"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.