirling watery grave. But the long-winded story doesn't end there.

After his features have been almost completely eaten away by the water, Raziel is saved by a being known as the Elder God, who sets him on a quest to free the world from the parasitic influence of the vampire clans and destroy Kain. Raziel finds himself transformed so that he no longer drinks blood, but devours souls (luckily, since he no longer has a jaw). Also, he can no longer die; instead, he is transported to the Spirit Realm - a shadowy distorted version of the Material World - after sustaining heavy damage. And surprisingly, his wings still work after a fashion, at least letting him glide over short distances.

These are the tools you start the game with. You can also move and stack large stone blocks and switch over to the Spirit Realm whenever you like. You can only transport yourself back to the Material World at select locations and only once you've filled up on souls. This ability comes in handy, since the netherworld often bends platforms and structures out of shape so that you can climb them more easily and then flip back to the Material World and continue on. Why not just stay in the Spirit Realm? Because you can't open doors or move objects there. You can now begin to see the shape of many of the game's inventive 3D puzzles.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your skills. Kain's other lieutenants have evolved in different ways throughout the last few hundred year, and each of them acts as a stage boss in the game. One has a spidery form, another has grown a tolerance for water, and so on. After destroying each one, you gain his special ability, which then opens up new areas in the environment for you to access. Beyond that, there are bonus areas (which you don't need to complete to beat Soul Reaver). In these areas, you can acquire elemental glyphs, which grant you new powers that work well against the game's standard stock of vampires.

Speaking of which, there are many different ways to exterminate the vampires of Soul Reaver. You can set them on fire, throw them into water, impale them with stakes, and toss them onto spikes. Destroying vampires regularly is necessary early on in the game because you'll eventually revert to the Spirit Realm if you don't eat enough souls. That is, until the Soul Reaver itself comes into play. The Soul Reaver is a blade that appears as a thin blue energy trail that curls around your right arm from the shoulder and extends a few feet down past your hand. Swallowing enough souls summons it to the Material World, where it sustains you, keeping you from having to constantly hunt down vampires to feed on. Once you gain the Soul Reaver, you'll shatter enemies with an explosive punch that mixes Psylocke's psi-dagger (from Marvel Comics' X-Men) with a Jedi lightsaber. While poking vampires with stakes can get a bit tired after awhile, this never gets old. --Joe Fielder
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