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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Review
Noel Brady
00/12/0000
Just as Lara debuts on Dreamcast, Ms Croft's adopted parents Eidos sneakily place this much darker vision on the shelves.
Just as Lara debuts on Dreamcast, Ms Croft's adopted parents Eidos sneakily place this much darker vision on the shelves. The idea is similar -- running, jumping, exploring, puzzle solving, beastie destroying - but Soul Reaver's world is so dark and twisted, it's ideas so stunningly original, that the link has been carefully hidden. It's Lara's evil alter ego, if you like.
The story is little more than your typical tale of treachery and deceit - lord creates vampire, lord destroys vampire, vampire returns as soul-sucking demon intent on revenge... you know the score. You assume the role of Raziel, a former member of Kain's vampire council who was cast into the Lake Of The Dead by his master after he surpassed Kain's greatness. After being resurrected by the Elder, Raziel's mission becomes clear - stalk the land of Nosgoth, slaughtering his former brethren and claiming their souls before taking on Kain himself.
Soul Reaver may look slightly like Tomb Raider, but the likeness ends there. For starters, the entire world has two appearances. In the real world everything is as you'd expect (given that it's a dark, gothic world that looks like it's been designed by the love child of HR Giger and Mary Shelley). But one of Soul Reaver's great twists is that as Raziel you can at any time opt to discard your physical body and revert to a spiritual form. As you do so, time in the real world freezes - anything you were holding hovers in the air - and locations darken and sometimes twist to create even more depressing caverns and rooms, possibly providing access to new locations.
Reaching inaccessible areas is the key to Soul Reaver. Get to know the first few locations well, because you'll be going back to them plenty of times. The central hub leads to all the other levels, which are theoretically approachable if only Raziel had the ability. As it happens, the destruction of your siblings (still touchingly loyal to Kain) and the absorption of their souls awards you extra powers.
The first enables you to pass through light textures such as fences when you're in the spiritual world, another grants you the 'skill' of climbing walls, while a third enables the generation of fireballs which can be used to nudge distant blocks out of the way. While encouraging you to fully explore locations, what appear to be dead ends dutifully committed to memory, this method also means that each time you complete a little section you can be fruitlessly wandering around annoyingly similar locations trying to find either where you haven't been to before, or areas that you may well have been to before.
But the whole 'going to the spiritual world' thing needs some more explanation, because it's Soul Reaver's ideas that are so exciting. Right, as you're already dead, it's impossible for you to get any deader. Nevertheless, you're not indestructible; you have a limited energy system that drains when you're in the real world and replenishes in the spiritual realm. If your energy is lost in the real world, you're automatically transferred into your spirit form. Your energy is gradually restored, but you can only return to the real world when you have full energy and access to a transformation portal, of which there are many scattered strategically throughout the world. Lose all your energy in the spiritual realm and you're deposited back into Elder's chamber, usually some distance from where you are, and a suitable punishment if you really are that bad at this game.
Energy is lost with enemy attacks, but is more rapidly restored by a damn good sucking on their souls as they die. Unfortunately it's still not that straightforward. As most of your antagonists are vampires, they can't be killed by such a simple ploy as rapping them around the head with a big stick. Nevertheless, when a beastie is hit enough times he becomes sufficiently stunned for you to perform what wrestling fans like to call a 'finishing' move. Dig up that pseudo-tie-in 'X Factor' book your auntie bought you for Christmas and you'll notice that sunlight, water, fire and impaling are all sufficiently gruesome endings for the fanged undead.
While the PlayStation version scratched the surface of what Soul Reaver should have looked like, the Dreamcast brings out every little detail in the dark and fetid land of Nosgoth. To say it looks spanking gorgeous would be a huge understatement - flowing water, burning flames and flickering lights all look so real, it's astounding. Nosgoth oozes just the right atmosphere for a land on the brink of despair with its majestic mansions and cathedrals lying in ruins while the clouds billow overhead. It looks so lovely that we'd want to live there ourselves... if it wasn't quite so scary, that is.
Despite us heaping on the praise with a shovel, you shouldn't believe that this game is perfect. In fact, far from it - there are a few glaring problems that make playing Soul Reaver a rather soulless experience (ho, ho). For starters, the sprawling nature of Raziel's world means that while things start off reasonably simple, the whole question of where to go next gets tougher to answer as you progress through the game. The various hints given by the Elder and other characters along the way go some of the way to point you in the right direction but their rather vague comments can sometimes just end up confusing you even further.
Sadly though, the main complaint that can be levelled at Soul Reaver is that sometimes it can be just a tad boring - in several instances, there won't be any vampires to kill for ages as you wander around previous areas looking for something new to uncover. Many of the puzzles revolve around the same pull switch/move block/open door scenario and while this is fine for much of the time, it occasionally gets a little repetitive.
However, don't get us wrong, there's so much that's good about this game that only the most cynical of gamers won't consider it a genuine masterpiece. Never has a game looked so amazing, played so well or provided such an atmosphere that it actually sent shivers down our collective spines. If you forgive its various shortcomings, we're looking at one of the best games released on Dreamcast this year.
