@@SeriousPan why does everyone assume comparisons are the worst thing you can do between two things Like, they're literally both heavily stylized wario land homages made and released around the same time. Obviously people are going to compare them. Why is that such a problem?
I can see why he didn't like Soul Reaver much, due to the overall gameplay of it. Most of us fans are here for the story and how the dialogue is well presented, and if Yahtzee hasn't progressed to the first boss then he wouldn't like the story that much, especially since he hasn't played Blood Omen.
I had it on dreamcast and for me it was the nearest thing to a 3d zelda for dreamcast. I still like the game and the plot and style is grea. The combat and controls are dated but nothing I can't look past today. Its a series that would be great to fully reboot.
Even as a fan who grew up with the games, I gotta say Soul Reaver was my least favourite of the bunch! I know, lynch me, but BO2 was at least *different* I also think Zahtz needed much more exposure to appreciate the music/world/dialogue and not cast it off as "90s edgy"
Him suggesting that Soul Reaver would have been lacking even in its own time is a bizarre statement. Soul Reaver was the absolute _tits_ when it was new and cutting edge- easily one of the best-looking games on the PS1 and it was easily the best 3D platformer you'd find outside of the N64. Plus its story was and still is arguably the best of its generation (when you include the PS2 sequels, Blood Omen 2 notwithstanding).
Antonblast and Pizza Tower are sibling series. They were being developed by two guys who had the same idea of a WarioLand inspired game with speed and art styles inspired by their favorite cartoons. Also Yahtzee for future preference if you decide to pick it up again you can turn off all the screenshake and make it easier to see.
@@GenericProtagonist118 even without the screenshake, i do agree that there can be a lot of visual clutter. Namely in boss fights as i often find myself picking a brighter skin just to make anton easier to track. It really could use some white outlines during certain moments
@2-Way_Intersection Oh, there's another solution too! Even though the plot hinges on the fact that Anton is the "Red Guy" the game doesn't seem to care if you choose for him to be red or not.
Honestly, I thought Yahtzee would appreciate Soul Reaver because a lot of its themes, mechanics and gameplay are pre-Dark Souls Dark Souls. Character is a literally deathless character in a ruined world gradually falling to a mystical entropy, in 1 with the enemies being vampires they can only be killed in certain ways requiring you to either take no damage so you can use the literal Soul Reaver sword or find environmental or weapon ways of killing them. Gameplay is clunky as hell but the writing is top notch.
The game is pretty meh, to be fair. The story is absolutely amazing, sure, but the gameplay is take it or leave it. About the only gameplay I thought was passable was Blood Omen, and Lok: Defiance with it's puzzles and Onimusha style combat.
OG Blood Omen surprisingly holds up better than the rest of the series simply because unlike the rest of the series it let's you do some nasty vampire shit like a motherfucker. Massacring villages as werewolf - lets gooooo
I think it's just a taste thing. Yahtzee doesn't tend to vibe with grim or edgy tones that take themselves very seriously. POP2 was his least favoured of the trilogy, and he's often expressed revulsion at the hyper-serious dogma driven Warhammer 40K series, only recently coming around to it in finding it rides the line between self-serious and self-aware. This is just speculation, but it might come from growing up on Terry pratchett, who liked to be playful and irreverent with fantasy, and often deconstructed the assumed values of the genre.
I mean, it was a dual-commentary live stream, it was doomed from the start. You can't get immersed in a story that you're actively engaged in pissing on.
Soul Reaver isn't just angst, it's a whole drama. The second game is the crisis and connection point for the plot of three other games between Soul Reaver 1 and the Blood Omen games. It's this huge, complex plot involving time travel and fate. There's another game series plot that parallels this, but I would likely be hunted down and shot for saying it.
I mean, if you start the series with Soul Reaver 1 and don't go past it (or even finish it), it's easy to assume it's all just about Raziel's vengeance quest - and Raziel is all about being angry and self-righteous.
It's if peggle had a baby with slay the spire since it uses the same map and relic system, plus its 3 act branching path, ending with boss, maybe with elites and unknowns, structure
I know you have a severe lack of spare time, Yahtzee, but as a narrative specialist I highly recommend you continue the Soul Reaver games, if only to see why they are regarded as formative for more mature storytelling in games. While the initial aesthetic is very Hammer Comics, the story takes some very philosophical directions and isn't afraid of asking really big questions. As you observed, they have been surpassed by successing titles, but I think you, with your interest in video game dev history, will appreciate what they have to offer.
Thank you for this comment. Soul Reaver walked, so more modern games with great storytelling could run.It's a pretty risky concept as a whole ( gameplay -wise too) that was part of a more experimental crop of games in the late 90's , i think.
I think any one who loves Soul Reaver would agree that the gameplay isn't good. A lot of your complaints were fixed in the 2nd game after all. Everyone loves the game for the story though. Plus, one element of the game that you didn't experience in your try out is the need to go back and forth between the Spirit realm and the physical realm. The best thing the game design has going for it is how the landscape twists and turns seamlessly as you transition between the two worlds and you never really got a chance to see that. One thing I would argue about with you is your comment how the dialogue is edgy. I can understand why you would come to that opinion, but I think if you instead view the dialogue as something you are hearing as part of a Shakespearean soliloquy then it makes more sense and helps you get into the tone the game tries to set up.
That has got to be the _worst_ defence of a game's dialogue I've ever seen. You actually lowered my opinion of the writing, and I didn't think that was possible.
@@Eden_Laika Not sure how it's the worst defence, nor how it lower's the quality of the dialogue. You can not like that style of writing that's for sure, but they were just giving another way to view it.
@@zanmaru139 the map is only there to help you remember what the teleport symbols mean and show you where everything is in relation to each other. if it was an actual map then it would defeat the idea of the game, just like if Dark Souls had a map.
The fact that Yahtzee doesn't have the patience for a deeper or more drawn-out story is Jack's absolute lack of surprise to me, who has been with Zero Punctuation from the start and knows story-driven games are to Yahtzee like clockmaking is to a toddler. But I'll be damned if it doesn't hurt to see him utterly dismiss the atmosphere so eagerly.
@@poiumty What on earth are you talking about? Have you genuinely not heard him talk about Silent Hill 2, Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, the Metal Gear series, Firewatch? Literally one of his most common complaints about video game stories is that they're too shallow. Why do you think he likes Papers Please or the Return of the Obra Dinn so much?
@@Eden_Laika And yet this time, he barely paid attention to it. I watched the vod. Could be that there was something else he didn't like but he doesn't play "wordy" video games for a reason, and that reason is he doesn't have enough patience for them.
@@Eden_Laika He says Symphony of the Night is one of his favorite games. He's never played a CRPG, and refused to even review Disco Elysium. The man does not have patience for story. It has to come in a package.
@poiumty Every time he mentions Disco Elysium he has almost exclusively positive things to say. I'm begining to wonder if we're even talking about the same person. Also, there is a difference between edgy and gothic.
It was interesting so a take on soul reaver without nostalgia goggles, because I played the hell out of that game as a kid, but I had no idea what I was doing back then, but I loved the visuals.
In Soul Reaver, sneaking prevents you from falling off ledges. No idea if it's explained in the remaster, but it's in the Dreamcast manual, which I'm sure is very helpful for modern players.
I think a lot of the hype for the Soul Reaver/Blood Omen stuff if for the writing rather than gameplay. While the games become fun once you've progressed enough the story and design were the real points of interest.
legacy of kain fyi's: crouch to approach ledges and not fall off, also the game is most fondly remembered for the stellar voice acting and dialogues. we are very well aware the rest of the gameplay is mediocre at best
I always loved the vampire killing mechanic, wish it had been iterated upon. And the atmosphere of that game is absolutely immaculate. Not even From has captured such a sense of desolation and displacement that well.
The skating guy seems like a nice evolution of that genre instead of always being point to point unless you're falling to your demise, heh heh. There was an "Eggman" where you had two arms instead of just a sledgehammer. Oh btw that sledgehammer one has a VR version in first person! If you need to piss off a family member while they visit, or something. Cheers all!
9:57 I especially felt this to be extremely PlayStation, not just in the original graphics (I'm sure they were smoother on the PC version), but especially in the save system. The first game does have a "save-when-want" feature, but it will still reset you to the very first are if you quit, you just keep the general progress, The second game doesn't even have that, just random save points around the world. I feel like this is trying a bit too much to stay true to the original, especially since the Tomb Raider 1-3 remaster let's save whereever, whenever no questions asked and then you can play an extra mode gives you the PS1 save system. And I just completely forgot there was even a map, cause it just shows you the world, not the rooms you're in. There's also this PS1 distance fog/darkness, which I feel they kept in specifically because I've heard people say they didn't like it in TR 1-3 how you could see into the horizon and it was more "spooky" the old way.
Nosgoth is suppost be covered with mist/fog/smog because the vampires did it delbrately so they didn't burn up everytime they went outside. removing it would have been a bit like when the removed the fog from the silent hill1 remaster.
Playing 50 min of Soul Reaver 1 without any context could lead to only surface -level snarky comments on the game's story & narrative. I don't expect more from this channel since this is apparently Yahtzee's wheelhouse , but seeing that footage reminded me of the truly amazing storyline and interesting concepts about destiny/ predetermined fate that unfolds during this, SR 2 & LoK: Defiance. So yeah - if anybody is interested in truly epic vampiric saga & amazing storyline penned by the talented Amy Hennig , play these games - I for example started with Soul Reaver 2 at the time , and watched a short recap of the first game .
@@2-Way_Intersection Back off, man.Sure, a nefarious entity is paying me money so that i can dislike that a youtuber is trying the first chapter of a great trilogy while making surface- level snarky conclusions about it. If anything, my comment focused more on praising the storyline and the qualities of the LoK games, thus urging more people to give them a chance and see why they are considered a storytelling classics. Believe me, if you had a favorite book, game or a movie that you know it's incredible, you'd aldo get frustrated listening to this "Yahtzee tries". I also do aknowledge that this is the format, so nobody should expect much more.
@@2-Way_Intersection Yeah, I have to agree, even as a fan of the LoK series. Besides, why would you care about one guy's opinion on it, if you enjoy the game anyway? Oh, he didn't like it? I would just shrug and go back to the game~
You can't expect someone to play more than an hour of a game they're fundamentally not enjoying - that's just not a reasonable thing to expect, even if that person had all the free time in the world.
@@Eden_Laika It's like gamers who shit on people for playing Yoko Taro games, and not being able to get past the horribly tedious first two acts. Yes, while it's true that the best part of a game can come from the latter parts, it's also understandable when people go, 'Nah, it already lost me'
"Soul Reaver 1 does not have a crafting system, because it doesn't need it. It is a very focused experience. It is not a combat game with puzzles, it is a puzzle game that has combat occasionally within it. People get that wrong about Soul Reaver. Soul Reaver isn't an action fighter game, it's a puzzle game. It's an exploration, puzzle, narrative driven revenge story." - Josh Strife
@alexanderfreeman3406 Yes it's tedious at the start of the game before you unlock any abilities, but every Metroidvania is like that. Even Hollow Knight is like that.
"it's pizza tower again" honestly i just want someone to just start pizza tower, play john gutter, start antonblast, play boiler city, and then say that again, because they genuinely play NOTHING alike. and also the thing of them being both in development around the same time. actually i think tons of people compared pizza tower to cuphead back when that one came out just because both are cartoons, switching points of comparisons the moment one of them becomes slightly less relevant I see
To be honest, Ballionaire reminds me more of Luck be a Landlord (which, fun fact, LocalThunk cited as one of his direct inspirations for making Balatro).
I love these videos, guys. But can you get somehow the recording of gameplay at least to 1080p? It's slightly unpleasant especially when you zoom in on stuff. Again I love the videos and what you are doing.
I'm sorry you didn't much like Soul Reaver. It has a really good story. My nostalgia is thick, but it's a classic story about destiny. (Also, you can stop from falling off the platforms, if you hold 'walk'.) That said a lot of the game is puzzle/platform and the answers weren't always intuitive. This game came from the days of look under every stone you see, because you never know which one will have a key under it. (And then do it again in the spirit world.)
I don't think Yahtzee remembers 1999 very well, but it was still the era when action games could either have great combat and bare minimum story, or great story and passable combat. The few games that did both were usually shooters or action RPGs.
"Get to Work, Billionaire" sounds like a meme game where you put Musk to work on his own assembly line, frantically trying to maintain stock value after his entire workforce went on strike.
Balatro may be the most successful of them but I'm pretty sure Luck Be A Landlord came first so it feels a bit unfair to label other games trying to to do the strategy but also RNG number explosion roguelite thing as chasing Balatro's thunder.
@arminkuburas1696 Well history has shown you guys were wrong and FPS took over. Luck be a Landlord was also incredibly successful and deserves to be remembered as something other than a clone of game it inspired.
What I think you should do Yahtzee for Soul Reaver is watch a story compilation of the first game off of TH-cam, then start playing the 2nd game. I think you will find that to be a much more enjoyable experience.
Watching him play Soul Reaver probably made me as frustrated as he was playing it. You can harp all day on what you think a game SHOULD or SHOULD HAVE been. But a remaster is probably better digested by taking it for what it truly WAS. He wanted it to be Mario with some Dark Souls. It's not that and never was trying to be that. It's a story game with puzzles. Even the COMBAT is a puzzle. Take one of the fights he just showed! He had 4 options for combat and he chose none of them. The rocks will put a guy into "killable mode" he didn't use them. In a 2 on 1, it's worth using a spear to run through one baddie and then melee the other into a fire..sure, maybe you lose the 1st soul but now it's a 1 on 1. Get him into the fire and then pull the spear out of the first guy and then fully focus kill him. See? A puzzle of juggling priorities. He fell into a lake and then got lost because he refused to reexamine the world around him after he got sucked into the spectral realm. This was the earlier days of 3d when examining the environment was a huge part of the puzzle... You be all judgy about Call of Duty puzzles being too easy. I get it. You're doing a show on a limited time frame and have to make it entertaining. And it's definitely understandable when a streamer's play quality is hampered. But don't hold it against the game when you're not giving it the attention it deserves.
I saw a video recently talking about how people don't want true remasters in part because design sensibilities have changed so much since our childhoods, and the Kain remaster highlights that super well. No doubt certain people will enjoy being able to access the game they like on a modern system with some light graphical upgrades but even for some of those people the clunkiness and core of the game won't be as enjoyable as they remembered and they'll wish they were playing something more like a complete remake that just has familiar names and faces.
Yeah, the sub reddit for the series is also saying as much. It's good as a preservation of history, but a remake would serve it better, especially with a modern audience.
Legacy of kain didnt need a remaster. It needed a remake. That fact seems readily apparent to me, and I can't imagine how the developers didn't see it. Oh wait, they were bought by embracer group. That cash grabby feeling makes sense now.
Lol not. It's a fine game. I never played it back then but anyone who actually plays games and isn't a poser can enjoy it for it's atmosphere and story.
Going off Josh Strife Hayes recounting, it's more out of faithful reverence than laziness. He digs it. Though maybe going the MGS Delta route of having options for classic, and updated mechanics would have been the way to go.
Nostalgia is not the Sole Reason people love and regularly replay older video games, Croshaw. Yes Nostalgia can cloud your memory and some people definitely huff too much of the rose tinted stuff. But no amount of nostalgia is going to make me replay Covert Action or Mechwarrior 1 on a yearly basis. In the case of Soul Reaver it's a combination of the world, the atmosphere and the writing that keeps people coming back. For context I've played SR1+2 ONCE about 5 years ago, and I still remember a fair chunk of the story beats and locations. And while I agree the controls are on the clunky side in SR1. It is possible to do more than just mash attack. As I recently said to someone: IF YOU TAKE THE EFFORT TO PROPERLY ENGAGE WITH THE GAMEPLAY IN ANY GIVEN GAME THEN YOU'LL HAVE A LOT MORE FUN You can carry sharp weapons to smack and then impale stunned enemies, throw said sharp weapons to impale distant foes. You can imbue the titular soul Reaver with Fire, which is a bit overkill since I seem to remember the Reaver can just execute stunned enemies. Using attacks to knock enemies into finishing hazards like light or water. You gain magic spells, including one that nukes the whole room at the cost of a fair bit of energy Yahtz really needs to stop using Nostalgia as a criticism, it's getting to the point where I'm shocked when he DOESN'T mention nostalgia in a retro-game etro-style review. I'd rather have that space contain actual tangible criticisms\praise instead of a lazy hand waving of "This game isn't pushing the boundaries, nostalgia nutters amirite!"
At least, his experience of SR is aligned with mine. I emulated the Dreamcast version hoping to find a gem I ignored back then only to get a clunky walking simulator with bad combat and annoying puzzles. I like puzzles, mind, but I prefer when the UI is done accordingly. Instead, it felt like a core, controls were not intuitive and the writing witnessed during that hour was nothing convincing. I might try Blood Omen again but it seems to have the same problems. I just can't get the gameplay to click.
The lack of appreciating Marilyn Manson pencil holders is why we never got Antichrist Superstar the Musical. That and Manson was too busy with his newfound passion for becoming Barbie.
Yeah… Antonblast is not “another pizza tower.” Thats like saying pizza tower is “another wario land” when it’s simply not. Both games were being developed around the same time. Both have completely different mechanics, color pallets. And the issues you brought up didn’t seem to affect most other people. The color pallet was fine. I mean, maybe it just affects you more than other people, because out of every review for this game I’ve seen, you appear to be the only one that’s really brought up the color pallet being a negative thing.
Soul Reaver's combat gets better, there are reusable weapons you can find that you can use to beat enemies up with then impale them on, so there isn't as much of a need to find environmental kill spots. Then once you get the Soul Reaver, it gets better again, though granted you need to play for a couple of hours before you get it. And that "level select" is a quick travel teleporter to various spots in the game world which become available to warp to as you find them.
Yeah, nostalgia goggles can be powerful. For example, Goldeneye on the N64. Great fun at the time, beloved by many, but it absolutely does NOT hold up at all.
Legacy of Kain was always more about the story than the gameplay. The fights were easy, navigation could be a little confusing, but never so much that I needed a FAQ or anything, the acting was top notch and I really did want to know how the story ended. It feels more like a walking simulator where you eat souls. By the way, eating souls wasn't required, it just let you regain health. So, I liked it, but we're not all clones, so eh...
I lost track of how many times I watched the animated music video of Diggy Diggy Hole. And I don't care about the Yogscast aside from that (and maybe the other music video about the dwarf going to the moon.)
I'm surprised you didn't give Soul Reaver a chance! Defunct Games has a good video on how it would have been viewed at the time, as an impressive open world / no loading screen cinematic action game with full professional voice acting, not to mention directed and written by Amy Hennig, who has become legendary in her own right for this and the Uncharted series.
Trash talking Soul Reaver like that doesn't make you look very smart. Play the game on original hardware and compare it to what was being done at the time. The work of Amy Hennig on the script alone makes it a cult classic. Now add the huge world with no loading screens on PSX era, the ambience, the puzzles. I give you that the combat system is not really fleshed out, but the main focus is more on puzzles and exploration.
@@Eden_Laika You could make the same argument for any classic piece of media, tbh. Soul Reaver is not the only one whom this criticism applies to. Also, I've seen you around this comments section, and you kinda seem to miss that there are plenty of fans here who will readily admit the game's age, despite nostalgia. We know, we ALL know... We like it anyway~
@@DipolarApathy I actually played the game to completion, unlike Yatzhee. And I replayed it about an year ago so It's not a far distant memory or a nostalgia driven rant. The game holds up. The core elements AKA puzzles and exploration are still great altough combat is not as good and is barely improved upon in the sequels. I recommend watching Josh Strife for a more thorough analysis. His "Was it Good?" series delves deep into game mechanics and game design. I think dismissing a great game after barely scratching the surface is akin to dismissing a great book after reading the index.
I will not answer dumb questions. Games are not cars and the evolution of game design is not a linear progression. One could argue that many games today, specially AAA games, are stale and lack innovation. Or that mechanic depth is often sacrificed in favor of reaching a broader audience.
It's funny to call Antonblast "another Pizza Tower" because Antonblast and Pizza Tower were competitors at game jams for years during development
They have also both drawn the protagonists kissing
Both devs have even talked about working with each other to improve their games over the years while they were in development.
@@GooBomber1 LOVE WINS
It's sad to see games that are basically siblings in how they got developed together have one become the focus of comparison.
@@SeriousPan why does everyone assume comparisons are the worst thing you can do between two things
Like, they're literally both heavily stylized wario land homages made and released around the same time. Obviously people are going to compare them. Why is that such a problem?
I never expected Yahtzee singing diggy diggy hole
That one threw me as well 😂
Right after Jinglejam ended too!
I tried Soul Reaver a few years back and enjoyed it
I can see why it was so highly rated at the time
I can see why he didn't like Soul Reaver much, due to the overall gameplay of it. Most of us fans are here for the story and how the dialogue is well presented, and if Yahtzee hasn't progressed to the first boss then he wouldn't like the story that much, especially since he hasn't played Blood Omen.
I had it on dreamcast and for me it was the nearest thing to a 3d zelda for dreamcast. I still like the game and the plot and style is grea. The combat and controls are dated but nothing I can't look past today. Its a series that would be great to fully reboot.
Even as a fan who grew up with the games, I gotta say Soul Reaver was my least favourite of the bunch! I know, lynch me, but BO2 was at least *different*
I also think Zahtz needed much more exposure to appreciate the music/world/dialogue and not cast it off as "90s edgy"
Him suggesting that Soul Reaver would have been lacking even in its own time is a bizarre statement. Soul Reaver was the absolute _tits_ when it was new and cutting edge- easily one of the best-looking games on the PS1 and it was easily the best 3D platformer you'd find outside of the N64. Plus its story was and still is arguably the best of its generation (when you include the PS2 sequels, Blood Omen 2 notwithstanding).
Antonblast and Pizza Tower are sibling series. They were being developed by two guys who had the same idea of a WarioLand inspired game with speed and art styles inspired by their favorite cartoons.
Also Yahtzee for future preference if you decide to pick it up again you can turn off all the screenshake and make it easier to see.
@@GenericProtagonist118 even without the screenshake, i do agree that there can be a lot of visual clutter. Namely in boss fights as i often find myself picking a brighter skin just to make anton easier to track. It really could use some white outlines during certain moments
@2-Way_Intersection Oh, there's another solution too! Even though the plot hinges on the fact that Anton is the "Red Guy" the game doesn't seem to care if you choose for him to be red or not.
Honestly, I thought Yahtzee would appreciate Soul Reaver because a lot of its themes, mechanics and gameplay are pre-Dark Souls Dark Souls.
Character is a literally deathless character in a ruined world gradually falling to a mystical entropy, in 1 with the enemies being vampires they can only be killed in certain ways requiring you to either take no damage so you can use the literal Soul Reaver sword or find environmental or weapon ways of killing them. Gameplay is clunky as hell but the writing is top notch.
The game is pretty meh, to be fair. The story is absolutely amazing, sure, but the gameplay is take it or leave it. About the only gameplay I thought was passable was Blood Omen, and Lok: Defiance with it's puzzles and Onimusha style combat.
Enemies you can only kill in certain ways is not a Dark Souls mechanic.
OG Blood Omen surprisingly holds up better than the rest of the series simply because unlike the rest of the series it let's you do some nasty vampire shit like a motherfucker. Massacring villages as werewolf - lets gooooo
Also, there is a map. Not sure how useful it is, I didn't use it.
@@roetemeteorthe gameplay is of its time.
Soul Reaver is obviously broken gameplay, but I'm surprised with how quickly the atmosphere and dialogue were shat on.
I think it's just a taste thing. Yahtzee doesn't tend to vibe with grim or edgy tones that take themselves very seriously. POP2 was his least favoured of the trilogy, and he's often expressed revulsion at the hyper-serious dogma driven Warhammer 40K series, only recently coming around to it in finding it rides the line between self-serious and self-aware.
This is just speculation, but it might come from growing up on Terry pratchett, who liked to be playful and irreverent with fantasy, and often deconstructed the assumed values of the genre.
You must be new here. Even just looking at screenshots I could tell Yahtzee would hate the tone.
@@DakNJaxter which is weird, because I also grew up on terry pratchett and love the Shakespeare vampire game series.
I mean, it was a dual-commentary live stream, it was doomed from the start. You can't get immersed in a story that you're actively engaged in pissing on.
Judging from the footage that only shows to the outside of the Citadel of the Clans, it feels he gave it as much of a shot as Monster Hunter Tri.
Jack doing ad reads blends the perfect amount of shilling with sarcasm.
Soul Reaver isn't just angst, it's a whole drama. The second game is the crisis and connection point for the plot of three other games between Soul Reaver 1 and the Blood Omen games. It's this huge, complex plot involving time travel and fate. There's another game series plot that parallels this, but I would likely be hunted down and shot for saying it.
I mean, if you start the series with Soul Reaver 1 and don't go past it (or even finish it), it's easy to assume it's all just about Raziel's vengeance quest - and Raziel is all about being angry and self-righteous.
Peglin is basically rougelike peggle(hence the name.)
It's if peggle had a baby with slay the spire since it uses the same map and relic system, plus its 3 act branching path, ending with boss, maybe with elites and unknowns, structure
I know you have a severe lack of spare time, Yahtzee, but as a narrative specialist I highly recommend you continue the Soul Reaver games, if only to see why they are regarded as formative for more mature storytelling in games. While the initial aesthetic is very Hammer Comics, the story takes some very philosophical directions and isn't afraid of asking really big questions. As you observed, they have been surpassed by successing titles, but I think you, with your interest in video game dev history, will appreciate what they have to offer.
Thank you for this comment. Soul Reaver walked, so more modern games with great storytelling could run.It's a pretty risky concept as a whole ( gameplay -wise too) that was part of a more experimental crop of games in the late 90's , i think.
Welcome to another episode of 'Random Quotes and Noises' starring Yahtzee and friends.
I think any one who loves Soul Reaver would agree that the gameplay isn't good. A lot of your complaints were fixed in the 2nd game after all. Everyone loves the game for the story though. Plus, one element of the game that you didn't experience in your try out is the need to go back and forth between the Spirit realm and the physical realm. The best thing the game design has going for it is how the landscape twists and turns seamlessly as you transition between the two worlds and you never really got a chance to see that.
One thing I would argue about with you is your comment how the dialogue is edgy. I can understand why you would come to that opinion, but I think if you instead view the dialogue as something you are hearing as part of a Shakespearean soliloquy then it makes more sense and helps you get into the tone the game tries to set up.
That has got to be the _worst_ defence of a game's dialogue I've ever seen. You actually lowered my opinion of the writing, and I didn't think that was possible.
@@Eden_Laika Not sure how it's the worst defence, nor how it lower's the quality of the dialogue. You can not like that style of writing that's for sure, but they were just giving another way to view it.
@@MintyCoolness Word of advice: never compare your writing to fucking Shakespear - you will _never_ look good in that comparison.
@@Eden_Laika I wasn't directly comparing it to Shakespeare, just that it wanted to ape that style.
@@MintyCoolness What? This isn't your comment. Unless Takeru is your alt-account.
There's a map in the Soul Reaver remaster.
@@KillThad it's not a particularly useful one, and I'm a longtime fan of the series
@zanmaru139 I understand that, but he said there was no map. I watched the live stream as well, he never pulled it up.
Helps to have a map
@@zanmaru139 the map is only there to help you remember what the teleport symbols mean and show you where everything is in relation to each other. if it was an actual map then it would defeat the idea of the game, just like if Dark Souls had a map.
The fact that Yahtzee doesn't have the patience for a deeper or more drawn-out story is Jack's absolute lack of surprise to me, who has been with Zero Punctuation from the start and knows story-driven games are to Yahtzee like clockmaking is to a toddler.
But I'll be damned if it doesn't hurt to see him utterly dismiss the atmosphere so eagerly.
@@poiumty What on earth are you talking about? Have you genuinely not heard him talk about Silent Hill 2, Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, the Metal Gear series, Firewatch? Literally one of his most common complaints about video game stories is that they're too shallow. Why do you think he likes Papers Please or the Return of the Obra Dinn so much?
@@Eden_Laika And yet this time, he barely paid attention to it. I watched the vod.
Could be that there was something else he didn't like but he doesn't play "wordy" video games for a reason, and that reason is he doesn't have enough patience for them.
@@poiumty Again: Bioshock, Metal Gear, Firewatch. He just doesn't like _edgy_ games.
@@Eden_Laika He says Symphony of the Night is one of his favorite games. He's never played a CRPG, and refused to even review Disco Elysium.
The man does not have patience for story. It has to come in a package.
@poiumty Every time he mentions Disco Elysium he has almost exclusively positive things to say. I'm begining to wonder if we're even talking about the same person.
Also, there is a difference between edgy and gothic.
The position of get to work is so funny it alone makes me want to get it
00:57 I'm glad that Yahtzee has finally admitted that he's Snow Miser. We can finally put that theory to bed.
Yatzhee singing diggy diggy hole was NOT of my 2024 bingo card I tell ya what
It was interesting so a take on soul reaver without nostalgia goggles, because I played the hell out of that game as a kid, but I had no idea what I was doing back then, but I loved the visuals.
In Soul Reaver, sneaking prevents you from falling off ledges. No idea if it's explained in the remaster, but it's in the Dreamcast manual, which I'm sure is very helpful for modern players.
I feel like get to work is what you end up with when you need a plot for your game and go, "Oh, satire. I can do a satire."
"I guess this is the game"... feels like that's the mantra for every Yahtzee Plays, endlessly playing in his head as he works out why it's not fun...
I think a lot of the hype for the Soul Reaver/Blood Omen stuff if for the writing rather than gameplay. While the games become fun once you've progressed enough the story and design were the real points of interest.
legacy of kain fyi's: crouch to approach ledges and not fall off, also the game is most fondly remembered for the stellar voice acting and dialogues. we are very well aware the rest of the gameplay is mediocre at best
I always loved the vampire killing mechanic, wish it had been iterated upon.
And the atmosphere of that game is absolutely immaculate. Not even From has captured such a sense of desolation and displacement that well.
For someone who is a published writer and appreciates good stories in video games, it's odd he didn't even mention the writing in Soul Reaver
Well, Yahtzee tends to be a bit of a pretentious twat when he doesn't have Gabriel Morton to reign him in.
He only played it for an hour. There's not much happening story wise in the first hour besides generic action-adventure tutorializing.
He's just gobblin' up orbs!
DAMN, SNOW MISER REP.
Feels like calling Antonblast "another Pizza Tower" is much in the same vein as calling Neon White "another Ultrakill".
I do remember Bubba And Stix for the Sega Mega Drive. Really nice game with cartoon graphics.
Fun fact, I bought Ballionaire because I watched the Yahtzee Tries. it's pretty fun
The skating guy seems like a nice evolution of that genre instead of always being point to point unless you're falling to your demise, heh heh. There was an "Eggman" where you had two arms instead of just a sledgehammer. Oh btw that sledgehammer one has a VR version in first person! If you need to piss off a family member while they visit, or something. Cheers all!
Even beyond the term being mostly used by people grouchy about modern kids shows, Ballionaire most certainly does NOT have a "Cal Arts" visual style.
I only played soul reaver for the first time last year, does that count as being biased with nostalgia, what is nostalgia and where does it come from
9:57 I especially felt this to be extremely PlayStation, not just in the original graphics (I'm sure they were smoother on the PC version), but especially in the save system. The first game does have a "save-when-want" feature, but it will still reset you to the very first are if you quit, you just keep the general progress, The second game doesn't even have that, just random save points around the world. I feel like this is trying a bit too much to stay true to the original, especially since the Tomb Raider 1-3 remaster let's save whereever, whenever no questions asked and then you can play an extra mode gives you the PS1 save system. And I just completely forgot there was even a map, cause it just shows you the world, not the rooms you're in. There's also this PS1 distance fog/darkness, which I feel they kept in specifically because I've heard people say they didn't like it in TR 1-3 how you could see into the horizon and it was more "spooky" the old way.
Nosgoth is suppost be covered with mist/fog/smog because the vampires did it delbrately so they didn't burn up everytime they went outside. removing it would have been a bit like when the removed the fog from the silent hill1 remaster.
Excuse me, Ballionaire isn't trying to be Balatro! It's trying to be Luck be a Landlord.
Playing 50 min of Soul Reaver 1 without any context could lead to only surface -level snarky comments on the game's story & narrative. I don't expect more from this channel since this is apparently Yahtzee's wheelhouse , but seeing that footage reminded me of the truly amazing storyline and interesting concepts about destiny/ predetermined fate that unfolds during this, SR 2 & LoK: Defiance. So yeah - if anybody is interested in truly epic vampiric saga & amazing storyline penned by the talented Amy Hennig , play these games - I for example started with Soul Reaver 2 at the time , and watched a short recap of the first game .
Jesus christ are they paying you?
Its literally called yahtzee *tries*, these arent reviews.
@@2-Way_Intersection Back off, man.Sure, a nefarious entity is paying me money so that i can dislike that a youtuber is trying the first chapter of a great trilogy while making surface- level snarky conclusions about it. If anything, my comment focused more on praising the storyline and the qualities of the LoK games, thus urging more people to give them a chance and see why they are considered a storytelling classics. Believe me, if you had a favorite book, game or a movie that you know it's incredible, you'd aldo get frustrated listening to this "Yahtzee tries". I also do aknowledge that this is the format, so nobody should expect much more.
@@2-Way_Intersection Yeah, I have to agree, even as a fan of the LoK series. Besides, why would you care about one guy's opinion on it, if you enjoy the game anyway? Oh, he didn't like it? I would just shrug and go back to the game~
You can't expect someone to play more than an hour of a game they're fundamentally not enjoying - that's just not a reasonable thing to expect, even if that person had all the free time in the world.
@@Eden_Laika It's like gamers who shit on people for playing Yoko Taro games, and not being able to get past the horribly tedious first two acts. Yes, while it's true that the best part of a game can come from the latter parts, it's also understandable when people go, 'Nah, it already lost me'
"Soul Reaver 1 does not have a crafting system, because it doesn't need it. It is a very focused experience. It is not a combat game with puzzles, it is a puzzle game that has combat occasionally within it. People get that wrong about Soul Reaver. Soul Reaver isn't an action fighter game, it's a puzzle game. It's an exploration, puzzle, narrative driven revenge story." - Josh Strife
You can split hairs over whatever labels you think should be affixed to the game, it doesn’t make it any less tedious to play.
@alexanderfreeman3406 Yes it's tedious at the start of the game before you unlock any abilities, but every Metroidvania is like that. Even Hollow Knight is like that.
In the hour Yahtzee played, there was a lot more combat than puzzle solving.
"it's pizza tower again" honestly i just want someone to just start pizza tower, play john gutter, start antonblast, play boiler city, and then say that again, because they genuinely play NOTHING alike. and also the thing of them being both in development around the same time. actually i think tons of people compared pizza tower to cuphead back when that one came out just because both are cartoons, switching points of comparisons the moment one of them becomes slightly less relevant I see
The fucking squeal that came out of my grinchy ass when Yatz dropped that Snow Miser line. Phew. Top class.
To be honest, Ballionaire reminds me more of Luck be a Landlord (which, fun fact, LocalThunk cited as one of his direct inspirations for making Balatro).
I love these videos, guys. But can you get somehow the recording of gameplay at least to 1080p? It's slightly unpleasant especially when you zoom in on stuff. Again I love the videos and what you are doing.
I'm sorry you didn't much like Soul Reaver. It has a really good story. My nostalgia is thick, but it's a classic story about destiny.
(Also, you can stop from falling off the platforms, if you hold 'walk'.)
That said a lot of the game is puzzle/platform and the answers weren't always intuitive. This game came from the days of look under every stone you see, because you never know which one will have a key under it. (And then do it again in the spirit world.)
I don't think you'll find a fan who wouldn't admit that Soul Reaver is just Block Puzzles: The Game XD
I don't think Yahtzee remembers 1999 very well, but it was still the era when action games could either have great combat and bare minimum story, or great story and passable combat. The few games that did both were usually shooters or action RPGs.
Personaly I didn't have any of the issues you had with ANTONBLAST, but I do see your point with that.
I feel like if "get to work" had been a skateboard protagonist it would have been awesome.
"Get to Work, Billionaire" sounds like a meme game where you put Musk to work on his own assembly line, frantically trying to maintain stock value after his entire workforce went on strike.
Josh would be disappointed in you :(
indeed. JSH shed a tear
with the Legacy of Kain games, it helps if you are invested in the plot and characters to get over some of the outdated gameplay and graphics.
Bubba & Stix was awesome! 😊
Balatro may be the most successful of them but I'm pretty sure Luck Be A Landlord came first so it feels a bit unfair to label other games trying to to do the strategy but also RNG number explosion roguelite thing as chasing Balatro's thunder.
Sure and doom wasn't the first FPS but we still called games that came out after it doom-clones.
@arminkuburas1696 Well history has shown you guys were wrong and FPS took over. Luck be a Landlord was also incredibly successful and deserves to be remembered as something other than a clone of game it inspired.
Have you ever played Pureya? Because that's what Ballionaire popped me to.
I remember bubba n stick, I don't remember much beside opening tins and stiring them haha
What I think you should do Yahtzee for Soul Reaver is watch a story compilation of the first game off of TH-cam, then start playing the 2nd game. I think you will find that to be a much more enjoyable experience.
Watching him play Soul Reaver probably made me as frustrated as he was playing it. You can harp all day on what you think a game SHOULD or SHOULD HAVE been. But a remaster is probably better digested by taking it for what it truly WAS. He wanted it to be Mario with some Dark Souls. It's not that and never was trying to be that. It's a story game with puzzles. Even the COMBAT is a puzzle. Take one of the fights he just showed! He had 4 options for combat and he chose none of them. The rocks will put a guy into "killable mode" he didn't use them. In a 2 on 1, it's worth using a spear to run through one baddie and then melee the other into a fire..sure, maybe you lose the 1st soul but now it's a 1 on 1. Get him into the fire and then pull the spear out of the first guy and then fully focus kill him. See? A puzzle of juggling priorities.
He fell into a lake and then got lost because he refused to reexamine the world around him after he got sucked into the spectral realm. This was the earlier days of 3d when examining the environment was a huge part of the puzzle...
You be all judgy about Call of Duty puzzles being too easy.
I get it. You're doing a show on a limited time frame and have to make it entertaining. And it's definitely understandable when a streamer's play quality is hampered. But don't hold it against the game when you're not giving it the attention it deserves.
If I had a nickel for every deck-building roguelite game based on pachinko, I'd have 3 nickels (Roundguard, Peglin and now Ballionaire)
0:59 @icesnort you have been summoned
I saw a video recently talking about how people don't want true remasters in part because design sensibilities have changed so much since our childhoods, and the Kain remaster highlights that super well. No doubt certain people will enjoy being able to access the game they like on a modern system with some light graphical upgrades but even for some of those people the clunkiness and core of the game won't be as enjoyable as they remembered and they'll wish they were playing something more like a complete remake that just has familiar names and faces.
Yeah, the sub reddit for the series is also saying as much. It's good as a preservation of history, but a remake would serve it better, especially with a modern audience.
Bubba 'n' Stix? wow, this take me back to 90s on my amiga.
1:03 I had just got done watching an icesnort video and then I get hit with that.
God damnit.
So Yahtzee plays is just him proving he is terrible at playing games?
Snow Miser reference :D Also New Arc Line looks dope
Legacy of kain didnt need a remaster. It needed a remake. That fact seems readily apparent to me, and I can't imagine how the developers didn't see it.
Oh wait, they were bought by embracer group. That cash grabby feeling makes sense now.
Whispers in the ground tell of this being a testing ground of sorts to gauge interest in the franchise. But you didn't hear that from me
Lol not. It's a fine game. I never played it back then but anyone who actually plays games and isn't a poser can enjoy it for it's atmosphere and story.
@@thebuddah1253 the gameplay actively gets in the way of the atmosphere and story. If it were even okay, the game would be better off for it.
Going off Josh Strife Hayes recounting, it's more out of faithful reverence than laziness. He digs it. Though maybe going the MGS Delta route of having options for classic, and updated mechanics would have been the way to go.
@@Unstablegroundz it's very simple puzzles and combat. It's not like it's hard.
get to work looks just like trackmania gameplay-wise
except trackmania comes with a ton of maps and a map-editor, IIRC
Yikes the video quality is bad with this one...
"Soul Reaver doesn't hold up..."
"Come play our steampunk game!"
LOL!
I remember Bubba n' stix, but for the sega genesis. I really liked that one, but I think I never got past the lava tightrope
yahtzee keeps saying how original the general luck plus powerups idea is to balatro but didn't buckshot roulette come out months before balatro
me when yahtzee is trying
I remember Bubba & Stix, but it's the Genesis version.
Nostalgia is not the Sole Reason people love and regularly replay older video games, Croshaw.
Yes Nostalgia can cloud your memory and some people definitely huff too much of the rose tinted stuff. But no amount of nostalgia is going to make me replay Covert Action or Mechwarrior 1 on a yearly basis.
In the case of Soul Reaver it's a combination of the world, the atmosphere and the writing that keeps people coming back. For context I've played SR1+2 ONCE about 5 years ago, and I still remember a fair chunk of the story beats and locations.
And while I agree the controls are on the clunky side in SR1. It is possible to do more than just mash attack. As I recently said to someone: IF YOU TAKE THE EFFORT TO PROPERLY ENGAGE WITH THE GAMEPLAY IN ANY GIVEN GAME THEN YOU'LL HAVE A LOT MORE FUN
You can carry sharp weapons to smack and then impale stunned enemies, throw said sharp weapons to impale distant foes. You can imbue the titular soul Reaver with Fire, which is a bit overkill since I seem to remember the Reaver can just execute stunned enemies. Using attacks to knock enemies into finishing hazards like light or water. You gain magic spells, including one that nukes the whole room at the cost of a fair bit of energy
Yahtz really needs to stop using Nostalgia as a criticism, it's getting to the point where I'm shocked when he DOESN'T mention nostalgia in a retro-game
etro-style review. I'd rather have that space contain actual tangible criticisms\praise instead of a lazy hand waving of "This game isn't pushing the boundaries, nostalgia nutters amirite!"
Bubba N Stix first level was awesome then I got completely stuck in the 2nd level the weird alien prison 😂😂
At least, his experience of SR is aligned with mine. I emulated the Dreamcast version hoping to find a gem I ignored back then only to get a clunky walking simulator with bad combat and annoying puzzles. I like puzzles, mind, but I prefer when the UI is done accordingly. Instead, it felt like a core, controls were not intuitive and the writing witnessed during that hour was nothing convincing.
I might try Blood Omen again but it seems to have the same problems. I just can't get the gameplay to click.
I played Bubba 'n' Stix, but I played the proper version on the Mega Drive
The lack of appreciating Marilyn Manson pencil holders is why we never got Antichrist Superstar the Musical. That and Manson was too busy with his newfound passion for becoming Barbie.
Oh thank goodness - finally someone else who finds Soul Reaver a bit meh... ;)
i think peglin does the rouge-like plinko/peggle thing better than ballionaire
1:00 yahtzee miser jumpscare
You should start recording your webcams and gameplay locally for the edit. The compression on these is unwatchable.
I'm watching them perfectly fine.
Yeah… Antonblast is not “another pizza tower.” Thats like saying pizza tower is “another wario land” when it’s simply not. Both games were being developed around the same time. Both have completely different mechanics, color pallets. And the issues you brought up didn’t seem to affect most other people. The color pallet was fine. I mean, maybe it just affects you more than other people, because out of every review for this game I’ve seen, you appear to be the only one that’s really brought up the color pallet being a negative thing.
the dilemma of atrioc watchers: saying something positive about get to work or spamming GLIZZY GLIZZY GLIZZY
Erm, what the blast!?
capture quality? wtf happened
God I miss Peggle.
Get to work looks like getting over it with Tony Hawk. It looks kinda fun :) (if you don't get frustrated).
I'd like to see Yahtzee review King's Field if he's gonna get up on his high horse about Soul Reaver not tickling his fancy
I was hoping for a blood omen: legacy of cain remake. the sequels were only good with the precursor
Soul Reaver's combat gets better, there are reusable weapons you can find that you can use to beat enemies up with then impale them on, so there isn't as much of a need to find environmental kill spots. Then once you get the Soul Reaver, it gets better again, though granted you need to play for a couple of hours before you get it. And that "level select" is a quick travel teleporter to various spots in the game world which become available to warp to as you find them.
3:46 heard Yahtzee singing Windrose. My day has been significantly improved by that
IT'S NOT ANOTHER PIZZA TOWER!!
Yeah, nostalgia goggles can be powerful. For example, Goldeneye on the N64. Great fun at the time, beloved by many, but it absolutely does NOT hold up at all.
Indeed, anyone who isn't willing to look at a game objectively, despite their love for it, doesn't really have a matured sense of media literacy.
I still have fun with the game today. But 100% is lacking in quality of life improvements
Legacy of Kain was always more about the story than the gameplay. The fights were easy, navigation could be a little confusing, but never so much that I needed a FAQ or anything, the acting was top notch and I really did want to know how the story ended. It feels more like a walking simulator where you eat souls. By the way, eating souls wasn't required, it just let you regain health. So, I liked it, but we're not all clones, so eh...
Getting bonked by pegs is tight.
GLIZZY GLIZZY GLIZZY
Nice
Born underground, suckled from a teat of stone.
I lost track of how many times I watched the animated music video of Diggy Diggy Hole. And I don't care about the Yogscast aside from that (and maybe the other music video about the dwarf going to the moon.)
Ooo, Diggy diggy hole!
I'm surprised you didn't give Soul Reaver a chance! Defunct Games has a good video on how it would have been viewed at the time, as an impressive open world / no loading screen cinematic action game with full professional voice acting, not to mention directed and written by Amy Hennig, who has become legendary in her own right for this and the Uncharted series.
Get to Work reminds me of the worst parts of the later Tony Hawk games
Yahtzee sounding so incredibly bored during his playthough of Ballionaire is probably worth a dozen bad reviews.
Trash talking Soul Reaver like that doesn't make you look very smart. Play the game on original hardware and compare it to what was being done at the time. The work of Amy Hennig on the script alone makes it a cult classic. Now add the huge world with no loading screens on PSX era, the ambience, the puzzles. I give you that the combat system is not really fleshed out, but the main focus is more on puzzles and exploration.
“You can’t argue with nostalgia”
The remaster is great for game preservation, just not for fun having unfortunately
Answer me this: would you rather drive a Ford Model T, or a Ford Focus? Because the Model T was pretty advanced, _for the time._
@@Eden_Laika You could make the same argument for any classic piece of media, tbh. Soul Reaver is not the only one whom this criticism applies to.
Also, I've seen you around this comments section, and you kinda seem to miss that there are plenty of fans here who will readily admit the game's age, despite nostalgia. We know, we ALL know... We like it anyway~
@@DipolarApathy I actually played the game to completion, unlike Yatzhee. And I replayed it about an year ago so It's not a far distant memory or a nostalgia driven rant.
The game holds up. The core elements AKA puzzles and exploration are still great altough combat is not as good and is barely improved upon in the sequels.
I recommend watching Josh Strife for a more thorough analysis. His "Was it Good?" series delves deep into game mechanics and game design.
I think dismissing a great game after barely scratching the surface is akin to dismissing a great book after reading the index.
I will not answer dumb questions. Games are not cars and the evolution of game design is not a linear progression.
One could argue that many games today, specially AAA games, are stale and lack innovation. Or that mechanic depth is often sacrificed in favor of reaching a broader audience.