This game is something to behold. It's a great sequel to Soul Reaver in many aspects but also a colossal fumble in others. The writing and presentation are a great continuation of SR1, and the cutscene and voice directions are nothing to scoff at. It has, in my opinion, one of the most fulfilling and striking endings in any videogame, using the buildup the game (and its predecessor, as well!) had created up to that point to deliver a horrifying crescendo few other games come close to matching. Many of my issues with Soul Reaver 2 stem from its gameplay differences, but not everything unique to it are downgrades to me. The dungeons I found interesting and the backtracking overworld, on paper, sounds horrible, but in practice it helps serves the narrative in a way I didn't mind on top of being cleverly used in a few areas. The progression and combat is streamlined a little too much for my liking, gutting the upgrades and glyphs from the first game in favor of making health upgrades tied to story progression. Having the Reaver available to use almost always takes focus away from the environmental weapons, and overall combat feels less satisfying than Soul Reaver 1when you're NOT instantly killing things because the meter is filled to red.

El juego apesta pero dios mío que Amy Hennig se lucio escribiendo esto.

Puede que los caminos de Kain y Raziel hayan sido trazados con tal precisión que no importa lo que hagan, no escaparan de un ciclo lleno de tragedia y desgracia, tanto para ellos como para quienes los rodean, o quizás solo se trate de la historia de personajes egocentristas que al querer llevarle la contraria al otro terminan cayendo en un falso libre albedrio, no hacen estas acciones porque quieran, las hacen porque son personajes tan hundidos en su prepotencia que piensan que no haciendo lo que el otro espera que haga es una forma de mostrar alarde hacia este, terminando cayendo en una trampa que este mismo cavo.
Pero si aun si eso no fuese cierto, de que se trata el libre albedrio? valdría la pena simplemente hacer lo que se dicte o buscar una tercera respuesta? como no sabemos que siquiera esta incógnita sea algo elaborado por nosotros mismos y no por un tercero?
Creo que el juego esta tan consiente de esto que nunca hay una alternativa mas la que el relato nos ofrece, dejándonos guiar por una sucesión de eventos predeterminadas que tarde o temprano acabara en lo mismo... luego de tirar una moneda tantas veces algún día puede que caiga en el borde.

Story: 11 out of 10
Characters: 11 out of 10
Dialouge: 11 out of 10
Graphics: PS2 out of 10
Gameplay: 6 out of 10


PC Port: Suck my Balls Square Enix

When iterating on your previous work, you will get to the point where you must ask yourself, if you want to either add/improve what is already there, or you may not believe you are able to improve and do something completely different. While these are both valid ways to approach this problem, Soul Reaver 2 is often scrutinized for not going for the prior.
I do have a theory of why I think this criticism comes up so much more with this game than its predecessor Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, which already is the sequel to a completely different kind of game; as the moment you are done watching the opening cutscene, which shows you the final moments of LoK: SR and start controlling Raziel again, the game lulls you in the belief that this is but an expansion to the previous game.

Even to someone like me, who played the first game using a Dreamcast-controller and has barely ever even held a PlayStation 2-controller, when starting out with the game, controlling Raziel will feel eerily similar to how it was before. A few changes you will probably notice is how you won’t be able to shoot out the Energy Projectile, without aiming it anymore, with the button now reacting with a strong/heavy-attack, when you aren’t. This will be your first clue that Raziel never changed, it was the structure surrounding him that did.

Soul Reaver 2, unlike the 3D-metroidvania that was Soul Reaver (1), is a linear, action focused. This big change to the structure wasn’t done without reason though, as the story basically hits you over the head with how there is no such thing as free will and Raziel basically only doing everyone else’s bidding, even when he tries his best to avoid it.
Most changes can be traced back to that reasoning and I will start with the biggest one being the new and expanded combat system.

Soul Reaver 1 had a combat system, which in the best case, had you on the lookout for any weapons before confronting an enemy, as you wouldn’t have been able to defeat them otherwise. It was a combat system that incentivized the player to explore their environment and search for optional content, so it wouldn’t have fit here if it wasn’t changed and I believe the way they went about it to be really interesting, and it serves as a great example of Crystal Dynamics design-philosophy, when creating this sequel, of trying to not change the systems, but rather the structure around them to achieve something vastly different with them.
All the moves, you know and love from the first game, return, with only stealth and the energy projectiles receiving nerfs, they also expanded on it by allowing you to dodge into an enemy, without attacking, heavy-attacks and a complete overhaul of how the Soul Reaver works.
While I think the first two additions really helped making combat feel more expressive and get even better as you learn how to appropriately combine these two with the mechanics passed on from the first game; I believe the changes to the Soul Reaver to be at best misguided, as they nerfed it heavily, while at the same time trying to convey it being more powerful in the story.
Due to being able to call upon the Reaver at the press of a button at any time now, instead of it appearing at full health, it does not halt the constant draining of Raziels health anymore, which is also made more potent than ever in this game.
This was also not done without reason, as the only way to recover that lost health is to, you guessed it, reaving the souls of any enemies around. This in theory would work as great incentivization to dabble in the expanded combat system, but it was way to overtuned and became a great annoyance; made even worse by the fact that the game already has enough ways of incentivizing the player to defeat enemies, such as trapping you in a closed room with them, something that happens more frequently as the game goes on and towards the end went to such extremes that it tacked on at least another hour of playtime; and giving the weapons you need to quicker deal with enemies to the enemies themselves, which works as a fun little parallel to how the system worked in the prequel.

Just like in Soul Reaver (1), Raziels moveset is expanded upon in this game by visiting dungeons, which on paper is the logical thing to do. The problem is that these dungeon designs were the most hit or miss part for me, ranging from one of the best in the series thus far, to making me imagine Sisyphus as a blessed soul and easily the worst part of the game.
The dungeon design philosophy of Soul Reaver, which I talked about more in my review of that game, was mostly scrapped, probably because you barely have to revisit them, now being more akin to what you would see in a 3D-Zelda game, being built around a central room with branching paths. The puzzles you will find in the so called forges are mostly centered around doing the most obvious things enclosed in one room, located directly next to the central chamber. Most of these will have you just mindlessly interact with the first thing you see and have that be the whole “puzzle.”
When you finally reach the end of a forge the Reaver will absorb its energy and you will be able to use said energy for the puzzles of the next dungeon.
This mechanic, unfortunately, is entirely underbaked as elemental Reavers, to my best understanding, do not/have minimal impact on combat encounters, the thing the whole game is centered around, and their abilities are very similar in usage, being limited to interacting with other panels on the ground, most of whose only discernible trait being the symbol of the kind of Reaver you need to interact with them on it; and being able to shoot different stuff.
I might have made it sound more boring as I should have as the light and air Reaver came into great use in Janos Audron’s Retreat, the best dungeon in the game, and the puzzles centered around having to get somewhere with a different kind of Reaver and their own set of skills were really fun, albeit due to their nature could only ever be present in the later dungeons/forges. The dark Reaver centered puzzles were the worst offender and can be summarized to: ”get zapped by giant eyeball you didn’t see, search for a way to go back to the material realm, go get the dark reaver, shoot the eyeball” and I can’t really talk much about the fire-Reaver, as it was only used once in the whole game, due to the story and gameplay developing somehow asymmetrically.

The puzzles not centered around the Reaver were also a mixed bag and mostly straight up bad. One of these is the way you enter Janos Audron’s Retreat.
Soul Reaver 2 will see you exploring a few select places in Nosgoth during different times, a concept that sounds way better in theory. One of these places is the entrance of Janos Audron’s Retreat, which the first time around will serve as the entrance of the air-forge. If you ever get sent to the spectral realm there, which may happen as the difficulty suddenly spikes around this point in the game, and fall in the lake you will have to slowly be defeated by Sluagh, as there won’t be a way to go back to the material realm down there, which I, unlike in the first game, wouldn’t categorize as a softlock here, because the change of the saving system caused the creation of checkpoints, thus you won’t be sent to the start of the game.
While the checkpoint isn’t far from that point it still caused me to not ever want to change to the spirit realm around there again. So, when I had to revisit this location around 1-2 hours later and the game outright told me to do so to progress, I was understandably cautious and searched around the perimeter for any other solution. This should never have been an issue in the first place and, in my opinion, describes a lot of this games puzzle design.

One advantage you have when developing a sequel is hindsight and the publics reception of your previous work and this game does try to fix a lot of the issues, I had with its predecessor. For one this game does have an in-game-map, which I never used as the entirety of Soul Reaver 2 is taking place on a linear path, which is small enough to be memorized in its entirety.
The most baffling change was their reaction to both the handling of the glyphs and boss fights being that they completely removed them, as I would have loved their take on them, in a game that is able to focus on them more thoroughly due to being, say it with me, an action-adventure and in the case of the glyphs, not being optional anymore and having them actually be part of a combat system that can support them. They would’ve also helped fix the problem of the lack of an ability to break the blocks of enemies.
The camera and drawing distance were my biggest criticism of Soul Reaver and are not a problem anymore, as they have been completely reworked and benefit from the stronger hardware.

This might be the perfect time to mention the great presentation and story accompanying it. This game at points looked like an early Xbox 360 game, rather than early PS2. The Sarafan Stronghold might just be one of the most beautiful places I have visited in any game ever. While not as impressive as SR1, this game is still a technical marvel.
I won’t get into the story here as to avoid spoilers, just know it is the best one of the series yet, which is saying a lot. It does suffer from some pacing issues during the middle, but it does wrap up nicely and, in the process, manages to answer some questions from both previous games.

While I might have sounded overly negative during most of the review, that it stems from a place disappointment with how they went about the changes rather than contempt for the game. And then again, most of that does feed into the story and therefore makes it better; and while I have obviously not done so yet I believe they make this game more replayable, as the linearity makes it more easily digestible. Most of my criticisms were also most noticeable during the part between the dark- and shortly before the air- forge, after which the game gradually became better.
When looking back on it, I doubt Soul Reaver 2 will leave as much of an expression on me as its predecessor did, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is an easy recommendation to anyone eager to see Raziels story unfold, as I have the premonition that this might just be its beginning.

So I'm a little torn. On the one hand I love the presentation and the writing in the dialog, it's really well and smartly written. I also thought the dungeon design was great, very linear and straight-forward but not boring, just the way I like it. In the previous game you could still discover a lot of optional things and the world was much more open, but I also liked getting lost there and simply missing a lot of things. That never happens here, it's really linear from one point to the next, which I actually liked as well.

I thought it was a shame that there were basically no boss fights. The fighting itself was also very tricky at times, either enemies spam you to death or you spam them to death but the whole thing never really feels tactical.

The story is also very branching and I don't really know if it made sense :D But as I said presentation is top-notch and also the music was awesome...a short but very atmospheric pleasure.

PS: LOL, I had to use the fire upgrade for exactly ONE puzzle, ONE SINGLE ONE :D and it was about melting ice so it was also extremely obvious^^ So I wonder if a little more content with more interesting puzzles would have been good but at least there weren't those crappy sliding puzzles from the predecessor^^

Soul Reaver 2 is an interesting one, enjoyment of this game entirely hinges on how you felt about about the first Soul Reaver game. If you enjoyed it, then it's easy to view SR2 as a watered down, safe and boring version of it, but as someone who didn't really jive with most of SR1s design, I'm relieved at how simple SR2 is, so much so that I consider this to be my favourite of the series thus far.

Firstly, there's the structure, gone is the metroidvania layout of the first game and in its place is a linear set of hallways that you go through multiple times as you go through different points in time. I much prefer this approach since I don't have to get frustrated with getting lost every few steps but I wouldn't consider it good on its own merits. There's a lot of backtracking involved and the changes in decor as you go through these areas multiple times do little to alleviate how dull they end up being. Raziel does keep his abilities that he gained from beating his brothers in SR1 and they're now his innate abilities here, but with an environment that doesn't require exploration, I feel like these abilities feel sorta wasted here. Another aspect that was simplified was combat. Picking up and using weapons is now all done with the square button and killing enemies doesn't require picking them up and awkwardly carrying them, instead, hitting them with weapons is enough. This is fantastic and no longer having to jump through so many hoops to kill the most insignificant enemy was such a relief. But with the removal of exploration, there is now a greater emphasis on the combat and it's the one smear on what I'd otherwise consider to be a solid, inoffensive entry in the series. Fighting enemies here is just really brainless since you're best off equipping the wraith blade which now doesn't go away after being hit once and mashing the square button until the enemies are gone. Overusing the blade will now sap a portion of your health but it's a really minor amount and losing all your health means you get sent to the spirit realm and making your way back to the material world only takes like 10 seconds usually so it wasn't enough to deter me from having the wraith blade equipped at all times. It also doesn't help that blocking, the lock-on feature and especially dodging just don't seem reliable in this game. Sometimes I could dodge an attack just fine, other times I'd get clipped. Couple that with severely lacking sound design that makes the titular Soul Reaver feel like a limp pointy noodle and you get combat that is the definition of mindless, and with combat being the main thing you do in this game, well then that's a problem. I wouldn't say it's outright worse than in SR1, but the added emphasis on it and the fact that you can't run past pretty much every enemy here really makes it feel like it is inferior.

Luckily, combat isn't the only part of gameplay here, the other are the puzzle-focused forges that give the wraith blade a different elemental power. It's cool that the elemental powers are here since they were cut content from SR1 and the forges themselves are honestly the highlight of the gameplay for me, not just for this game, but for the series as a whole. They're all varied requiring you to do different puzzles from using shadows as platforms to manipulating light sources to using wind to propel yourself and almost none of them rely on block pushing and all of them are just right in terms of length, maybe except the fire forge that one is a bit short.

As for the story, I didn't really know what to expect since I wasn't as familiar with this game's plot as I was with BO1 and SR1s but after playing it, this to me is the best story the series has produced so far. I can't say too much without delving into spoilers but I will say that I think the way the game uses time travel to completely recontextualize events from the past games and completely change the dynamic between characters to be masterful. Another highlight of this story would be what it does with Raziel's character. Instead of being motivated purely by revenge, he starts to question his alliances and the world around him and it makes him much more compelling and 3-dimensional. As per usual with this series, the dialogue is still enthralling and the quality of the voice-acting to me is still unmatched for its time-period.

Overall, Soul Reaver 2 is a decent game that when sandwiched between SR1 and BO2, comes out looking like an absolute masterpiece to me. A lot of the enjoyment that I derived from this game stems from the disdain I had for SR1 and that won't be the case for most people. Perhaps the game is too standardized when compared to how ambitious it's predecessor was but to me, SR1 was a game that tried flying too close to the sun and got burnt, whereas SR2 walks along the ground just fine and it makes for a comfortable and enjoyable experience.

My final thoughts on the first Soul Reaver were complex: I liked it, overall, but it was a difficult, complicated game, plagued by various flaws. So, I was quite looking forward to playing the sequel. Unfortunately, even though aware that it was a bit of a step down from the first, I found myself very disappointed with SR2.

Let's start from the top. Soul Reaver 2 is fundamentally, an action game with some puzzle elements, rather than a Metroidvania like the first. I liked that aspect in the first Soul Reaver but left it feeling it was too overwhelming so toning it down was, I think, the right idea. However, Crystal Dynamics went way too far in the opposite direction. Completely gone is the interconnected world full of hidden collectables and player exploration: Soul Reaver 2 is a straight shot from start to finish. Or rather, a winding shot- thanks to the time travel aspect of the game, Raziel is constantly backtracking through the same few areas in different time periods- kind of a neat concept, but when that's all you do in the game, it feels like (and probably is) padding. I thought it might be an issue of the game being rushed or out of budget, but looking into the game's development a bit, it seems like they just wanted to make it more akin to a novel or a movie. That is... definitely not an idea I'm a fan of. There's a place for cinematic flair, but streamlining a game to the point that most of its gameplay is just running through corridors dodging enemies ain't that place. I'm not exaggerating, there is nothing to most of the game other than hoping for the next cutscene to come soon.

Let's talk about those enemies. The original game's combat was by far its lowest point- almost every enemy needed to be killed with some finishing move, all of them situational in some way. Thankfully that isn't the case here, but the situation isn't much better, because SR2 makes the extremely misguided choice to focus on combat much more than before, and despite using the same animations and engine as the first game and changing almost nothing, somehow they managed to fuck up the basic core of combat big time. Hit detection sucks, everything whiffs enemies while Raziel might as well have a magnet taped to his chest, your dodge is completely vestigial because it's laggy and has no invincibility, attack combos don't even string together properly and worst of all enemies are way overtuned. It's not a question of their stats, those are fine, they're just insanely fast and aggressive. You'll run up to some human guards that Raziel should by all rights tear to shreds in seconds, and they'll start spam-attacking faster than you can react, stun-locking you while you helplessly try to get around them and when you do get a hit in, they'll probably block it. The Soul Reaver (which now thankfully can be summoned at will) prevents the last of the issues but it is still a mess, man. I just ran past everything and I advise you to do the same.

So, is all of Soul Reaver 2 watching cutscenes and running past enemies in linear corridors? Thankfully not. There are five beautiful glimmers that shine through the awfulness of the rest of the gameplay, which are the Forges and Janos Audron's Retreat. While relatively simple, these are puzzle-focused dungeons similar to Zelda ones, mostly centered around spatial awareness. It's not super challenging stuff and there's some missteps, but it's extremely solid and I had a great time with them. Especially Janos Audron's Retreat, because that one doesn't have any enemies to ruin my day, and it has really nice ambiance and atmosphere (A lot of the game does, in fact, which makes me wish i didn't have five enemies chasing me at all times to prevent me from appreciating it). I wish all of Soul Reaver 2 was like them, honestly. They aren't perfect, but I'd really like it if they did. As nice as they are, though, they're the only good bits of a game full of mediocre to awful gameplay that exists only to be sandwiched between bits of story, rather than prop that story up. As flawed as BO1 and SR1 were in terms of gameplay, it at least achieved that much.

Anyways, before moving on to the story, I'd touch on two things. First off: Bosses. Because of the aforementioned interest in cinematic style, there are no bosses. I liked SR1's bosses. This is a downgrade. Second off: Visuals. To make things simple, environments look great and have a really nice vibe, characters look pretty goofy. They're over-expressive, not amazingly animated and weirdly cartoony, so the cutscenes get a lot of drama sucked out of them at times.

So, the story [SOME SPOILERS AHEAD]. I'm just gonna start with this, I don't know how it's going to end (besides the vague awareness of BO2 being a sort of alt-timeline stuff that doesn't tie in with the main series too much, and Defiance ending on a never to be resolved cliffhanger that happens to kinda work as a series ending), all my conclusions are just based on what I've experienced of the series so far. And those conclusions are... eh? I mean, I liked it, don't get me wrong, but it felt like for how much happened, nothing ended up really concluding. All of the big reveals are setting up some other bigger thing, and it ends on a massive cliffhanger. Raziel spends all of the game constantly changing ideals, confused and angry- I actually quite like that, don't get me wrong, but it adds to the feeling that the story moves around at a breakneck pace all to not really cross much ground. It feels like the middle chapters of a novel ripped out and sold as a full product- well written, but kinda pointless on their own. So, I'm going to reserve my judgment until I've played all LoK that there is to play, with one exception:

Man it is weird what they did with Kain in this game. In Blood Omen, Kain is a bastard. He murders indiscriminately without any regard or even interest in justifying himself, he is completely driven by his own vengeance and by the end chooses to damn the world rather than let it thrive. Now I understand that a lot of context is added to the world around Kain in the sequels, and that he's had literal millennia to become wiser, but even in SR1 he never struck me as actually being anything but a complete villain. I guess we're starting to get a glimpse at his true plans but it's never actually communicated why he's trying to restore the Pillars, just how he's doing it. I was initially under the impression that it was still an ultimately self-interested goal, but we're clearly meant to see him as a hero - I'm willing to believe it with the right setup but- and maybe I just missed something- from what I've seen the reason behind his change of heart isn't really ever discussed. I mean, there's two more games, I'll "let them cook", but it's just very jarring to me right now. (EDIT: Yeah I'd say with Defiance Kain's character works very well)

Before I go, I want to praise the ending. It's a good twist, and extremely well-acted on Raziel's part too. Anyways, Blood Omen 2 is next. Allegedly, the worst one in the series... hoo, I'm hoping I don't end up feeling that way.

Strange one. Better and worse than the first game. Brilliant plot, dialogue, and presentation. Lousy combat and too much backtracking. But the forges were good Zelda-like mini dungeons.

A flawed game, but definitely worth playing if you're a fan of the series.

Also has Odo from Deep Space Nine in it.

Soul Reaver 2 is an interesting case study in making a sequel. So many things have been improved from Raziel's first trek through Nosgoth: the controls are much tighter, the camera far more coherent, the combat...still kinda sucks, but at least the two aforementioned refinements, the ability to equip the Reaver at will and the groundbreaking inclusion of a guard button make it sting a little less. The puzzles tend to be more advanced than simple block pushing and do a good job of utilizing Raziel's moveset. The story just keeps getting better as the universe gets expanded and characters are further fleshed out, and the graphics and presentation are as top-fucking-notch as always with well-directed cutscenes, impressive animations and a soundtrack about on par with the original's quality. All of this should theoritically amount to a far better game, but the decision to remove optional objectives, instead focusing on a more linear, structured design ultimately results in a shallower, less impactful experience.

The first Soul Reaver is by no means a sprawling open world with endless possibilities. You can totally just follow the critical path and have a decent enough time. However, doing so would rob you of that unmistakable soul. Despite its size, the interconnected land of Nosgoth was still interesting to explore for, at the very least, the stellar art design and environmental storytelling. It's nice that you can come across max HP upgrades and magic glyphs, but the sense of discovery you get when you stumble upon a completely optional area like Nupraptor's Retreat far exceeds that nicety, and seeing just how much things have changed since Blood Omen enhances the already excellent plot and lore.

Soul Reaver 2 adopts a more authored approach to level design. The critical path is the only one there is, as the narrative takes you through every location no matter what and even forces you to backtrack through them. There aren't any branching paths, hidden areas or powerups to be found anywhere along the way, and consequently the adventure vibe from the first game is nearly erased. You can poke around each area if you feel inclined, but you're not going to find anything interesting or enlightening by doing so. This isn't to say the quest is bad; as I've said, the art design is still great, the mechanics have been tightened up and the challenges you'll face are well put together, but the narrow scope of it all just left me wanting more meat on the bone. When that soul is so faint, it ends up feeling more like a shoddy action game with some decent puzzles. The story helps keep everything tied together, but I still honestly wouldn't blame anyone for just watching the cutscenes on the internet.

Wasn't really sure how to fit these in, so I'm just going to list a few other observations:
-Enemies' attack animations are way too fast and they track you like a goddamn wolf unless your dodges are frame-perfect. There were times I was practically stunlocked, it's fucking clownshoes.
-While the camera and controls are a lot more fluid, the targeting system is still temperamental. Enemies have to be really close for the lock-on to work, and I found myself jumping toward the camera instead of dodging a lot because I was just barely too far from the target.
-The Reaver is basically just Stormbringer now, and that's okay. I'd like to slam the idea for the blatant plagiarism it is, but I'm a scorned Elric fan so I'll take whatever I can get. Plus, it's just a lot more satisfying mechanically than the "get hit once and it's gone" bullshit from the first game.
-Replacing the ability to save anywhere with save points is utterly stupid. I had to repeat half an hour of gameplay at one point because a weird camera glitch happened and the most recent save point had been that long ago.

LoK is one of my favorite franchises lore-wise.
When i finished Soul Reaver 1, i was really hyped up by that ending cutscene and instantly booted up Soul Reaver 2 the very next day.
Amazing lore, universe, characters, dialogue, voice actors, design and new combat mechanics.

The puzzles are slightly better than Soul Reaver 1 and they use your arsenal/equipment in a kinda creative way. However, the gameplay can be "off" sometimes. There are visual bugs and strange level design scattered all around.

Soul Reaver 2 is very linear compared to Soul Reaver 1. Which isn't bad, but i think it was worth mentioning.

Yes, the lore is great and rich, but there are points in the story that you will end up getting lost or extremely confused. Nothing that an fandom wiki or an video essay can't cover for you, though.

Nevertheless, it's an cool game.

Every element of Soul Reaver is improved and expanded here: more combat (still repetitive, but sometimes syncing nicely with some plot events), more complex puzzles (though they're still nothing to write home about), a deeper story with, as always, great cutscenes and voice acting (which -- let's face it -- is the main thing that makes us wanna keep playing the LOK games).

The fact that the same basic elements were improved already makes want to give this a higher score than the one I gave to SR1. Alas, there are some things I didn't quite like: the combat system is somehow more frustrating than SR1's; I didn't like the heavy emphasis on backtracking (compared to SR1's exploration of different areas as you progress through it) because it gave me the feeling of repetitiveness, even though it's a short game; finally, the story kinda got weirder and weirder to a point when I started missing the simplicity SR1's plot. I also didn't like the evolution of Raziel's personality; I mean, sure, it's more varied and distinct than in SR1, but his sudden cockiness and "cool cunning guy" posturing during some cutscenes threw me off a bit, I miss the constantly simpler, colder and more serious Raziel from the first game (but Kain's portrayal is WAY better here than in SR1, that's for sure).

Overall, it's pretty good for what it tries to accomplish, and I look forward to playing the next games the series has to offer.