Oh my god. They brought Kain back. Awesome!” Huh? Who? What was Fireflash babbling about now? Peeking into the box I found Soul Reaver 2, and was introduced to a legacy of dark games I found a chilling pleasure to play. In order to do a review of Soul Reaver 2, there has to be some clarification. There are lengthy cut scenes to explain the plot, a reality playing realm, and an astral playing realm. After you get the hang of that, you are then bounced around in time to different locations. If you do not pay SERIOUS attention to where, when, and why, then you will never make it through the game. There are too many sections you could wander around in for hours, blissfully unaware that in an earlier section of the game you had noticed a particular location and knew you would have to travel back to the future to get to it. Sound confusing yet? Toss in the fact everyone you meet wants to act like your friend – except the humans. Oh, did I forget to mention you are an undead demon vampire…even more immortal than the usual vampire as you have been resurrected from a VAMPIRE death? On with the review!

I found the story line detailed and intriguing, the layer upon layer of mysteries slowly peeled back to reveal yet another twist in the plot. Every time you finally make up your mind on an npc, something happens to twist your sensibilities, and all friends may turn into foe while those you wished to kill may now be your ally. This is definitely not your typical hack and slasher game, although you can do a few senseless slaughters if you are in the mood. While the graphics in game play on the reality plane were somewhat blocky, the smooth movements of the characters made up for it. Raziel, your character, never really comes out from the dark so to speak. The graphics for him reminded me of the Blue Elf from X-Men. The critters you have to get through can get pretty redundant as well. Although I have to admit the impaling of the Crusaders, the slashing their hearts out, their getting cut in half…err ok this IS a dark game. Definitely not for the Leave it to Beaver crowd.

Once you switched to the astral plane the graphics grew smoother, but more shadowed. You actually look like a ghost running around with the Reaver. You cannot get back to reality unless you find a portal. No, they do NOT make it easy. The critters become a different type of danger and the story line changes here as well once more twisting a new tale out for you to unravel. Finally there are the extensive cut scenes. This game almost plays more like a movie with short breaks than any other game I have played. However, the cut scenes are major works of art, and do not detract from the game. The dialogue is intelligent with a flair for the dramatic, but what vampire is NOT a little drama diva? Watch as Raziel grows bolder and angrier with the manipulation from the npc’s. He eventually is even challenging the demi-god face to face. Err face to something.

The sound is excellent. There is no background music to annoy you. Of course Fireflash has been known to turn the dang things off so I don’t know if there was or not. The sound effects of Raziel’s movement lent a touch of reality to an otherwise unreal game. I have to admit I loved rebooting the game just to hear “Kain refused the sacrifice” in that chilling leered voice. Interesting to note I did hear an English accent, not Romanian, as I had expected. It did not detract from the sound effects, but was noteworthy. All in all Soul Reaver 2 is a keeper. I cannot wait for the third edition in this saga to come out. I just saw the trailer for Blood Omen 2. Might be interesting to play Kain, although I will be sorry to see Azriel go. He was a dark hero who knew how to kill time….

Final Grade - B-

System Requirements (PC):

Pentium III 450 MHz or equivalent processor
Windows 98/ME
128MB RAM
DirectX 8.0 or higher
DirectX 8.0 compliant sound card
DirectX 8.0 compliant 3D accelerator card w/16MB VRAM
850 MB uncompressed hard drive space
8X CD-ROM drive
Keyboard and mouse