Honestly, the first game isn't famous for its mechanics or anything, so I really don't get the decision of adding those godawful parkour stuff that makes your navigation much harder than it needs to be.
"I'm guessing that dress will cause a few of them."
Yoooo!
What?!
I can move around and shit!
There are combos and shit!
The combat in general is just so fucking sick now.
The dismemberment is awesome.
The blood is awesome.
The sex appeal is awesome.
The combat, and the way it's so immediately superior to the first game's combat, is awesome.
I love how sometimes you'll slice someone's leg off and they'll hop around on the other for a bit or crawl on the floor.
I love the new traversal system. You swing on poles and slide down railings and shit.
The pre-rendered cutscenes are just as awesome as in the first game.
"Dhampir go down just like anybody else."
"Aw, not just like anybody else."
But it definitely feels more PS2 than PC in that it loses the charm that the first game had. And in that the graphics are kind of...worse? Less detailed. I think it's especially apparent when the characters speak.
The art direction might be better, but the execution isn't. It's solid, but it's not better.
Ironically, despite the new combat, this feels way more repetitive and tedious. At least towards the end when the enemies become more annoying. Maybe it's because of the abundance of bosses.
People say that this one is easier than the first, and they're clearly out of their minds.
It's sort of the opposite of the first. Everything points to this one being the superior game, with less tedious combat, but it's not. Maybe there just was something to the first game's simplicity.
This is still fucking awesome, though. I could probably play the mansion over and over again.
I love Rayne! This is more Rayne.
"The master can blow me."
Yoooo!
What?!
I can move around and shit!
There are combos and shit!
The combat in general is just so fucking sick now.
The dismemberment is awesome.
The blood is awesome.
The sex appeal is awesome.
The combat, and the way it's so immediately superior to the first game's combat, is awesome.
I love how sometimes you'll slice someone's leg off and they'll hop around on the other for a bit or crawl on the floor.
I love the new traversal system. You swing on poles and slide down railings and shit.
The pre-rendered cutscenes are just as awesome as in the first game.
"Dhampir go down just like anybody else."
"Aw, not just like anybody else."
But it definitely feels more PS2 than PC in that it loses the charm that the first game had. And in that the graphics are kind of...worse? Less detailed. I think it's especially apparent when the characters speak.
The art direction might be better, but the execution isn't. It's solid, but it's not better.
Ironically, despite the new combat, this feels way more repetitive and tedious. At least towards the end when the enemies become more annoying. Maybe it's because of the abundance of bosses.
People say that this one is easier than the first, and they're clearly out of their minds.
It's sort of the opposite of the first. Everything points to this one being the superior game, with less tedious combat, but it's not. Maybe there just was something to the first game's simplicity.
This is still fucking awesome, though. I could probably play the mansion over and over again.
I love Rayne! This is more Rayne.
"The master can blow me."
This review contains spoilers
Rayne is back with cooler combat mechanics and new features. The story also gets spicier the more you advance in it, and you get to fight Rayne's father (as mentioned in the first game's ending, Brimstone Society found her father's location). The game is more graphic and violent than the previous one since the graphics are also better (it was released 2 years after the first one, after all).
As mentioned in my first game's review, if you DO NOT own this game in its original version, I recommend that you purchase the Terminal Cut one, because it is enhanced and optimized.
As mentioned in my first game's review, if you DO NOT own this game in its original version, I recommend that you purchase the Terminal Cut one, because it is enhanced and optimized.
not much of a step up from the first one.
I also enjoy sucking the blood of criminal men while scantily clad
Basically what I expected the first game to be (derogatory), Laura Bailey did a great job playing Rayne though.
Better than the first game, but has a few controller problems the first one didn't, but that's fine because just about anything you press will trigger a combo that will do most of the work. You might think it button mashy, but holy sh*t is it fun to find button combinations and cause carnage. I don't know what it is. In these levels where enemies spawn until you solve the puzzle, I find myself just deliberately avoiding the solution and spending hours seeing how much destruction I can create.
i love the aesthetic but it's just so frequently awful to play, constantly using its dmc-esque combat for puzzles which don't work with it at all. probably one of the worst games I could've played while ill lmao but rayne is "very cool"
shoutout to cathouse in glasgow
shoutout to cathouse in glasgow
Never in my life have I had the urge to smash a controller harder than the day I found this gem. I can't dignify this game with the phrase "product of its time", because that would be a disservice to the vast library of perfectly functioning PS2 games released in the same era. In a B-movie "so bad it's good" sense, BloodRayne 2 does have its charm. But not even the anti-cap one-liners they sprinkled in are enough to distract me from how mind-bogglingly unintuitive the systems and controls are.
Remember when I said that sex sells?
No, I don't either.
No, I don't either.
A hugely enjoyable action-adventure with buckets and buckets of gore.
I loved this as a kid but when I got to replay it now it feels worse than the first game in terms of aesthetics and gameplay.. idk exactly what but this one feels like a disney game instead of the creepy ambience the first one had.
I will have to revisit this
I will have to revisit this
it has some good ideas but the gameplay is not really fun sadly
after loving the first game so much and hearing good things about its sequel, i was very very excited to play this game. unfortunately that excitement quickly dimished to disappointment throughout the few hours i beared to play the game. first of all the gameplay is majorly different. rather than being so focused on shooting, it is alot more focused on the hack and slash aspect, giving you a large move list of many button combinations, and allowing you to dodge. the grab and feed mechanics remain, but feel completely different. somehow the gameplay feels even more repetitive and monotonous than the first games, even though there is a bit more depth to the buttons you are pressing. regardless of that, the main reason i hated the time i spent on this game is because it felt completely different to the first much beyond its gameplay. this is not what i fell in love with. i had to stop playing it, and search the internet to see whether there were any games that COULD give me an experience actually similar to the first game, with a character like rayne. i found nothing.
boobies
Does little to improve on the previous game. The combat still isn't fun because it continues to have no weight or stuns to hits, but they did add in some entertaining execution kills while biting them. Acrobatics often ignore your input and are slow and boring to do. Guns don't seem to aim properly and are not fun to use. Rayne's lines and voice are annoying. The camera is still poor.
Inferior to the first one, although it does start great. The tower climbing section at the end really tested my patience I have to say.
I'm not entirely sure why I started this, maybe just some nostalgia or the hobby gaming historian in me wanted to see some prime example for 00's trends. It's actually kinda neat, with it's wanna be matrix combat, grinding on rails, nu-metalish soundtrack and edgy, sexy vampire lady protagonists. But it gets repetitive after a while sadly. Laura Bailey sure had a lot of fun lending her voice to Rayner though!
soaked in 2000s edge as opposed to foggy swamps and nazi-clad halls, rayne's second outing features an actual moveset (thank fucking god) vastly superior power progression, and way, way, WAY better level design altogether - opting for linear stages with light platforming rather than aimless mazes through samey corridors
it's definitely not the most refined action game by any means, but if you've got a soft spot for the era of crazy towns, hot topics, and coal chambers, then you're doing yourself a disservice by not giving this a shot
to quote laura bailey, "fuck kagan, i left him hanging like inxs"
it's definitely not the most refined action game by any means, but if you've got a soft spot for the era of crazy towns, hot topics, and coal chambers, then you're doing yourself a disservice by not giving this a shot
to quote laura bailey, "fuck kagan, i left him hanging like inxs"
I remember when the first BloodRayne came out I stared at the ad and drooled. I never knew vampires could be so sexy and right there she became one of my top 5 favorite female video game heroines ever made. Of course being younger I wasn’t allowed to play such games, so in the end, I never got the chance to play the first BloodRayne. When BloodRayne 2 came out I HAD to play it so I rented it for my PS2 and it was great…not amazing, but pretty solid, but now…well time ages things.
BloodRayne 2 has you playing as the half-human half-vampire Dampir Rayne who is trying to kill her father Kagan (who survived the first game) and kill all his children and demon spawns. Through this escapade, Rayne runs into his new minions Kestrel, and Ferril, and Ephemera (who hate each other). While they are almost as sexy as Rayne their attitudes make up for it. BloodRayne 2 has pretty decent voice acting and Rayne’s attitude is just something you have to love.
BR2 is very gruesome with lots of dismemberment, and gory death traps. There are two types of enemies in the game and they are unarmed weapons (that you can freely feed off of to get health) and armed enemies with melee weapons that will push you down if you try to feed. You just knock their weapons out of their hands before doing this. Yes, I realize only two enemy types, but this is why the game could have been better. The designs for them are neat and they look cool, but seriously? You will run into sub-bosses an awful lot and most of these are just elite henchman or giant minotaurs. This is where one of my biggest gripes come in and that’s the fact that boss fights are all luck and no skill. It doesn’t help that the game is a button masher and there’s no skill involved what-so-ever. You just hit X for blade attacks and B for kicks and that’s it. The blocking never seems effective and you are constantly relying on your powers.
Powers range from astral feeding, temporary invincibility, time freeze, and aura vision. These take up A LOT of power energy so you have to constantly kill to keep your meter up. You can level up to extend this, but it never seems enough. You also have your Dragon Pistols, but you can’t level these up and you only get very little ammo then it feeds off your health. You have to kill to keep your ammo up, but this thing never seems effective until you get different ammo types.
You also have a harpoon that you use to throw enemies into deadly death traps to unlock different parts of levels, but the later on enemies in the Twisted Park can block this and you have to use your time freeze or super speed to get behind them, but sometimes THAT doesn’t work…see what I mean? The game is so frustrating later on, so much, in fact, I had to use God Mode through the last 25% because they threw way too many larger enemies at you and not enough people to feed on.
There is some acrobatics involved such as sliding down rails, swinging and climbing poles, but this is troublesome since the mechanics are so finicky and everything has to be aligned perfectly.
Now don’t get me wrong, BR2 is worth a bargain bin purchase you just have to look past its many flaws. When it comes to graphics the game is decent at best. The characters look good and so do the environments, but the pre-rendered scenes look cheap and crappy. There is also a lot of slow-down throughout the game when too much is going on on screen.
With button mashing, no skill involved fighting, unbalanced everything throughout, and weak acrobatics there is just something about this game that makes you want to keep playing and it’s probably Rayne herself.
BloodRayne 2 has you playing as the half-human half-vampire Dampir Rayne who is trying to kill her father Kagan (who survived the first game) and kill all his children and demon spawns. Through this escapade, Rayne runs into his new minions Kestrel, and Ferril, and Ephemera (who hate each other). While they are almost as sexy as Rayne their attitudes make up for it. BloodRayne 2 has pretty decent voice acting and Rayne’s attitude is just something you have to love.
BR2 is very gruesome with lots of dismemberment, and gory death traps. There are two types of enemies in the game and they are unarmed weapons (that you can freely feed off of to get health) and armed enemies with melee weapons that will push you down if you try to feed. You just knock their weapons out of their hands before doing this. Yes, I realize only two enemy types, but this is why the game could have been better. The designs for them are neat and they look cool, but seriously? You will run into sub-bosses an awful lot and most of these are just elite henchman or giant minotaurs. This is where one of my biggest gripes come in and that’s the fact that boss fights are all luck and no skill. It doesn’t help that the game is a button masher and there’s no skill involved what-so-ever. You just hit X for blade attacks and B for kicks and that’s it. The blocking never seems effective and you are constantly relying on your powers.
Powers range from astral feeding, temporary invincibility, time freeze, and aura vision. These take up A LOT of power energy so you have to constantly kill to keep your meter up. You can level up to extend this, but it never seems enough. You also have your Dragon Pistols, but you can’t level these up and you only get very little ammo then it feeds off your health. You have to kill to keep your ammo up, but this thing never seems effective until you get different ammo types.
You also have a harpoon that you use to throw enemies into deadly death traps to unlock different parts of levels, but the later on enemies in the Twisted Park can block this and you have to use your time freeze or super speed to get behind them, but sometimes THAT doesn’t work…see what I mean? The game is so frustrating later on, so much, in fact, I had to use God Mode through the last 25% because they threw way too many larger enemies at you and not enough people to feed on.
There is some acrobatics involved such as sliding down rails, swinging and climbing poles, but this is troublesome since the mechanics are so finicky and everything has to be aligned perfectly.
Now don’t get me wrong, BR2 is worth a bargain bin purchase you just have to look past its many flaws. When it comes to graphics the game is decent at best. The characters look good and so do the environments, but the pre-rendered scenes look cheap and crappy. There is also a lot of slow-down throughout the game when too much is going on on screen.
With button mashing, no skill involved fighting, unbalanced everything throughout, and weak acrobatics there is just something about this game that makes you want to keep playing and it’s probably Rayne herself.
You can really tell that the developers learned a lot of lessons from Bloodrayne (and got a much higher budget), and it shows as this game is a much more competently made than the original. Oddly, this also meant the game become less enjoyable.
The original game occupied this weird place where its nonsensical ideas and low budget led to a fascinating and charming game, teetering between "so bad, it's good" and absolute garbage. Terminal Reality, in an attempt to make a superior game, managed to make a game that's on paper better but ultimately is still just okay. It's good, but doesn't live up to the absolute stupidity that is the original Bloodrayne.
While the original game felt like Terminal Reality trying to make their own version of Tomb Raider, this game feels like they played Sands of Time and said "We can do this". There's a heavier emphasis on platforming, with the game frequently tasking you with climbing and swinging from poles. There's also multiple instances of rail grinding, just in case you forgot Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was still popular at the time. It all works, but that's really as much as you can say about it.
The combat is serviceable, and definitely way flashier than the original. The executions Rayne can perform while feeding on an enemy are particularly cool to watch, and the briefs instances of environmental interaction in combat is pretty fun. The addition of special moves was neat, but I never really felt a need to use them, as the basic kick and blade attacks got the job done. I also felt like guns were de-emphasized in this game, as they all now are fueled by blood that you drain from enemies. However, sucking blood is also how you refill your health so I rarely refueled the guns as I found keeping my health up to be a greater priority in fights. As such, I often forgot guns even existed, except outside of certain boss fights who you need to use them.
I will say a large improvement over the original is the use of the vampire powers. In the original game the vampire powers were just there. Here, they factor so much more into the combat, and I found myself utilizing them for most encounters.
The story just kind of exists, but does pick up well from plot threads set up in the first game. The character interactions are pretty fun to watch though, so the cutscenes still delivered. The voice acting, while having not changed any actors, has significantly improved. The entire cast gives good performances but special mention needs to be made to Laura Bailey as the main character Rayne. She nails it. Sadly no Japanese dub this time, so no Romi Park role reprisal.
In terms of length, I'd argue the game is 2-3 hours too long. While the later levels really deliver in terms of graphics and tone, the game just feels like it's dragging its feet to the conclusion. Not saying any levels needed to be cut, but maybe truncated.
Ultimately, I like Bloodrayne 2. It's okay at best, and honestly that's best and worst thing I can say about it. Everything it does you've seen done better in dozens of other titles.
It lost a lot of the charm of original and replaced it with early 2000s edge. That's not necessarily a bad thing, this game has it's own charm and it rocks that well. I guess in the process of becoming better, the game lost a lot of made the original a truly dumb experience, and what this game does wasn't enough to fill the void left behind. That being said, if you can find it cheap I'd say give it a shot. The console versions are largely identical to the original PC release, though you do lose out on mods. Sadly, the original PC release is no longer for sale, having been replaced by the recent Terminal Cut. That version add some nice new visual effects and upscaled cutscenes if that means anything to you.
The original game occupied this weird place where its nonsensical ideas and low budget led to a fascinating and charming game, teetering between "so bad, it's good" and absolute garbage. Terminal Reality, in an attempt to make a superior game, managed to make a game that's on paper better but ultimately is still just okay. It's good, but doesn't live up to the absolute stupidity that is the original Bloodrayne.
While the original game felt like Terminal Reality trying to make their own version of Tomb Raider, this game feels like they played Sands of Time and said "We can do this". There's a heavier emphasis on platforming, with the game frequently tasking you with climbing and swinging from poles. There's also multiple instances of rail grinding, just in case you forgot Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was still popular at the time. It all works, but that's really as much as you can say about it.
The combat is serviceable, and definitely way flashier than the original. The executions Rayne can perform while feeding on an enemy are particularly cool to watch, and the briefs instances of environmental interaction in combat is pretty fun. The addition of special moves was neat, but I never really felt a need to use them, as the basic kick and blade attacks got the job done. I also felt like guns were de-emphasized in this game, as they all now are fueled by blood that you drain from enemies. However, sucking blood is also how you refill your health so I rarely refueled the guns as I found keeping my health up to be a greater priority in fights. As such, I often forgot guns even existed, except outside of certain boss fights who you need to use them.
I will say a large improvement over the original is the use of the vampire powers. In the original game the vampire powers were just there. Here, they factor so much more into the combat, and I found myself utilizing them for most encounters.
The story just kind of exists, but does pick up well from plot threads set up in the first game. The character interactions are pretty fun to watch though, so the cutscenes still delivered. The voice acting, while having not changed any actors, has significantly improved. The entire cast gives good performances but special mention needs to be made to Laura Bailey as the main character Rayne. She nails it. Sadly no Japanese dub this time, so no Romi Park role reprisal.
In terms of length, I'd argue the game is 2-3 hours too long. While the later levels really deliver in terms of graphics and tone, the game just feels like it's dragging its feet to the conclusion. Not saying any levels needed to be cut, but maybe truncated.
Ultimately, I like Bloodrayne 2. It's okay at best, and honestly that's best and worst thing I can say about it. Everything it does you've seen done better in dozens of other titles.
It lost a lot of the charm of original and replaced it with early 2000s edge. That's not necessarily a bad thing, this game has it's own charm and it rocks that well. I guess in the process of becoming better, the game lost a lot of made the original a truly dumb experience, and what this game does wasn't enough to fill the void left behind. That being said, if you can find it cheap I'd say give it a shot. The console versions are largely identical to the original PC release, though you do lose out on mods. Sadly, the original PC release is no longer for sale, having been replaced by the recent Terminal Cut. That version add some nice new visual effects and upscaled cutscenes if that means anything to you.