Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver tells the story of Raziel, mouthless, blue vampire boy, facing his greatest foe: box pushing puzzles. Ok, actually it tells the story of... well, it tells PART of the story of Raziel's fight with Kain, his former vampire boss. He enacts this battle by hunting down his brothers-in-arms, devouring their souls to gain new abilities, Metroidvania style, to explore more areas of a large, interconnected world, all the while being guided by a faceless elder god who never really explains why any of this is happening.

Soul Reaver comes from that magical turning point in gaming history where developers realized that voice acting could actually be good, and this is by far the best part of the game. Characters speak in pseudo-Shakespearean riddles about betrayal and purpose with a level of seriousness that adds proper weight to the setting, bordering juuuuuust on the edge of being a little too edgy for its own good. All the performances hold up even by today's standards, particularly Raziel's self-serious, single-minded internal monologue. It's all pretty one-note, but it's a good note that suits the Gothic goings-ons. Unfortunately, no amount of high-quality acting can outplay the lesser parts of the game.

Soul Reaver is a lot of old game design wrapped up in much prettier packaging. Raziel's adventure takes place in one massive environment with no visible loading screens. Teleportation gateways serve as shortcuts around the world, but even those hide any perceptible loading of assets. It's an extremely impressive technical feat for a game of this size from 1999. Raziel travels through swirling lakes, vampiric temples, and a massive cathedral that is, in fact, a giant pipe organ of sorts. It's all very unique, but the creativity was spent entirely on these settings and not so much on what to fill them with. Despite the sprawling environments and varied enemies that inhabit them, the main thing Raziel spends his time doing is pushing boxes. Literally every level has multiple box pushing puzzles. Every so often he'll flip a switch or pull a lever, put it's usually in service of getting Raz to the next bunch of boxes to push. It's tedious and wears thin almost immediately. Credit where it's due, most of the overall puzzles are built into the environment itself, being a part of the natural setting, but rounding the corner to see another stack of boxes just waiting for Raz to push around is sigh-inducing.

When he's not pushing boxes, Raziel is leaping, climbing, or swimming around the world. He can swap between the physical and material planes pretty much at will (returning to the physical world requires using a highlighted spot in the environment), and the area around him can shift dramatically between either version. It's a neat idea and offers some cool visuals, but both realms are stuck with Raziel's dated controls and camera. He often slides to a stop, turns in wide circles, and decides randomly when to use his high jump, making precision platforming more aggravating than rewarding. Add a camera that usually wants to be as close to Raz as possible and it all becomes a harsh reminder of how early 3D platformers played.

Fortunately, levels culminate in a boss "battle" against one of Raziel's brothers, and most of these are memorable high points of the journey. Very rarely is a fight won with brute strength. The majority of Raz's brothers are bested with some sort of creative puzzle solution, turning their powers back against them. It's a satisfying way of defeating these creatures that have been twisted and deformed by the passing of hundreds of years, whose sole purpose seems to be betting Raziel that he can't kill them. Each time he proves them wrong, he absorbs their soul and special ability, which enables him to traverse more parts of the environment, tracking down Kain to his final hideaway.

At the end, however, all of this fratricide leads to a great big reveal of... nothing. The game's story ends with a defeating "To Be Continued..." text screen. Nothing is answered, nothing is explained, no one ever speaks in any specifics. Raziel is never clued into anything that Kain is actually up to, and is instead forced to, I assume, get answers in the sequel that wouldn't appear until the PS2. It's a deeply unsatisfying ending that comes at a point when things seem to be picking up, not concluding.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is rightfully remembered for terrific voice acting, dramatic presentation, and gorgeous environment and character design. It's rightfully less remembered for its janky controls, repetitive combat, and abundance of box pushing puzzles. Overall it's a memorable experience that shows off some of the best that the PS1 era had to offer, but, much like the beginning of Raziel's tale, many years have passed and many things have changed in the world of games, making it a worthwhile journey with a heavy dose of caveats.

"Use your hatred to reave their souls... I can make it possible. Become my soul reaver, my angel of death...".

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is one of those titles that in many ways was ahead of its time and was left to join the maelstrom of cult classic games with a devoted following, but nothing beyond as far as the mainstream is concerned. Which I find unfair, because Soul Reaver is, to this day, a key example of what I would classify as writing excellence.

Now admittedly, the entire franchise is (minus one, Blood Omen 2, but that’s another story), but Soul Reaver is when the franchise found its footing, where things start to kick into high gear. It is perhaps the most well-known one for a reason, as well as the fan favorite.

You play as Raziel, a vampire lord serving the deified Kain, he himself a legendary vampire that has sired Raziel and five other vampire lords and ushered in a new age of despair in the lands of Nosgoth. During the millenia of Kain’s rule, things have functioned in the following way: Kain would grow in power, his vampiric body would evolve, and his followers would follow suit. The game starts with Raziel breaking this cycle however, showcasing a new set of wings to his vampiric comrades. As a reward, our man Raziel gets the best someone could wish for: punishment for suprassing his leader on the evolutionary scale, his wings forcefully removed and his dying body thrown into a swirling, watery abyss.

So yeah things could’ve gone better, but for poor Raziel they somehow get worse, as he suffers the acidic effects of water on his vampiric flesh for centuries, finally reaching the bottom of this seemingly bottomless lake a blue, jawless carcass, being awaken by an eldritch monstrosity known as the Elder God, who know pushes Raziel to work for him and do his bidding.

And thus our journey begins. Soul Reaver’s gameplay feels like a cross between Tomb Raider’s platforming and Ocarina of Time’s exploration. That may sound more exciting than it is, the gameplay really is okay but not like, groundbreaking. Combat revolves around damaging enemies enough times for them to be stunned and eventually executed in a variety of different ways (burning, impaling, exposure to the sun…). It’s relatively basic stuff, but it does it’s job well enough. Platforming is the same, focused on box puzzles, backtracking, later on swimming, relatively basic stuff, even for the time.

The gameplay is tool in order to bring you from story beat to story beat, really. While not awful, it will not be what you remember Soul Reaver for; the presentation, music and especially the writing and performances. The game looks great, with each character having very memorable designs and even more memorable performances. Everyone brings their A-game for this one, delivering Amy Henning’s Shakesperian writing with gusto. This is one of the aspects that has aged the best out of this game (and really, the franchise as a whole), making it a timeless experience. Raziel’s squabbels with his former comrades (now deformed beasts that have left their corrupted sides take the best of them) are written fantastically, making even someone who only see for the duration of a boss fight an interesting and deep character with its own motives.

At the centre of this lies Raziel, a man that is as sympathetic as he is, for lack of finer terms, an incredibly sassy bitch: the lack of a lower jaw doesn’t stop him at any point to make his mind known, and if when he isn’t busy judging a character’s moral standpoint, he is actively mocking them in the cattiest way possible, all while still remaining on a Shakesperian edge.
Acting as a foil is the titular Kain, the de facto protagonist of the entire franchise, though here he takes the role of antagonist, being a now clearly demented and egolomaniac being with some hidden agenda that doesn’t become clearer (key word being clearer, not clear) until later on in the sequels. Kain’s a powerful villain on a surface level, having defiled the corpses of the holy order of the Sarafans (from which Raziel and his bretheren were transformed into vampires, something that was removed from their memory) and actively destroyed the world of Nosgoth by refusing to sacrifice his life in order to keep the Pillars of Nosgoth, gigantic structures that keep balance to the land, intact, something that lead to the eventual wasteland we are tasked with exploring.

Raziel’s quest is one driven by his disgust of what his vampiric brethren have become, and then one against vampire-kind in general; a man against his own nature following the whims of a lord that is clearly using him, but from which he has no real way to unshackle himself. Raziel continues serving the Elder God only because, for the time being, their objectives are the same. Free will is something that will become a core component of Raziel’s story as the series moves on, but the seeds are sown here.

While every character is written sublimely and is visually striking and memorable, if they are fought, they aren’t always engaging, as bosses are mostly puzzles that require less fighting and more environmental exploration to deal with them (one boss flat-out requires you to run away from them, as they are invincible). Similarly, the spells that you obtain from them are varied in terms of usefulness; in typical Zelda fashion, some spells/items obtained after a dungeon are more usefull in most situations than in others, but all kinda share the same fate of just being “there”. A projectile, an AoE spell, the ability to climb and swim…all of these are useful but none really makes you crazy to use them. The one exception is the famed Soul Reaver itself, Kain’s sword that Raziel obtains after his first encounter with his lord post-punishment. Raz’s Reaver takes a spectral form that is only usable when Raziel is at full health and deals excellent damage.

One ability that always remains a constant is Raziel’s ability to shift between dimensions, the corporeal and ethereal. A lot of dungeon puzzles are built on the differences the world experiences between these two dimensions, a unique mechanic that takes a while to get accustomed to (sometimes the path forward is obvious, such as a gate being able to be passed through only in the spectral realm, but other times it’s stuff like realizing how the actual level geometry changes between dimensions).

By the end you have more questions than answers, as Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver ends on a cliffhanger, but in rare fashion, it actually manages to make it earned. Raziel’s journey is one that leaves you wanting more, and more is what we will get. If that isn’t a testament to the game’s spectacular writing, I don’t know what is.