I still remember the disbelief when my friend and I finished this game and got that “To Be Continued” ending. At least you don’t have to wait years for the sequel. I remember being so eager for it, that I purchased a copy before I even owned a PS2. it was right up there with Metal Gear Solid 2 as a must play game I was drooling for.
I was lucky that I didn't find the series until stumbling across Blood Omen 2 and Soul Reaver 2 in a bargain bin. I think I paid $5 each for them. Didn't usually buy sequels to games I'd never played, but the covers and boxes intrigued me. And so few games had you playing as a vampire. Took me ages to track down BO1 and SR1, and the wait for Defiance is excruciating. Still keep hoping for a continuation but after this long I doubt it'll happen.
90% of the time, Mapo is more perceptive than most players. And then there's the other 10%. "I wonder what the gate is for if I can re-materialize right after." "I lost my fire power." "It's too dark to see." _stands next to unlit lantern_
I think all players are like that and have that kind of moments. Personally, there are times when I play I'm thinking "thank god I'm not on Twitch/YT because I would look like a complete idiot." 😅
Bro, your reaction to the "To Be Continued" sent me through a time portal too, hurtling way back to the year 1999 when a shocked 17-year-old stared at the screen in utter disbelief and anguish xD
Your frustration is well-founded. The ending to this game was very abrubt. That's because this game was produced at the very end of the Playstation 1's life cycle and the creators had to push the system to its absolute limitations. In the end they had to cut a lot out of the whole game and refocus efforts into the sequel which would be released onto the next console with thankfully fewer limitations. The original concept was meant to have more closure, with Kain's demise in a third and final boss fight, the boss fight with Turel the last vampire brother, a side plot about a human cult worshipping the vampires, and the eradication of all vampires in Nosgoth with Raziel becoming humanity's new dark messiah. In fact the bell tower was meant to be the final level with Raziel activating the ultimate weapon against the vampires. Fyi, I did not just spoil the rest of the story. This was only the initial draft. After the first Soul Reaver the story went into complete overdrive. You won't be able to guess what happens next.
" I'm gonna play the sequel immediately" - yup, I kinda felt that is what was gonna happen :D And tbf I rly wanted you to continue immediately so all I can say is Thank you man, for these playtroughs and can't wait till part 1 of Soul Reaver 2. Prepare yoursef for one of the best written stories in gaming. P.S Also it is the right choice to play Soul Reaver 2 before Blood Omen 2!
To explain: the development team planned on having an entire finale section, involving Raziel defeating Kain and using a human weapon (a giant magical bell) to kill off all the vampires (as seen in the comic adaptation of Soul Reaver) that would have made it yet another "game to end triumphantly at a tower" (a la Half-Life 2 & Metro 2033, among others), but they realized that they didn't have enough budget or time to implement that, having "over-designed" the already-existing levels, and the designers had ideas for more stories about Raziel and Kain. Hence, the unsatisfying cliffhanger. Abrupt as the ending is, I'd say this is my favorite game of the series. There's quite a bit of cut content (as you might expect), and the channel Strictly Fantasy made a good video trying to piece together what the original plan for Soul Reaver would have looked. But if you do watch that video, for the love of God, DON'T WATCH ANY OTHER VIDEOS OF HIS ABOUT LEGACY OF KAIN BECAUSE THEY TALK ABOUT SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT GAMES.
this game does a lot of base work for setting up tone and the general flair of the series (BO-1 is a bit weird in that regard as its completely different to all others) gameplay wise i don't think its my favorite, the story is incredibly well told, but its only like ... 8? cutscenes the true hero is the level design, the giant open world with streaming map and no loading screens and the flair and the environmental storytelling and immersiveness we really need defiance 2
The thing with Soul Reaver, it had a lot of cut content, for one, you still have a brother left. The two colour Reavers you didn't obtain were cut content (but you can spoil yourself on what they could have been via codes). Roll on Soul Reaver 2!
I wouldn't recommend spoiling them, though. They were cut from the game but not the series. Also, I have a video on my channel with (I believe) all of the cut dialogue, including the original ending. It's worth a listen if you've never heard. Though, again, series spoilers for ideas that were just moved elsewhere in the plot.
Oh my god, can't wait to see your reactions to the rest of the series. It's been great watching you play these games, Legacy of Kain alongside Half-Life and Metal Gear series are some of my favorite games from childhood.
I've already watched the first videos of his SR2 playthrough (thanks to Patreon), let me tell you it's as good, if not better, as his MGS/HL reactions!
Yeah, so this game is pretty much the trailer for Soul Reaver 2. SR2 is where Legacy of Kain goes from incredible atmosphere to incredible storytelling. You wont be disappointed with SR2.
I recomend returning to this game sometime, to find all the content that you've missed. There are about as much square meters of extra areas as there was on the main path. And more references to BO1, like the head of Nupraptor that you've found (but didn't solve it's puzzle).
I enjoyed this playthrough beyond any words! And I'm extremely happy that you still have 3 more games from this legendary franchise to go on, the amazing ride is just getting started!!!!
I just started watching this video and I am already waiting for Soul Reaver 2. Loved the gameplay, so many memories, also it sucked waiting so many years for the next game without knowing if another one would be made.
Soul reaver 2 was my first legacy of kain game so I was pretty lucky, I think. When I finally got around to the first one it was more of a neat little look into things that were referenced and talked about in 2 and I didn't think much about the 'to be continued' at the time. Soul reaver 2 is also my favourite in the series. But I think part of that is bias from it being my introduction into the series. Despite the gameplay jank the series is one of my all time favourite for the story and voice acting and atmosphere. Raziel and Kain have amazing chemistry. It's hard to say who I like better. Kain's secretive arrogance or Raziel's naive righteousnss. Both are done so well. Very excited to see your reactions to the story as you continue. Also it's good you're keeping notes because it gets complicated!
It's a bit sudden for sure. The game had a lot of stuff cut off. Still a bit disappointed that you didn't do any of the side exploring though. A lot of the Blood Omen references in this game are set outside of the beaten path, and it's great stuff. Plus just more moods and atmosphere, and more stuff that lets you use your earned powers so you can sorta feel more gameplay variety as a whole. And there are some pretty big areas to see! Oh well! You saw all the most important stuff, still, and seem to have enjoyed the game, so that's something at least! Looking forward to Soul Reaver 2!
Your feelings about the ending of Soul Reaver mirror mine with my first playthrough. Fantastic story, oh so many box puzzles, and a plethora of powers you can easily miss. It remains one of my favourite series. Looking forward to you continuing the series. Mahalo.
On my original playthrough I definitely remember being shocked at the 'to be continued', but I wasn't disappointed really. I'd found a couple of the glyphs, then went back and found the rest, played around with 'allying' with the humans and such. So I still got a good amount more playtime from the game. I was more-so excited for the sequel than anything haha
The finished game is only about two thirds of what was planned but a deadline was given and a lot had to be cut. The three visions of the future seen at the end were were supposed to happen in this game, however as it was cut off early the story completely changes going into SR2 with these original events becoming non-canon. So it is not a spoiler to tell you the original plan. Raziel would have faced off with a human sorceress that is the head of the vampire worshippers gaining a mind control ability, he would have faced off with his last brother Turel gaining telekinesis (Turel's dialogue was cut up and given to one of his clan in the sarafan tomb). In Kain's retreat Raziel would have gained a bit of Kain's soul but not able to fully defeat him until Ariel offers herself up to feed the blade making it stronger. In their final confrontation Kain would wax poetic about how all the actions he took were predestined (thus not really his responsibility (Soul Reaver as a whole was inspired by Milton's paradise lost). Upon Kain's defeat and absorption into the blade (the red/black version) Raziel would be completely unstoppable as he returns to the silenced cathedral that Zephon was found in, there he would repair the piping system to complete the cathedral and finally utilise it as the weapon it was meant to be and use its deadly hymn to finally destroy all the vampires in Nosgoth. (I've probably misremembered some of that but you get the gist). _None_ of this comes up in later entries but the chronoplast visions are re-interpreted as something else. The hype for Soul Reaver's release was massive and when I got to that ending I was rightly pissed as well (though I did read the manual first so better understood what I was supposed to be able to do). I had not played Blood Omen beforehand or even really heard of it so I had no idea who Ariel was at the time (from the dialogue I just assumed that she was some human who was supposed to be sacrificed to Kain but got bound to the pillars when he refused to accept her... or something). By the end I vowed to never play it again but I did eventually pick up SR2 and when I reached the end of that I was utterly sold on the series. SR2 is where the overall story is really cemented together. There is a lot more story to SR2 than there was in SR1 but at the same time exploration is completely nixed, there are _no_ secrets to find so every playthrough will match the others except for skill level. That won't be a loss for you though as you did no exploring in _this_ game, critical path only. SR1 is pretty much only a prologue for the much more rich SR2.
Hehe, was hoping that the "to be continued" would lead you to getting into SR2 faster instead of frustration and I'm very glad that was the case! SR2 intro cinematic is legendary and the game is a huge step-up in terms of writing (not that this was bad by any means). So glad the SR1 team ran out of time/resources or otherwise we probably would have not gotten SR2 and the rest of the series ^^
Oh, quick note Mapo - The fire Reaver was optional just like the glyph abilities, you could have missed it too. So having it as your reason to think the glyphs are superfluous is a bit flawed as it could have been any of the glyphs that carried you through instead and you could have found some much earlier. I seem to recall the fire glyph being found somewhat near the fire Reaver too.
The way Mapocolops slowly gets out his notebook and starts taking notes while Kain monologues kills me 🤣 because that is also how I deal with my mortal enemies
Randomly saw your soul reaver videos after seing your intro I was sure that I'll watch it all the way to the end and continue with the rest of the series. One of my all time favorites for sure and glad to see you experience it
Revisiting this classic alongside you being able to play it blindly was a big boost for me. This was one of my dads favorite series and some of my earliest gaming memories. This game alone got me into reading more often since the vocabulary was all Shakespearean and more advanced for a child to try and understand. Looking forward to all the other adventures through Nosgoth you get to go through, stoked for your reactions. 🤟
You were so close to find some of the glyphs you were looking for haha. You were in the room of the Force one rigth after killing Melchiah (the one with Nupraptor's head). You were close once to the entrance of the fire, stone and sound glyphs. However you never came close to the water and sunligth glyphs. There would have been a surprise for you in the stone glyph area since you played Blood Omen :D
Thanks for this. For some context: this game shipped with about a 1/3rd of the planned content. That's why all the glyph powers, forges and even some areas are optional. Further more, some of the time-visions hint to the original plot, but that sequels changed most of them.
One of the most interesting things about this game is that the ending was originally quite different because they weren't planning on sequels. But when they changed it, they incorporated bits and pieces into this ending. For instance, Ariel being killed by raziel. That scene was part of the original story for the game, and you are right, it was part of powering up the reaver to kill kain. You can even use cheat codes to activate the "Air Reaver" and the "Kain Reaver", though I'm fairly sure it's just a visual change at this point.
Mapo we were lucky to get this game at all. Raziels character was originally supposed to be for a completely different game concept called Shifter I think before they decided to make him part of lok. As for the tbc they were completely out of time and tons of content was cut and recycled in/delayed for the sequel. Much of that content has since been restored using the source code but very little of it is in a playable condition.
I also enjoyed watching you play Blood Omens more. I am very intrigued by the story but watching Soul Reaver felt like it was 5 % juicy story and dialogue and 95 % pushing blocks around.
kinda wish kane had all the powers from the original game, made a real interesting boss fight, where each of your abilities countered one of kanes abilities, oh well cant wait for your playthrough of Soul Reaver 2
Mapocolops Soup Reaver Drinking game: Drink whenever he says "human mode" Drink whenever he says "not human" Drink whenever he says "I forgot" Drink whenever he says he's going to go back and check something l, but never does Drink whenever he tries to vastly overcomplicate a relatively simple puzzle Drink whenever he makes a very complicated puzzle seem easy Drink every time he falls off a platform Drink every time he thinks he's in a bonus area but id actually progressing the game 😂😂 Just kidding...I actually really enjoyed your playthrough, but you could have found much more content if you actually had revisited areas you had said you were going to revisit
Love this serie, and you can imagine that waiting for more than a year for the sequel was like waiting for a new season of your favorite serie on netflix which has finished with a big cliffhanger ! :o About your let's play I feel ok not to do everything, but it's a little shame you didn't go at least the passage in the tower (rewarding your guessing), maybe to discover a spell or something (honestly I don't remember). All I remember is that there are whole areas to lead to theses spells, fully optionnal. Kinda strange but that is a thing. I don't think there is lore to obtain, but some are linked (as you said) to blood omen areas. I have to say something about this serie : Its my favorite serie of games (with dark souls but for different reasons). I was like 13 years old when I started with blood omen, and I can say these games made me smart and change my life. They teach me the sense of sacrifice and free will beyond what I thought to be good or evil. and the importance to knowing myself and what I do really want in my life. They sharp me to a critical mind always doubting and questioning things, forcing me to always be curious.
The real benefit of them is that you're invulnerable while casting them. Which is handy if you are (for example) charging an enemy three levels up who you have to hit at full health but will hit you with an auto-hitting attack if you're a split second too slow. Aside from that though, yeah, they're not that great. The satisfaction is more in solving the puzzles to get them.
Well that's it, then. I figured you would give it a couple months before jumpng back in but you've just caught the LOK series bug. Mapo's been sucked in and NEEDS to know what happens right away after that ending. P.S We all felt the same way about the "to be continued" abrubtly ending the game.
last contact with Elder God in this game "be warned if you go through there, you are beyond my influence!" first contact in next game "oh great its YOU. And i had hoped I was finally rid of you!" that bit always jarred me. This game The Elder God was chill, giving us half truths and encouraging us to kill Kain and our brothers. Then when we next see him, Raziel is just full sass mode.
Played the hell out this game back then. To be continued just made want Soul Reaver 2 even more … PSone had Game Shark and Game Genie for some awesome cheats 😊😊😊
You got yourself a sub! Great watching someone experience these games for the first time. Can't wait to see your reaction to Soul Reaver 2, which has the best story in the series, imo
My experience was a bit heartbreaking. I loved this game when I was a kid, but I was never able to beat it, mainly because of the Language Barrier. Years went by, other games and consoles came out, but Soul Reaver was still there, lingering in my mind. 7 years later I had the chance to sit down and beat it, and yes it was very disappointing. I didn't have a PS2 back then, I could only afford one console and I bought a Gamecube which was about to be replaced by the Wii and I think the PS3 was already out or close to be released, so Legacy of Kain was kinda old news back then. It wasn't until 2013/14 when I was finally able to play all the games back to back. Legacy of Kain was a great franchise from the Art and Narrative stand point, but as video games, they had a huge identity crisis.
i'm ready for the next in the series. side note, if you like collectibles, there was a cool line of action figures for this game series, not sure why but they existed and they were really neat, if you're into that sorta thing. Any horror games coming up for spooky season?
Okay, I can explain the whole visions thing you saw with the yellow and red/black blades. From my understanding those were supposed to be put into the game but were cut. Apparently a lot of stuff got cut from the game, which you can tell and as you stated. I think you were supposed to go to Ariel and free her soul by consuming it. Empowering the Wraith Blade and turning it golden, and I think letting you really hurt Kain. I do know that the red/black blade was from killing Kain and taking his soul as well, empowering the wraith blade further. And I believe at some point after all that the last thing Raziel was supposed to do was go to the Silenced Cathedral (Zephon's lair) and activate the pipes. It was made by the humans to be a sonic weapon against the vampires, and so Raziel's final mission was to activate it and kill all the remaining vampires in Nosgoth. Then he was supposed to go to the Chronoplast chamber and meet Mobius. Now, keep in mind that I'm pulling this from like over a decade ago and it was all cut content so I don't know specifics or the order. But yes, a great deal of content was cut (either time or budget reasons, not sure which) and it was really padded out with those block puzzles and it had way less stuff in terms of powers and items and such. Soul Reaver's one of the weaker games in the series because of that. I still like it. I went out to get the sequel before I even had a PS2. This game along with Half Life, KOTOR and MGS2 are the games of my childhood. As much as I like this game I have to agree. Blood Omen has a lot more stuff for the player to do.
This game is one of those games that really really could do with a good remake (and merge it with SL2). As fond as I am of this game it’s flaws are not aging too well. Loving your playthrough though can’t wait for SL2!
Play Soul Reaver 2 before Blood Omen 2. There is a big bit of unfinished content. Raziel's vampire brother Turel is still out there, he was going to be fought after the second Kain boss since Kain would teleport away to retreat to his stronghold. At Kain's stronghold Ariel would tell Raziel that only the power of Balance will defeat Kain so Raziel would absorb Ariel's soul so Raziel could damage Kain. After the final battle Raziel would return to the Silent Cathedral and active the function the humans were going to use killing all Vampires across Nosgoth. There is other cut content.
I was planning to play this game and then catch up with this playthrough along the way but my GOG copy broke. But man! I share your excitement about this series. The LoK series seems to be one of those that has the 'X' factor to it, which makes me all the more excited to watch the next playthrough. And hopefully, my copy of SR2 doesn't get a case of the crashies.
It was exactly what you said... A stab in the heart.. At the time, it was THE GAME for me and it still is to this day, and when I saw this "to be continued".... Ugh! But the story, the music, the gameplay, forgave (somehow)..... that. I replayed the game so many times I can't count.. even after the second and last part played because I enjoy every surprise and twist of the story every time as if I'm playing it for the first time ever.
The game felt short because you missed all the "hidden" glyph areas. You actually went very close to all of them, but didn't write them down and forgot to go back and check them with the new abilities you got killing your brothers. There is a LOT of stuff to do to get them, and they were for me the favourite things to do in the game! I still enjoyed your playthrough very much, I hope you will come back one day and aquire all the glyphs. They are worth it.
When Kain activated the machinery on the roof and it starts to spinning I thought about Half Life 1 and how much fun a collabing game could be. A game where the vampires of Nosgoth came through the portals and how the different clans would evolve with a headcrab. Could Kain beat the Nihilanth? Or when only Raziel would be teleported and replace Gordon, imagine Half Life 1 with a Soul Reaver as protagonist with all his powers (from which you missed a few) :D Could someone give this idea to Valve and Crystal Dynamics (or whoever owns the licence of Legacy of Kain today) if there is the possibility of a collab?
the only issue with not picking up any gliphs (other than reducing the game length) is all these sections where you got hit and lost your weapon so you shift to gain full health then shift back to get hit again (repeat till you manage to win) would have been easier because you could have just nuked the offending vampire instead.
I was very frustrated about him not exploring more and giving up so soon about that, forgetting about it. Could have been the best blind playthough of this game there is on youtube. This game rewards curiosity and exploration! It has no fear in putting A TON of hidden content, maybe even more than the main path
You should check out the lost worlds channel on this game bc we really on got 2/3 of the game intended. The cut content and story was meant to ebd with this game. Cut bosses and abilities.
strange, i did play the game back then but i don´t remember there being this energy refilling circle in the final fight. I remember this fight to be way harder as a result. Did they update it later, i wonder.
You will make a favor to yourself by playing the next game on the PlayStation 2 emulator (PCSX2). It runs flawlessly there, with the best sound quality between all of the versions and with a bunch of extras. Plus, there are custom HD textures for it that makes it your best alternative. The PC version needs a few fixes that are not so intuitive, but it works as well if you want to stick with it, although with worst sound quality and way worse controlls. I hope you have a great time with it! Its story presentation is as good, if not better, than Blood Omen's, and it's my absolute favorite in the series!
There are some folks on here encouraging you to skip BO2 after SR2 and go straight to Defiance but I recommend against doing this, you'll want to play all 5 games and you really don't want BO2 to be the climax. It was made by a B team and is clearly not of the same quality but it _is_ a significant piece of the whole plot puzzle. You will have questions going in and questions coming out of it and they will be answered (mostly) in the final game. Defiance is not just the last game but the emotional climax too, going from there into the mediocre previous game will not be satisfying, play all 5 and in the order they came out please.
i played it as a kid and remember enjoying iit. I think i'm gonna play it again now as an adult to make a veredict cuz you know... we "enjoy" any game as kids
BO2 has some good worldbuilding and arguably the best boss fights in the series (although the overall gameplay feels very clunky), but my biggest issue is character retcons. Also, dialogue overall is very blunt and naming conventions (the builder, the device etc.) just feel weak. However, I feel they kept true to (younger) Kain's character and playing such a nasty p.o.s. has that novel charm, to me at least. And last but not least, like the op said, Defiance obviously acknowledges BO2, so not playing it would weaken Defiance in turn.
I mean... it's no problem nowadays, because you can just hop into the next game. But back in the day I would have been furious about that To Be Continued screen.^^
This game was originally supposed to have an entirely different and expanded ending which would've made it the last game in the series. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the team couldn't finish the game in time and had to tell the story in an expanded form through Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance.
the ending sucked back then but what sucked even more was the fact that they didn't finish the game. theres quite a bit of content that was planned but never made into the game. there was a whole website with cut audio dialogs, places etc.
Was really great to see playthough this classic and I can't wait for you to play soul reaver 2. I would highly recommend that you leave blood omen 2 till after you finish the soul reaver trilogy as blood omens story is set in a different timeline and is separate from the SR trilogy 👍
It's so funny to me how people always claim that this one is the masterpiece and you could just skip some others because they are seemingly bad. I'm gonna be honest - I didn't even finish this game when I was playing it myself. I guess playing Blood Omen 2 and Defiance before kinda spoiled me since they are more enjoyable in terms of gameplay but there is also a lot more going on in those. Don't get me wrong - not saying that this is a bad game but people hate too much. Yea, the dialogue and the writing are great in Soul Reaver, the music is too and it's a very unique concept. But seeing it now again - I've gotta say the gameplay is really outdated and the ending rather frustrating. So I'm glad I've just watched a Let's Play instead of playing it myself. Really curious to how Soul Reaver 2 is going to be though. And excited to hear Mapos thoughts on Blood Omen 2 and Defiance since they are very different to Soul Reaver 1.
The ending timing is more than likely down to size restraints - for a PS1 game, it did have a big open world with no load screens other than the portals and remember, you didn't get ANY of the 5 optional relics - each are in their own location so exploration is key. Sadly, there's not much use for them, although you would have been less frustrated several times if you had the abilities to hand... [Edit] Finishing it back then was just as frustrating, and the next episode took AGES to come out... ... hence I explored every inch of the map while I waited.
No, the ending being what it was was due to time. They had so much development trouble (the human Citadel had massive cuts due to technical difficulties) that they just didn't have the time left to actually finish it before their release deadline. So they cut it down and set up for a sequel. One of the few times in gaming history where time constraints and cuts made things better. The original SR1 ending (I have the cut dialogue on my channel, it's actually on the disc because the cuts happened so late) was ok but what we got from the sequels is so much better.
Edit: This was a phenomenal game for its time - really sad that it was ruined halfway through by internal strife. Absolutely loved the playthrough though, as always. Geeking out a bit since I've been building, breaking and fixing PCs since I was 12 - vsync synchronizes your framerate to the vertical refresh rate of your display. So if your framerate goes higher than your refresh rate, for example your display is 120Hz and your framerate is 150fps, or if your display and your graphics card are for some reason out of sync in spite of having vsync enabled, you get screen tearing. This won't be visible in a recording, it's limited to your actual display. Vsync can be pretty glitchy; I've even had a few newer games give me screen tearing with vsync on, and emulators can be finnicky too. Generally I prefer when a game has the option to actually hard-limit your framerate, since it also won't give you the input lag you can get with vsync sometimes. You can also do this with your graphics card's drivers, but obviously that requires some tinkering. It's not difficult, just fairly obscure. For nVidia it will be in your control panel somewhere - look for "Max Framerate" or something similar and try setting it to be the same as your display refresh rate. Just throwing it in there - something you can look at if you have bad tearing issues again in the future.
You missed a LOT of optional content, like the spells and I think you didn't find the final human settlement either. There was originally another ending planned for this game where Raziel kills Kain, and then uses the pipe organ chapel like a sonic nuke to kill all the remaining vampires in Nosgoth.
lol yea seems every ep does start off with block moving the next one is even better, controls allot better, story fills in allot of the missing lore and connects the other games together nicely, defiance is where its at tho , my all time fav hack and slash, but blood omen 2 was fun, least kept us busy till defiance dropped haha
after i ended the game i keep playing searching for that Scenes that shows on the visions. till Soul reaver 2 cames hahaha i spend thousends of hours searching how to kill Ariel hahaha.
Unfortunately about a third of planned content for this game had to be scrapped at the last minute. there are data miners out there have discovered entire levels buried in the code once you finish the series go look up some of that stuff.
The final fight was also obviously a let down compared to the puzzles of prior bosses, and part of the scramble to cut the game short. Yeah these days, with the refocus on the soul reaver and the found weapons as compared to blood omen, I'm sure there'd be a bit more depth to combat, along the lines of a general souls framework. It really isn't a power fantasy, Raziel is coming back from a deeply weakened state, something along those lines would be great.
In this play-through, 1/3 of the game was missed, this game should be driven by curiosity in order to get the pleasure of it. Not a single spell was found and acquired...
The weakest element of Soul Reaver was unfortunately the exploration and constant environmental puzzles, so it does not entice you to explore further especially knowing now most of the game was cut and development cut short. I enjoy the setting, lore and storytelling a lot and I feel satisfied with what I got here on that front.
the game doesn't encourage the player to go for the other spells. The Fire Reaver is overpowered enough and the search for the other spells don't add anything relevant to the story anyway (the spells don't even carry over to the sequel). Worst of it all: MORE block puzzles to collect them :(
@@Mapocolopswow, i found the exploration the best part of this game. Intensily satisfying finding hidden areas. Some were huge and were nice callbacks to blood omen. Bit disappointed after watching all of these that you didnt explore more, but makes sense if you didn’t like that part.
Just a little information. there were supposed to be two more boss fights. If you remember each of the enemy types our offspring from your brothers. Except for the dog ones. You never got the fight that brother or the last brother. There was even supposed to be a human boss that you would have to fight. But unfortunately they ran out of space on the desk.
Was i disappointed from the ending? Let me tell you a story... i randomly stumbled over this game somewhere around 1999, played it, loved it, got disappointed. I showed it to my girlfriend. She played it, she loved it - and then yelled the whole rest of the evening at me. She forced me on the following saturday, right after we got up, to the next electronic store, where we bought a copy of soul reaver 2. I'd love to see you play Soul Reaver 2. The game is in my eyes the weakest of all the series. While it explains _a lot_ more about the lore, the combat is punishing (and not anywhere as easy as in SR1 with the constant exploiting of the spectral realm), and it feels like it drags on for ever. Even the puzzles - while most of them are pretty clever and cool to solve - even feel like they are more complicated then it should be. However, keep in mind, the lore that gets thrown at you is worth to play it. SR2 leaves a few plotholes too, but doesn't have such a cliffhanger as SR1 had (to be honest, SR1 had the most salty Cliffhanger of all games, so thats not hard...). The whole story gets round with Soul Reaver: Defiance, and after you finished this one, you will understand what was really going on, even if there is more to uncover. There are certain websites that grab every clue around and make up interesting theories about the whole plot. Anyway, Defiance will offer you closure to the plot, so prepare to play it after SR2. If you feel like it, you can stick Blood Omen 2 somewhere inbetween. The game is more combat-focused, the riddles are less complicated (well, most of them...), and the story is rather weak compared to the stuff going on in SR2 & Defiance, but i would not mind see you finding out for yourself. Have fun anyways.
From gameplay perspective this game looks VERY boring and weak. I think this time-thing should have been introduced earlier too. What annoys me the most - is that this game could have been much better. With same technology and stuff.
![We've Come Full Circle - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 | Blind Playthrough [Part 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UOMsBKX6WzE/mqdefault.jpg)
![We've Come Full Circle - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 | Blind Playthrough [Part 1]](/img/tr.png)
![The Final Turn Of The Wheel | Legacy of Kain: Defiance - Blind Playthrough [Part 6 - ENDING]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5VjyxOuqH6o/mqdefault.jpg)
![Drunk on Revelations - Soul Reaver 2 | Blind Playthrough [Part 6 - ENDING]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vl8luk3_3nM/mqdefault.jpg)
I still remember the disbelief when my friend and I finished this game and got that “To Be Continued” ending. At least you don’t have to wait years for the sequel. I remember being so eager for it, that I purchased a copy before I even owned a PS2. it was right up there with Metal Gear Solid 2 as a must play game I was drooling for.
I was lucky that I didn't find the series until stumbling across Blood Omen 2 and Soul Reaver 2 in a bargain bin. I think I paid $5 each for them. Didn't usually buy sequels to games I'd never played, but the covers and boxes intrigued me. And so few games had you playing as a vampire.
Took me ages to track down BO1 and SR1, and the wait for Defiance is excruciating. Still keep hoping for a continuation but after this long I doubt it'll happen.
@@xyex The recent acquisition of the rights has awakened hope, but I'm not sure there's any real reason yet.
Imagine only playing this on Dreamcast, and never getting the sequel LOL
MGS2 and Soul Reaver 2 were the reasons my 15 year old self had to get the PS2.
90% of the time, Mapo is more perceptive than most players. And then there's the other 10%.
"I wonder what the gate is for if I can re-materialize right after." "I lost my fire power." "It's too dark to see." _stands next to unlit lantern_
I think all players are like that and have that kind of moments. Personally, there are times when I play I'm thinking "thank god I'm not on Twitch/YT because I would look like a complete idiot." 😅
Bro, your reaction to the "To Be Continued" sent me through a time portal too, hurtling way back to the year 1999 when a shocked 17-year-old stared at the screen in utter disbelief and anguish xD
Your frustration is well-founded. The ending to this game was very abrubt. That's because this game was produced at the very end of the Playstation 1's life cycle and the creators had to push the system to its absolute limitations. In the end they had to cut a lot out of the whole game and refocus efforts into the sequel which would be released onto the next console with thankfully fewer limitations.
The original concept was meant to have more closure, with Kain's demise in a third and final boss fight, the boss fight with Turel the last vampire brother, a side plot about a human cult worshipping the vampires, and the eradication of all vampires in Nosgoth with Raziel becoming humanity's new dark messiah. In fact the bell tower was meant to be the final level with Raziel activating the ultimate weapon against the vampires.
Fyi, I did not just spoil the rest of the story. This was only the initial draft. After the first Soul Reaver the story went into complete overdrive. You won't be able to guess what happens next.
" I'm gonna play the sequel immediately" - yup, I kinda felt that is what was gonna happen :D And tbf I rly wanted you to continue immediately so all I can say is Thank you man, for these playtroughs and can't wait till part 1 of Soul Reaver 2. Prepare yoursef for one of the best written stories in gaming.
P.S Also it is the right choice to play Soul Reaver 2 before Blood Omen 2!
To explain: the development team planned on having an entire finale section, involving Raziel defeating Kain and using a human weapon (a giant magical bell) to kill off all the vampires (as seen in the comic adaptation of Soul Reaver) that would have made it yet another "game to end triumphantly at a tower" (a la Half-Life 2 & Metro 2033, among others), but they realized that they didn't have enough budget or time to implement that, having "over-designed" the already-existing levels, and the designers had ideas for more stories about Raziel and Kain. Hence, the unsatisfying cliffhanger. Abrupt as the ending is, I'd say this is my favorite game of the series.
There's quite a bit of cut content (as you might expect), and the channel Strictly Fantasy made a good video trying to piece together what the original plan for Soul Reaver would have looked. But if you do watch that video, for the love of God, DON'T WATCH ANY OTHER VIDEOS OF HIS ABOUT LEGACY OF KAIN BECAUSE THEY TALK ABOUT SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT GAMES.
this game does a lot of base work for setting up tone and the general flair of the series (BO-1 is a bit weird in that regard as its completely different to all others)
gameplay wise i don't think its my favorite, the story is incredibly well told, but its only like ... 8? cutscenes
the true hero is the level design, the giant open world with streaming map and no loading screens and the flair and the environmental storytelling and immersiveness
we really need defiance 2
The thing with Soul Reaver, it had a lot of cut content, for one, you still have a brother left. The two colour Reavers you didn't obtain were cut content (but you can spoil yourself on what they could have been via codes).
Roll on Soul Reaver 2!
I wouldn't recommend spoiling them, though. They were cut from the game but not the series.
Also, I have a video on my channel with (I believe) all of the cut dialogue, including the original ending. It's worth a listen if you've never heard. Though, again, series spoilers for ideas that were just moved elsewhere in the plot.
Oh my god, can't wait to see your reactions to the rest of the series. It's been great watching you play these games, Legacy of Kain alongside Half-Life and Metal Gear series are some of my favorite games from childhood.
I've already watched the first videos of his SR2 playthrough (thanks to Patreon), let me tell you it's as good, if not better, as his MGS/HL reactions!
@@sheraf340 now that I know that he liked BO more than SR, I'm already expecting a lot from SR2 and Defiance haha
Yeah, so this game is pretty much the trailer for Soul Reaver 2. SR2 is where Legacy of Kain goes from incredible atmosphere to incredible storytelling. You wont be disappointed with SR2.
I recomend returning to this game sometime, to find all the content that you've missed. There are about as much square meters of extra areas as there was on the main path. And more references to BO1, like the head of Nupraptor that you've found (but didn't solve it's puzzle).
I enjoyed this playthrough beyond any words! And I'm extremely happy that you still have 3 more games from this legendary franchise to go on, the amazing ride is just getting started!!!!
I just started watching this video and I am already waiting for Soul Reaver 2. Loved the gameplay, so many memories, also it sucked waiting so many years for the next game without knowing if another one would be made.
Soul reaver 2 was my first legacy of kain game so I was pretty lucky, I think. When I finally got around to the first one it was more of a neat little look into things that were referenced and talked about in 2 and I didn't think much about the 'to be continued' at the time.
Soul reaver 2 is also my favourite in the series. But I think part of that is bias from it being my introduction into the series.
Despite the gameplay jank the series is one of my all time favourite for the story and voice acting and atmosphere. Raziel and Kain have amazing chemistry. It's hard to say who I like better. Kain's secretive arrogance or Raziel's naive righteousnss. Both are done so well.
Very excited to see your reactions to the story as you continue.
Also it's good you're keeping notes because it gets complicated!
did you know that to this day people are still finding hidden locations
It's a bit sudden for sure. The game had a lot of stuff cut off. Still a bit disappointed that you didn't do any of the side exploring though. A lot of the Blood Omen references in this game are set outside of the beaten path, and it's great stuff. Plus just more moods and atmosphere, and more stuff that lets you use your earned powers so you can sorta feel more gameplay variety as a whole.
And there are some pretty big areas to see!
Oh well! You saw all the most important stuff, still, and seem to have enjoyed the game, so that's something at least! Looking forward to Soul Reaver 2!
Your feelings about the ending of Soul Reaver mirror mine with my first playthrough. Fantastic story, oh so many box puzzles, and a plethora of powers you can easily miss. It remains one of my favourite series.
Looking forward to you continuing the series. Mahalo.
On my original playthrough I definitely remember being shocked at the 'to be continued', but I wasn't disappointed really. I'd found a couple of the glyphs, then went back and found the rest, played around with 'allying' with the humans and such. So I still got a good amount more playtime from the game. I was more-so excited for the sequel than anything haha
The finished game is only about two thirds of what was planned but a deadline was given and a lot had to be cut. The three visions of the future seen at the end were were supposed to happen in this game, however as it was cut off early the story completely changes going into SR2 with these original events becoming non-canon. So it is not a spoiler to tell you the original plan.
Raziel would have faced off with a human sorceress that is the head of the vampire worshippers gaining a mind control ability, he would have faced off with his last brother Turel gaining telekinesis (Turel's dialogue was cut up and given to one of his clan in the sarafan tomb). In Kain's retreat Raziel would have gained a bit of Kain's soul but not able to fully defeat him until Ariel offers herself up to feed the blade making it stronger. In their final confrontation Kain would wax poetic about how all the actions he took were predestined (thus not really his responsibility (Soul Reaver as a whole was inspired by Milton's paradise lost). Upon Kain's defeat and absorption into the blade (the red/black version) Raziel would be completely unstoppable as he returns to the silenced cathedral that Zephon was found in, there he would repair the piping system to complete the cathedral and finally utilise it as the weapon it was meant to be and use its deadly hymn to finally destroy all the vampires in Nosgoth. (I've probably misremembered some of that but you get the gist). _None_ of this comes up in later entries but the chronoplast visions are re-interpreted as something else.
The hype for Soul Reaver's release was massive and when I got to that ending I was rightly pissed as well (though I did read the manual first so better understood what I was supposed to be able to do). I had not played Blood Omen beforehand or even really heard of it so I had no idea who Ariel was at the time (from the dialogue I just assumed that she was some human who was supposed to be sacrificed to Kain but got bound to the pillars when he refused to accept her... or something). By the end I vowed to never play it again but I did eventually pick up SR2 and when I reached the end of that I was utterly sold on the series. SR2 is where the overall story is really cemented together.
There is a lot more story to SR2 than there was in SR1 but at the same time exploration is completely nixed, there are _no_ secrets to find so every playthrough will match the others except for skill level. That won't be a loss for you though as you did no exploring in _this_ game, critical path only. SR1 is pretty much only a prologue for the much more rich SR2.
Love the title and the game- Hope you'll play the other games in this series too, they don't get enough love.
Hehe, was hoping that the "to be continued" would lead you to getting into SR2 faster instead of frustration and I'm very glad that was the case! SR2 intro cinematic is legendary and the game is a huge step-up in terms of writing (not that this was bad by any means).
So glad the SR1 team ran out of time/resources or otherwise we probably would have not gotten SR2 and the rest of the series ^^
Oh, quick note Mapo - The fire Reaver was optional just like the glyph abilities, you could have missed it too. So having it as your reason to think the glyphs are superfluous is a bit flawed as it could have been any of the glyphs that carried you through instead and you could have found some much earlier. I seem to recall the fire glyph being found somewhat near the fire Reaver too.
The way Mapocolops slowly gets out his notebook and starts taking notes while Kain monologues kills me 🤣
because that is also how I deal with my mortal enemies
Randomly saw your soul reaver videos after seing your intro I was sure that I'll watch it all the way to the end and continue with the rest of the series. One of my all time favorites for sure and glad to see you experience it
Revisiting this classic alongside you being able to play it blindly was a big boost for me. This was one of my dads favorite series and some of my earliest gaming memories. This game alone got me into reading more often since the vocabulary was all Shakespearean and more advanced for a child to try and understand. Looking forward to all the other adventures through Nosgoth you get to go through, stoked for your reactions. 🤟
The 2 year long wait after Soul Reaver 1's cliffhanger wasn't that bad.
The 6 year long wait after Half -Life 1's cliffhanger though... oof.
You were so close to find some of the glyphs you were looking for haha. You were in the room of the Force one rigth after killing Melchiah (the one with Nupraptor's head). You were close once to the entrance of the fire, stone and sound glyphs. However you never came close to the water and sunligth glyphs. There would have been a surprise for you in the stone glyph area since you played Blood Omen :D
Thanks for this.
For some context: this game shipped with about a 1/3rd of the planned content. That's why all the glyph powers, forges and even some areas are optional. Further more, some of the time-visions hint to the original plot, but that sequels changed most of them.
Ahhh, the claws scratching at the ground
fun trivia: The writer of Legacy of Kain series is also the writer of the Uncharted trilogy
If only I could give more than one like. One for the playthrough and the rest for the "To Be Continued" reaction lol
The whole LOK series has some amazing voice work and the lore and world building is impressive.
One of the most interesting things about this game is that the ending was originally quite different because they weren't planning on sequels. But when they changed it, they incorporated bits and pieces into this ending. For instance, Ariel being killed by raziel. That scene was part of the original story for the game, and you are right, it was part of powering up the reaver to kill kain. You can even use cheat codes to activate the "Air Reaver" and the "Kain Reaver", though I'm fairly sure it's just a visual change at this point.
Thank you so much for this series playthrough. Holds a special place in the hearts of gamers
Mapo we were lucky to get this game at all. Raziels character was originally supposed to be for a completely different game concept called Shifter I think before they decided to make him part of lok. As for the tbc they were completely out of time and tons of content was cut and recycled in/delayed for the sequel. Much of that content has since been restored using the source code but very little of it is in a playable condition.
I also enjoyed watching you play Blood Omens more. I am very intrigued by the story but watching Soul Reaver felt like it was 5 % juicy story and dialogue and 95 % pushing blocks around.
You'll probably like Soul Reaver 2 more in that case.
@@yewtewbstew547 yes, you are right. I have been enjoying SR2 much more.
kinda wish kane had all the powers from the original game, made a real interesting boss fight, where each of your abilities countered one of kanes abilities, oh well cant wait for your playthrough of Soul Reaver 2
Mapocolops Soup Reaver Drinking game:
Drink whenever he says "human mode"
Drink whenever he says "not human"
Drink whenever he says "I forgot"
Drink whenever he says he's going to go back and check something l, but never does
Drink whenever he tries to vastly overcomplicate a relatively simple puzzle
Drink whenever he makes a very complicated puzzle seem easy
Drink every time he falls off a platform
Drink every time he thinks he's in a bonus area but id actually progressing the game
😂😂
Just kidding...I actually really enjoyed your playthrough, but you could have found much more content if you actually had revisited areas you had said you were going to revisit
the ... SOUP reaver you say?
oh no he is coming for our soup!
:D
I had the luck to get into the series when soul reaver 2 was already out, but yeah, that "to be continued" had to hurt a lot of people back in 99'
It really did lol
@OfnionGidnir You ain't wrong >_
"Wisely done Mr.Freeman. i'll see you up ahead."
**6 years of pain and waiting**
Love this serie, and you can imagine that waiting for more than a year for the sequel was like waiting for a new season of your favorite serie on netflix which has finished with a big cliffhanger ! :o
About your let's play I feel ok not to do everything, but it's a little shame you didn't go at least the passage in the tower (rewarding your guessing), maybe to discover a spell or something (honestly I don't remember). All I remember is that there are whole areas to lead to theses spells, fully optionnal. Kinda strange but that is a thing. I don't think there is lore to obtain, but some are linked (as you said) to blood omen areas.
I have to say something about this serie : Its my favorite serie of games (with dark souls but for different reasons). I was like 13 years old when I started with blood omen, and I can say these games made me smart and change my life. They teach me the sense of sacrifice and free will beyond what I thought to be good or evil. and the importance to knowing myself and what I do really want in my life. They sharp me to a critical mind always doubting and questioning things, forcing me to always be curious.
Love experiencing this again from the pov of a new player
The offense spells are not really useful in my opinion, but in how you travel to and obtain them is what i wanted to see you experience
The sunlight spell is incredibly useful.
The real benefit of them is that you're invulnerable while casting them. Which is handy if you are (for example) charging an enemy three levels up who you have to hit at full health but will hit you with an auto-hitting attack if you're a split second too slow.
Aside from that though, yeah, they're not that great. The satisfaction is more in solving the puzzles to get them.
@@klemminguk Lot of satisfaction indeed. Hope Mapo might look at it. But those Glyph segments are pretty small to make one big episode
I'm surprised u beat this, and got none of the magic glyphs.
Well that's it, then. I figured you would give it a couple months before jumpng back in but you've just caught the LOK series bug. Mapo's been sucked in and NEEDS to know what happens right away after that ending. P.S We all felt the same way about the "to be continued" abrubtly ending the game.
last contact with Elder God in this game "be warned if you go through there, you are beyond my influence!"
first contact in next game "oh great its YOU. And i had hoped I was finally rid of you!"
that bit always jarred me. This game The Elder God was chill, giving us half truths and encouraging us to kill Kain and our brothers. Then when we next see him, Raziel is just full sass mode.
Played the hell out this game back then. To be continued just made want Soul Reaver 2 even more … PSone had Game Shark and Game Genie for some awesome cheats 😊😊😊
You got yourself a sub! Great watching someone experience these games for the first time. Can't wait to see your reaction to Soul Reaver 2, which has the best story in the series, imo
Can't wait till the next part!
Awesome playthrough mapo
My experience was a bit heartbreaking. I loved this game when I was a kid, but I was never able to beat it, mainly because of the Language Barrier. Years went by, other games and consoles came out, but Soul Reaver was still there, lingering in my mind. 7 years later I had the chance to sit down and beat it, and yes it was very disappointing. I didn't have a PS2 back then, I could only afford one console and I bought a Gamecube which was about to be replaced by the Wii and I think the PS3 was already out or close to be released, so Legacy of Kain was kinda old news back then. It wasn't until 2013/14 when I was finally able to play all the games back to back.
Legacy of Kain was a great franchise from the Art and Narrative stand point, but as video games, they had a huge identity crisis.
i'm ready for the next in the series. side note, if you like collectibles, there was a cool line of action figures for this game series, not sure why but they existed and they were really neat, if you're into that sorta thing.
Any horror games coming up for spooky season?
I had the Raziel one that came with the torch and spear as a kid.
Okay, I can explain the whole visions thing you saw with the yellow and red/black blades. From my understanding those were supposed to be put into the game but were cut. Apparently a lot of stuff got cut from the game, which you can tell and as you stated. I think you were supposed to go to Ariel and free her soul by consuming it. Empowering the Wraith Blade and turning it golden, and I think letting you really hurt Kain. I do know that the red/black blade was from killing Kain and taking his soul as well, empowering the wraith blade further. And I believe at some point after all that the last thing Raziel was supposed to do was go to the Silenced Cathedral (Zephon's lair) and activate the pipes. It was made by the humans to be a sonic weapon against the vampires, and so Raziel's final mission was to activate it and kill all the remaining vampires in Nosgoth. Then he was supposed to go to the Chronoplast chamber and meet Mobius. Now, keep in mind that I'm pulling this from like over a decade ago and it was all cut content so I don't know specifics or the order. But yes, a great deal of content was cut (either time or budget reasons, not sure which) and it was really padded out with those block puzzles and it had way less stuff in terms of powers and items and such. Soul Reaver's one of the weaker games in the series because of that. I still like it. I went out to get the sequel before I even had a PS2. This game along with Half Life, KOTOR and MGS2 are the games of my childhood. As much as I like this game I have to agree. Blood Omen has a lot more stuff for the player to do.
God I hope you play BG3 soon, you'll absolutely love the RPG chops it brings to the table
This game is one of those games that really really could do with a good remake (and merge it with SL2). As fond as I am of this game it’s flaws are not aging too well. Loving your playthrough though can’t wait for SL2!
I have news for you!
@@mjthebest7294 unfortunately it could do with more than just an AI upscale/remaster. It needs a full remake.
Fully agree with you. But I am very happy nonetheless. It may be just the beginning if it will be good enough to make the series revive.
@@mjthebest7294 fingers crossed I hope that turns out to be the case 🤞
Play Soul Reaver 2 before Blood Omen 2.
There is a big bit of unfinished content.
Raziel's vampire brother Turel is still out there, he was going to be fought after the second Kain boss since Kain would teleport away to retreat to his stronghold. At Kain's stronghold Ariel would tell Raziel that only the power of Balance will defeat Kain so Raziel would absorb Ariel's soul so Raziel could damage Kain. After the final battle Raziel would return to the Silent Cathedral and active the function the humans were going to use killing all Vampires across Nosgoth. There is other cut content.
"Play Soul Reaver 2 before Blood Omen 2."
God yes, Blood Omen 2 will make NO sense unless you play SR2 first.
I was planning to play this game and then catch up with this playthrough along the way but my GOG copy broke. But man! I share your excitement about this series. The LoK series seems to be one of those that has the 'X' factor to it, which makes me all the more excited to watch the next playthrough. And hopefully, my copy of SR2 doesn't get a case of the crashies.
It was exactly what you said... A stab in the heart..
At the time, it was THE GAME for me and it still is to this day, and when I saw this "to be continued".... Ugh!
But the story, the music, the gameplay, forgave (somehow)..... that.
I replayed the game so many times I can't count.. even after the second and last part played because I enjoy every surprise and twist of the story every time as if I'm playing it for the first time ever.
The game felt short because you missed all the "hidden" glyph areas. You actually went very close to all of them, but didn't write them down and forgot to go back and check them with the new abilities you got killing your brothers. There is a LOT of stuff to do to get them, and they were for me the favourite things to do in the game!
I still enjoyed your playthrough very much, I hope you will come back one day and aquire all the glyphs. They are worth it.
Redeemer and Destroyer.
Messiah and pawn.
1:12:25.
You missed your chance to laugh back at him. Lol.
some content in the secret routes youl Really enjoy
Engagement.
I read that with sondal's voice
flayyyye
ENGAGEMENT!
help me kind sir
When Kain activated the machinery on the roof and it starts to spinning I thought about Half Life 1 and how much fun a collabing game could be.
A game where the vampires of Nosgoth came through the portals and how the different clans would evolve with a headcrab.
Could Kain beat the Nihilanth?
Or when only Raziel would be teleported and replace Gordon, imagine Half Life 1 with a Soul Reaver as protagonist with all his powers (from which you missed a few) :D
Could someone give this idea to Valve and Crystal Dynamics (or whoever owns the licence of Legacy of Kain today) if there is the possibility of a collab?
I just noticed Aaron Keller worked on this game? The Aaron Keller who is now at Blizzard? Interesting!
the only issue with not picking up any gliphs (other than reducing the game length) is all these sections where you got hit and lost your weapon so you shift to gain full health then shift back to get hit again (repeat till you manage to win) would have been easier because you could have just nuked the offending vampire instead.
You missed all Glyphs locations. Except the first one, where you didn't do anything to get it
I was very frustrated about him not exploring more and giving up so soon about that, forgetting about it. Could have been the best blind playthough of this game there is on youtube. This game rewards curiosity and exploration! It has no fear in putting A TON of hidden content, maybe even more than the main path
You should check out the lost worlds channel on this game bc we really on got 2/3 of the game intended. The cut content and story was meant to ebd with this game. Cut bosses and abilities.
strange, i did play the game back then but i don´t remember there being this energy refilling circle in the final fight. I remember this fight to be way harder as a result. Did they update it later, i wonder.
You will make a favor to yourself by playing the next game on the PlayStation 2 emulator (PCSX2). It runs flawlessly there, with the best sound quality between all of the versions and with a bunch of extras. Plus, there are custom HD textures for it that makes it your best alternative. The PC version needs a few fixes that are not so intuitive, but it works as well if you want to stick with it, although with worst sound quality and way worse controlls. I hope you have a great time with it! Its story presentation is as good, if not better, than Blood Omen's, and it's my absolute favorite in the series!
And they say God of War 2 Has the Best cliffhanger.
There are some folks on here encouraging you to skip BO2 after SR2 and go straight to Defiance but I recommend against doing this, you'll want to play all 5 games and you really don't want BO2 to be the climax. It was made by a B team and is clearly not of the same quality but it _is_ a significant piece of the whole plot puzzle. You will have questions going in and questions coming out of it and they will be answered (mostly) in the final game. Defiance is not just the last game but the emotional climax too, going from there into the mediocre previous game will not be satisfying, play all 5 and in the order they came out please.
Yep, either skip BO2 altogether or play it between SR2 and Defiance. NOT last! But I certainly wouldn't mind Mapo playing BO2 too.
i played it as a kid and remember enjoying iit. I think i'm gonna play it again now as an adult to make a veredict cuz you know... we "enjoy" any game as kids
BO2 has some good worldbuilding and arguably the best boss fights in the series (although the overall gameplay feels very clunky), but my biggest issue is character retcons. Also, dialogue overall is very blunt and naming conventions (the builder, the device etc.) just feel weak.
However, I feel they kept true to (younger) Kain's character and playing such a nasty p.o.s. has that novel charm, to me at least.
And last but not least, like the op said, Defiance obviously acknowledges BO2, so not playing it would weaken Defiance in turn.
I mean... it's no problem nowadays, because you can just hop into the next game. But back in the day I would have been furious about that To Be Continued screen.^^
My advice is to read Mobius's end dialogue to Raziel. It's the entire plot of SR2 and Defiance.
This game was originally supposed to have an entirely different and expanded ending which would've made it the last game in the series. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the team couldn't finish the game in time and had to tell the story in an expanded form through Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance.
the ending sucked back then but what sucked even more was the fact that they didn't finish the game. theres quite a bit of content that was planned but never made into the game. there was a whole website with cut audio dialogs, places etc.
You missed every single glyph. You almost had it but you didnt realize that you needed to interact with the pillars in the room.
Was really great to see playthough this classic and I can't wait for you to play soul reaver 2. I would highly recommend that you leave blood omen 2 till after you finish the soul reaver trilogy as blood omens story is set in a different timeline and is separate from the SR trilogy 👍
It's so funny to me how people always claim that this one is the masterpiece and you could just skip some others because they are seemingly bad. I'm gonna be honest - I didn't even finish this game when I was playing it myself. I guess playing Blood Omen 2 and Defiance before kinda spoiled me since they are more enjoyable in terms of gameplay but there is also a lot more going on in those. Don't get me wrong - not saying that this is a bad game but people hate too much. Yea, the dialogue and the writing are great in Soul Reaver, the music is too and it's a very unique concept. But seeing it now again - I've gotta say the gameplay is really outdated and the ending rather frustrating. So I'm glad I've just watched a Let's Play instead of playing it myself. Really curious to how Soul Reaver 2 is going to be though. And excited to hear Mapos thoughts on Blood Omen 2 and Defiance since they are very different to Soul Reaver 1.
The ending timing is more than likely down to size restraints - for a PS1 game, it did have a big open world with no load screens other than the portals and remember, you didn't get ANY of the 5 optional relics - each are in their own location so exploration is key. Sadly, there's not much use for them, although you would have been less frustrated several times if you had the abilities to hand...
[Edit]
Finishing it back then was just as frustrating, and the next episode took AGES to come out...
... hence I explored every inch of the map while I waited.
No, the ending being what it was was due to time. They had so much development trouble (the human Citadel had massive cuts due to technical difficulties) that they just didn't have the time left to actually finish it before their release deadline. So they cut it down and set up for a sequel.
One of the few times in gaming history where time constraints and cuts made things better. The original SR1 ending (I have the cut dialogue on my channel, it's actually on the disc because the cuts happened so late) was ok but what we got from the sequels is so much better.
Edit: This was a phenomenal game for its time - really sad that it was ruined halfway through by internal strife. Absolutely loved the playthrough though, as always.
Geeking out a bit since I've been building, breaking and fixing PCs since I was 12 - vsync synchronizes your framerate to the vertical refresh rate of your display. So if your framerate goes higher than your refresh rate, for example your display is 120Hz and your framerate is 150fps, or if your display and your graphics card are for some reason out of sync in spite of having vsync enabled, you get screen tearing. This won't be visible in a recording, it's limited to your actual display. Vsync can be pretty glitchy; I've even had a few newer games give me screen tearing with vsync on, and emulators can be finnicky too. Generally I prefer when a game has the option to actually hard-limit your framerate, since it also won't give you the input lag you can get with vsync sometimes. You can also do this with your graphics card's drivers, but obviously that requires some tinkering. It's not difficult, just fairly obscure. For nVidia it will be in your control panel somewhere - look for "Max Framerate" or something similar and try setting it to be the same as your display refresh rate. Just throwing it in there - something you can look at if you have bad tearing issues again in the future.
Hey, what do you think about starting a Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough?
You missed a LOT of optional content, like the spells and I think you didn't find the final human settlement either.
There was originally another ending planned for this game where Raziel kills Kain, and then uses the pipe organ chapel like a sonic nuke to kill all the remaining vampires in Nosgoth.
lol yea seems every ep does start off with block moving
the next one is even better, controls allot better, story fills in allot of the missing lore and connects the other games together nicely, defiance is where its at tho , my all time fav hack and slash, but blood omen 2 was fun, least kept us busy till defiance dropped haha
loved this game :)
You should play Shadowman if you didn't arleady. Fantastic PS1 game that get remaster on GOG by nightdive recently.
yes if you love Soul Reaver chances are you're gonna love Shadowman as well.
I was so disappointed when i beat this game and the sequel was released on PS2 and i only had PS1.
after i ended the game i keep playing searching for that Scenes that shows on the visions. till Soul reaver 2 cames hahaha i spend thousends of hours searching how to kill Ariel hahaha.
Unfortunately about a third of planned content for this game had to be scrapped at the last minute. there are data miners out there have discovered entire levels buried in the code once you finish the series go look up some of that stuff.
Yeah that Kain fight was underwhelming. The dev team must've known that players would expect an epic battle between Raziel and Kain.
The final fight was also obviously a let down compared to the puzzles of prior bosses, and part of the scramble to cut the game short. Yeah these days, with the refocus on the soul reaver and the found weapons as compared to blood omen, I'm sure there'd be a bit more depth to combat, along the lines of a general souls framework. It really isn't a power fantasy, Raziel is coming back from a deeply weakened state, something along those lines would be great.
In this play-through, 1/3 of the game was missed, this game should be driven by curiosity in order to get the pleasure of it.
Not a single spell was found and acquired...
The weakest element of Soul Reaver was unfortunately the exploration and constant environmental puzzles, so it does not entice you to explore further especially knowing now most of the game was cut and development cut short. I enjoy the setting, lore and storytelling a lot and I feel satisfied with what I got here on that front.
the game doesn't encourage the player to go for the other spells. The Fire Reaver is overpowered enough and the search for the other spells don't add anything relevant to the story anyway (the spells don't even carry over to the sequel).
Worst of it all: MORE block puzzles to collect them :(
@@crust5909 Yes, spells are not a part of the main story, but my favorite part of this game is how much Raziel is OP...
@@Mapocolopswow, i found the exploration the best part of this game. Intensily satisfying finding hidden areas. Some were huge and were nice callbacks to blood omen. Bit disappointed after watching all of these that you didnt explore more, but makes sense if you didn’t like that part.
The "to be continued' of soul reaver might seem cruel, but at least you can continue the story. Unlike Halflife 2 Ep2
Playing BO2 after SR2 is best IMO, Defiance is the closer game
How are you playing this? I haven’t been able to get ahold of it outside buying a ps2 and physical copies of the series.
What if what he saw were possible futures a good and bad ending, like Kain
How did he make it through the whole game without finding one glyph?
Just a little information. there were supposed to be two more boss fights.
If you remember each of the enemy types our offspring from your brothers.
Except for the dog ones. You never got the fight that brother or the last brother.
There was even supposed to be a human boss that you would have to fight.
But unfortunately they ran out of space on the desk.
"But unfortunately they ran out of space on the disc."
No they didn't. They ran out of time.
After Soul Reaver 2 you can skip Blood Omen 2 and go directly to Soul Reaver : Defiance. 😉
You're telling this to the man who played Double Agent twice on different versions? lol
"Destiny is a Game is it not?" now is it?
Was i disappointed from the ending? Let me tell you a story...
i randomly stumbled over this game somewhere around 1999, played it, loved it, got disappointed. I showed it to my girlfriend. She played it, she loved it - and then yelled the whole rest of the evening at me. She forced me on the following saturday, right after we got up, to the next electronic store, where we bought a copy of soul reaver 2.
I'd love to see you play Soul Reaver 2. The game is in my eyes the weakest of all the series. While it explains _a lot_ more about the lore, the combat is punishing (and not anywhere as easy as in SR1 with the constant exploiting of the spectral realm), and it feels like it drags on for ever. Even the puzzles - while most of them are pretty clever and cool to solve - even feel like they are more complicated then it should be. However, keep in mind, the lore that gets thrown at you is worth to play it. SR2 leaves a few plotholes too, but doesn't have such a cliffhanger as SR1 had (to be honest, SR1 had the most salty Cliffhanger of all games, so thats not hard...). The whole story gets round with Soul Reaver: Defiance, and after you finished this one, you will understand what was really going on, even if there is more to uncover. There are certain websites that grab every clue around and make up interesting theories about the whole plot. Anyway, Defiance will offer you closure to the plot, so prepare to play it after SR2.
If you feel like it, you can stick Blood Omen 2 somewhere inbetween. The game is more combat-focused, the riddles are less complicated (well, most of them...), and the story is rather weak compared to the stuff going on in SR2 & Defiance, but i would not mind see you finding out for yourself. Have fun anyways.
From gameplay perspective this game looks VERY boring and weak. I think this time-thing should have been introduced earlier too.
What annoys me the most - is that this game could have been much better. With same technology and stuff.
The strength is it's storytelling
@@Mapocolops yeah, and the setting.
Lets just hope that the next game will be even better!