Here's more friendly advice:

In Soul Reaver 1, if the collision messes up and you get stuck in a wall DO NOT SAVE YOUR GAME.

In Soul Reaver 2, STAY AWAY FROM THE CROWS.

And if you like these games enough to try to play the second Blood Omen, do yourself a favor and don't save on the prison stage.

Originally posted by Melchiah:

As you may be aware already, Soul Reaver is the second game in the series and a sequel to Blood Omen, which is the beginning of the story, and has many important characters and locations for the whole story.

Many of us played Soul Reaver first, and it served to us as the entry point for the series; and while it's not strictly necessary to play Blood Omen to enjoy the game, I can guarantee you that you will enjoy it even more if you at least know what happens on Blood Omen.

You can buy it from GoG[www.gog.com] and it's very cheap, the real problem is that the game is kind of janky and can be incredibly frustrating at times (and also, it's the most different in the series, being more of an "Isometric" Zelda than a 3D "action adventure" like the rest), but the story itself is worth the trouble if you're into that kind of experience. If this is not your thing, you could also watch a let's play that, depending on the player, will give you a good experience (but not the same as if you were playing yourself). If you want to watch a let's play, I suggest this one because he cares for the story to the point of taking notes on a notebook; the only problem is that he misses some secrets, like the Lake of the Dead and other interesting stuff.

I'll also take a page from the souls community and suggest you to look up as little as possible for your first playthrough as to not spoil you of the things that will happen in the story (The Soul Reaver manual for instance, heavily spoils you on your character's progression, which sucks).

I hope you enjoy this weird series, beloved for it's elegant voice acting and wonderful story, and a not so stellar gameplay at times.

Definitely agree.

Blood Omen really aged badly IMO.
It's a GREAT game, fun to play for a few hours but I couldn't finish it due to the really aged mecanics not that they're bad, but for 2hours worth of story/lore you'd see by watching a game movie, you'll have to grind for HOURS and DAYS in it, in a RPG maker type game from 30years ago, with all the aged mecanics involved and old gimmick of that era (die and retry, etc...).

I'd advise most people to FIRST watch a let's play and see if it's their kind of game.

Anyway, if you're not into it, you definitely need to check Blood Omen's game movie to understand most of the plot in Soul Reaver no matter what and the story is great.

That game really need a remaster. I played about more than the half of it and never finished it out of boredness and not had the time to grind it :/
Dernière modification de Baron Borie; Il y a un instant

Wholeheartedly agreed.

Blood Omen is OK, I guess, and I would be a huge hypocrite if I told people not to buy it because it's not as good as Soul Reaver (it's not), since it's dirt cheap on GOG and it's heavily discounted a lot of times, on top of that. I bought it on GOG as soon as it was released there, so, yeah... get it if you can.

I don't think there's much one will miss out on if they start playing with Soul Reaver -- that's what most fans did, anyway, and I don't feel like I missed anything important by skipping Blood Omen. That jester toymaker boss was fun, I guess, at least it offered something different in an overly edgy pseudo-goth fantasy with WAY too much forced "Ye Olde English" for anyone's taste. It took me years before I managed to finally decide to finish Blood Omen and if I'm being completely honest, I struggled in doing so; the game definitely outstays its welcome, it's a bit longer than it should have been, characterization and world building isn't nearly as good as what Crystal Dynamics did with their Legacy of Kain games. Aside from a mostly stellar but sadly inconsistent voice acting work, there's not much I can say about this game other than "try it out for series' completion sake". Better yet, watch a Let's Play or a cutscene compilation, save yourself the trouble of fumbling through appalling hit detection, clunky controls, awful mechanic implementation.

As for it being a "dark 2D Zelda for PC and PS1", well... no, not really. You're better off just playing the original A Link to the Past for the SNES, to be fair, that one has flawless controls and mechanics, impressive open world exploration for its time, not to mention a "Soul Reaver-esque" dimension swap that even plays out when navigating dungeons or solving some puzzles. Blood Omen plays more like an extremely clunky, uglier, edgier Diablo for... PC (?) and PS1, except Diablo plays like a charm up until today (you can buy the original Diablo on GOG, by the way, might as well pick that one up, instead of Blood Omen), something that can't be said about Denis Dyack's game.

I think this is a case of "supporting the cult underdog", more than anything. Blood Omen wasn't as popular or as readily available as Soul Reaver, and this will invariably lead to a group of people feeling that game is somehow being treated unfairly or being overlooked by comparison. Sometimes that's the case, yes, one could argue it happened with System Shock and System Shock 2, but in this case, Blood Omen, though, is factually not nearly as good as Soul Reaver and it has really nothing to offer if you're a fan of the subsequent games developed by Crystal Dynamics.

Originally posted by thegroze:

Wholeheartedly agreed.

Blood Omen is OK, I guess, and I would be a huge hypocrite if I told people not to buy it because it's not as good as Soul Reaver (it's not), since it's dirt cheap on GOG and it's heavily discounted a lot of times, on top of that. I bought it on GOG as soon as it was released there, so, yeah... get it if you can.

I don't think there's much one will miss out on if they start playing with Soul Reaver -- that's what most fans did, anyway, and I don't feel like I missed anything important by skipping Blood Omen. That jester toymaker boss was fun, I guess, at least it offered something different in an overly edgy pseudo-goth fantasy with WAY too much forced "Ye Olde English" for anyone's taste. It took me years before I managed to finally decide to finish Blood Omen and if I'm being completely honest, I struggled in doing so; the game definitely outstays its welcome, it's a bit longer than it should have been, characterization and world building isn't nearly as good as what Crystal Dynamics did with their Legacy of Kain games. Aside from a mostly stellar but sadly inconsistent voice acting work, there's not much I can say about this game other than "try it out for series' completion sake". Better yet, watch a Let's Play or a cutscene compilation, save yourself the trouble of fumbling through appalling hit detection, clunky controls, awful mechanic implementation.

As for it being a "dark 2D Zelda for PC and PS1", well... no, not really. You're better off just playing the original A Link to the Past for the SNES, to be fair, that one has flawless controls and mechanics, impressive open world exploration for its time, not to mention a "Soul Reaver-esque" dimension swap that even plays out when navigating dungeons or solving some puzzles. Blood Omen plays more like an extremely clunky, uglier, edgier Diablo for... PC (?) and PS1, except Diablo plays like a charm up until today (you can buy the original Diablo on GOG, by the way, might as well pick that one up, instead of Blood Omen), something that can't be said about Denis Dyack's game.

I think this is a case of "supporting the cult underdog", more than anything. Blood Omen wasn't as popular or as readily available as Soul Reaver, and this will invariably lead to a group of people feeling that game is somehow being treated unfairly or being overlooked by comparison. Sometimes that's the case, yes, one could argue it happened with System Shock and System Shock 2, but in this case, Blood Omen, though, is factually not nearly as good as Soul Reaver and it has really nothing to offer if you're a fan of the subsequent games developed by Crystal Dynamics.

Personally, I don't think the game is that bad. I find that it's biggest flaws are the clunky combat (mostly due the hitboxes and weird attack range and angles) and some of the level designs on the later half, and this is why I believe people would prefer not to play it, and why I suggest a let's play instead.

I really enjoyed the story and voice acting, and having Kain narrate things about the workd and his equipment was cool. That being said, I hated the constant "Vae Victus" during combat. I've also never understood the hate for Denis Dyack or for the "edgyness" of the game, since the game was aiming to put you in the role of someone who's not exactly a good person, and dive into more of a gray morality instead of having you be the "goody two shoes" that saves the world.

I can't say that Soul Reaver is better either, as I consider them to be on a tie with each other:

• To me, Soul Reaver lacks the story punch that Blood Omen has, while Soul Reaver has the superior gameplay.
  
  
• Blood Omen has a lot of interesting exploration mechanics with all the spells and forms it had, but Soul Reaver's realm switching made up for that lack of variety.
  
  
• Both are basically a tale of vengeance, and Raziel's is more straight forward than Kain's twists and turns.
  
  
• Soul Reaver depends too much on it's block puzzles while Blood Omen had you do many different things to unlock stuff, from using certain spells to deciphering blood script and wait for a certain moon phase.

I really wish they would remake Blood Omen and fix those flaws. The game would shine a lot more that way.

Originally posted by Melchiah:

[skipped for brevity]

First, I'd like to address my feelings towards Denis Dyack, then I'll move on to some of the other points. It's not that I hate Dyack, I just think he's a liar and a grifter. People don't really like Peter Molyneux, with good reason, and the same reasons could be had for not liking Denis Dyack. He's on the same level as Molyneux. I was part of his Shadow of the Eternals attempt at playing his Eternal Darkness fans for blind nostalgia and I have to say we were lucky that it didn't pan out, because the guy doesn't really want to deliver on anything he promises. He's been working on some scummy promise of a "spiritual successor" for Blood Omen in the form of a narrative MMO "asynchronous gameplay" Web3 blockchain AI ARPG. It ticks all the boxes of a scam. He doesn't really know how to make games, I'd go as far as to say he doesn't even know what people actually liked about the two games his studio developed that are remembered (Blood Omen and Eternal Darkness). He clearly doesn't know how to run a studio, there are way too many sources for me to list that prove that. Does the guy deserve all the hate he gets? No, definitely not. But that doesn't mean he should get a free pass and being treated as some sort of "genius" or video game hall of fame legend, because he's not that, either. He's just a sad little man who got lucky twice by overworking his studio. Also, and I'm really sad I have to do this, but people apparently keep never mentioning it, the guy worked for decades alongside Ken McCulloch and he didn't know his "right-hand man" in co-creating Blood Omen, Eternal Darkness and the flop that was Too Human was involved with child pornography? I mean, sure, not on him, he wasn't the one being charged and found guilty of those charges, but it doesn't really paint a good picture of the video game executive creative "genius". So, yeah, I think this is good enough for my reasoning as to why I "hate" Mr. Dyack. Also, he permabanned me from the Steam Discussion forums for his in-all-likelyhood-never-to-be-released upcoming game, because of course he did.

Now, I don't think Blood Omen is that bad, maybe not as bad as I made it out to be, but it's definitely not that good, either. I get all the "edgelord Kain" vs. "emo Raziel" arguments from both sides of the aisle, I've been reading those for more than 15 years all over the internet. I don't like the way they depicted Kain in Blood Omen, sorry, I'm not going to make you see why I dislike him in that game, just like you aren't going to make me understand how Raziel is actually worse than Kain and he's on a revenge arc as well. I don't think he is. Sure, he starts out that way, being manipulated into it by both Kain and the Elder God, but by the beginning of Soul Reaver 2 it all turns into a deeper reflection on fate, free will, religion, accepting or defying dogmas and the status quo and why one does it -- or even if one is actually able to do it. Kain is just on a quest for revenge until the game ends. Sure, he was being manipulated as well, but the only thing this influences regarding the story is whether the player goes along with the manipulation or if they do their own thing and refuse the sacrifice (the "good" ending is so boring that even Crystal Dynamics officially disregarded it moving forward with Soul Reaver).

regarding the specific points you made:

• Yes, Blood Omen has the better story punch, when compared to Soul Reaver alone. Still, when you put Soul Reaver 2 in the mix (as I'd argue you should, as Soul Reaver is admittedly 'To Be Continued'), that impact swings back around, and the Raziel arc in the Soul Reaver duology is way more profound and interesting than the revenge thing we experience with Kain in Blood Omen. Gameplay-wise, I mean, we couldn't agree more, Blood Omen plays like crap, so... yeah.
  
• For all the variety Blood Omen had, we all ended up using the same two or three spells (unless some part of a dungeon made a spell you'll never use again mandatory).
  
• Yes, if you only take into account the first Soul Reaver. If you play both games and basically treat them as a single one, Raziel's story is not really about the vengeance tale it begins as.
  
• True. The block puzzles suck. I'm in the minority, I actually learned to enjoy them and now I wouldn't play the game any other way. But I agree that for most people they do suck. Fortunately, you got way better puzzles in Soul Reaver 2, so it kind of makes up for all the block puzzles in the first one. The puzzles in Blood Omen, though... I wouldn't even call them that, you basically walk around dungeons and press switches or step on pressure pads (more often than not by sheer luck, as they're not particularly well identifiable against the backdrops). The full moon dungeons outright suck, I never felt like waiting in place for a freaking door to open so I can get five or six more cards of some item I never use. You get all of the upgrades and spells without having to enter those, so why should anyone bother with that? Just to tick the 100 secrets Silicon Knights put into the game?

It could do with a remake, though, yes. Not that I particularly care about it, but if there's enough demand for it, giving people options and letting them play what they want is always a great thing. I'm happy for people who can now get into Soul Reaver, I don't mind Blood Omen fans being able to share that feeling. It's a good feeling to have.

(Apologies for the WALLOFTEXT. Feel free to skip it entirely. There's not even a TL;DR, just skip the whole thing.)

There are some benefits if you fully play and explore Blood Omen 1 before you play Soul Reaver 1+2.
knowing Kains past with the Nemesis, the fall of the Council to Vorador etc. will give you some nice "aha" moments.
You don´t need to play BO1, everything important will be come up in the games but it is much more rewarding to know the backstory.
Even little sidenotes in BO1 will come up later in Defiance (if they do a remaster of it).

Originally posted by thegroze:

[skipped for brevity]

I'd like to start by clarifying that I never said that Raziel was worse than Kain on his revenge quest, I'm saying that his revenge story is not as good since it's too straight forward and lacks moments like Malek beating Kain, Mobius manipulation or the final twist that Kain was the last man standing.

Second, I would never count Soul Reaver 1 and 2 as a single game despite the "to be continued" because they are different enough to each other to be separate games, and Soul Reaver 2 improves in a lot of ways over the first one, and for example, Soul Reaver 2 stops being a revenge story and becomes one about confronting destiny and finding enlightenment. By that logic we could say that all of Legacy of Kain is a single game and call it a day.

As for Denis Dyack, I really never cared for him enough to research what he has done. I've always regarded him as "the dude that was in charge of Blood Omen", and that's why I didn't understood the hate. After all you've said I have to say that I... still don't care about him, so nothing has changed really.

If I had to rate these games from best to worse, I'd put Defiance at the top with Soul Reaver 2 as a close second, and Blood Omen and Soul Reaver on a tie for third. Blood Omen 2 would be at the bottom because I don't like it's story and the gameplay is alright, but the locations are kind of boring (except for the prison, that place was nuts!).

Originally posted by Melchiah:

Originally posted by thegroze:

[skipped for brevity]

I'd like to start by clarifying that I never said that Raziel was worse than Kain on his revenge quest, I'm saying that his revenge story is not as good since it's too straight forward and lacks moments like Malek beating Kain, Mobius manipulation or the final twist that Kain was the last man standing.

Second, I would never count Soul Reaver 1 and 2 as a single game despite the "to be continued" because they are different enough to each other to be separate games, and Soul Reaver 2 improves in a lot of ways over the first one, and for example, Soul Reaver 2 stops being a revenge story and becomes one about confronting destiny and finding enlightenment. By that logic we could say that all of Legacy of Kain is a single game and call it a day.

As for Denis Dyack, I really never cared for him enough to research what he has done. I've always regarded him as "the dude that was in charge of Blood Omen", and that's why I didn't understood the hate. After all you've said I have to say that I... still don't care about him, so nothing has changed really.

If I had to rate these games from best to worse, I'd put Defiance at the top with Soul Reaver 2 as a close second, and Blood Omen and Soul Reaver on a tie for third. Blood Omen 2 would be at the bottom because I don't like it's story and the gameplay is alright, but the locations are kind of boring (except for the prison, that place was nuts!).

Fair points, all of them. I'm not going to WALLOFTEXT you again, don't worry. Just wanted to let you know everything you said made sense, at least to me, and I fully back your opening post for this thread.

I'd just like to clarify why I'm treating Soul Reaver and Soul Reaver 2 as if they were a single game, if that's OK. When Soul Reaver was released on PC, that game became one of my favourite games ever, right up there with Broken Sword, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, A Link to the Past, Terranigma (yes, I'm in Europe) and a couple others. I replayed it more times than I can remember, and I waited for a continuation for what felt like double the time it actually took for Crystal Dynamics to release the second game. So, to me, personally, there's no way to engage in a conversation about Soul Reaver's story and themes and consider both games as separate entities. I can talk about each one's flaws and accomplishments when it comes to gameplay, for sure, but in terms of narrative, I treat them as a single game. Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics are clearly putting both games in this remastered packaging, probably because they don't want new people coming into the series to wait for two, three, four years before they get to play the continuation of Soul Reaver's direct story, effectively kind of treating both titles as a single one. Blood Omen, while being the game that started the series, has a pretty self-contained arc, it wouldn't have needed a Blood Omen 2 -- or even a Soul Reaver -- to give its story any sort of closure, hence why I'm looking at its own self-contained thing (plus the fact there are things that are exclusive to Blood Omen and we don't get with any other game in the series).

As for Denis Dyack, my apologies. It just gets my blood boiling, that's all. There's a lot of talk in the gaming communities about voting with our wallets, rewarding good devs and punishing scammers and grifters, but Dyack always seems to be forgotten, inconspicuously in the middle of it all, just because "he" (i.e. his old studio that he led to bankruptcy) made two games that people like. I'm not trying to make you care about the guy, just trying to give some context as to why I don't really trust him or give him much credit at all. Because most of us wouldn't, if it was someone else instead of "the creator of Kain". I'd rather celebrate Amy Hennig as the creator of Raziel and the one who did something interesting with the series, than the grifter who "came up with the concept of Kain".

Originally posted by thegroze:

Fair points, all of them. I'm not going to WALLOFTEXT you again, don't worry. Just wanted to let you know everything you said made sense, at least to me, and I fully back your opening post for this thread.

I'd just like to clarify why I'm treating Soul Reaver and Soul Reaver 2 as if they were a single game, if that's OK. When Soul Reaver was released on PC, that game became one of my favourite games ever, right up there with Broken Sword, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, A Link to the Past, Terranigma (yes, I'm in Europe) and a couple others. I replayed it more times than I can remember, and I waited for a continuation for what felt like double the time it actually took for Crystal Dynamics to release the second game. So, to me, personally, there's no way to engage in a conversation about Soul Reaver's story and themes and consider both games as separate entities. I can talk about each one's flaws and accomplishments when it comes to gameplay, for sure, but in terms of narrative, I treat them as a single game. Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics are clearly putting both games in this remastered packaging, probably because they don't want new people coming into the series to wait for two, three, four years before they get to play the continuation of Soul Reaver's direct story, effectively kind of treating both titles as a single one. Blood Omen, while being the game that started the series, has a pretty self-contained arc, it wouldn't have needed a Blood Omen 2 -- or even a Soul Reaver -- to give its story any sort of closure, hence why I'm looking at its own self-contained thing (plus the fact there are things that are exclusive to Blood Omen and we don't get with any other game in the series).

As for Denis Dyack, my apologies. It just gets my blood boiling, that's all. There's a lot of talk in the gaming communities about voting with our wallets, rewarding good devs and punishing scammers and grifters, but Dyack always seems to be forgotten, inconspicuously in the middle of it all, just because "he" (i.e. his old studio that he led to bankruptcy) made two games that people like. I'm not trying to make you care about the guy, just trying to give some context as to why I don't really trust him or give him much credit at all. Because most of us wouldn't, if it was someone else instead of "the creator of Kain". I'd rather celebrate Amy Hennig as the creator of Raziel and the one who did something interesting with the series, than the grifter who "came up with the concept of Kain".

That's a fair point since Soul Reaver was butchered by time constrains and the second part is basically there to make it "more complete"; it really shows with how they start to fire their shots from the very beginning and don't stop until the very end, but I still think it's not fair to consider them a single game because Soul Reaver 2 changes a lot of stuff (Like combat which is surprisingly deep, and the game stops being a metroidvania of sorts to be more streamlined in order to tell it's story and avoid all the issues that time traveling would give them on their level designs), but I can see what you're saying.

As for Dyack, I appreciate the information, but I really don't feel like wasting my hatred on someone who, at least to me, is essentially a rando on the internet. I didn't know he came with the concept of Kain, as I thought it was something that came from a discussion from the team (I remember they wanted a world where everyone was some kind of Clint Eastwood character), and honestly to this day, I've appreciated Kain's existance rather than celebrating his creator for coming with the idea (and the same goes for Amy Hennig).

I know it is important to know the mind behind a certain creation, but I believe it's also important to have the context, since people and culture change over time, and there might have been more people involved in the idea.

myself i played Blood Omen and the game was great, but the gameplay itself could border on PAINFUL. even going to the menu took many seconds. yes i still have my PS1 copy.
jeez even Blood Omen 2 was rather clunky.
if there was a remake of Blood Omen (which i would like to see) it would need a rework from the ground up lol. would be awesome to see, but i kind of have my doubts.
anyone wants to know the story from Blood Omen plenty of people have done a lets play of it.

Blood omen wasn't my cuppa tea at all, but I did enjoy soul reaver..

The ending made me want to cry though...

It's a shame Blood Omnicide was never finished.

But the GoG version of Blood Omen works great on current gen PCs.

Originally posted by Хела:

It's a shame Blood Omnicide was never finished.

But the GoG version of Blood Omen works great on current gen PCs.

I got the new one on PSN with trophies. Great stuff.

If you have the ps1 classic copy of Blood omen on PS3, they give you the PS4/PS5 one for free.

The only one i had to buy was BO2.

Originally posted by Klampus:

Here's more friendly advice:

In Soul Reaver 1, if the collision messes up and you get stuck in a wall DO NOT SAVE YOUR GAME.

In Soul Reaver 2, STAY AWAY FROM THE CROWS.

And if you like these games enough to try to play the second Blood Omen, do yourself a favor and don't save on the prison stage.

I've been replaying soul reaver 1 , 2 and defiance every year for the past 10 years and I have never encountered any game breaking glitches in any of them....? These games were extremely polished for the time.