"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.

It's been a few days since I finished this game, as of the time of writing, unsure what to feel about it, unsure what to say, how to say it, if it would be unfair or not. Because, at the end of the day, Trek to Yomi is, in essence, a love letter. Like many love letters it isn't perfect, it wears it's affection proudly and it doesn't hide it, it shows every aspect of itself like an open book, the flattering and unflattering. Trek to Yomi is a love letter to the likes of Akira Kurasawa and his work, one that is seemingly more interested in replicating it's visual flair and storytelling than it is about being an engaging game it feels at times. And yet, is it fair to judge something born out of a clear love for something?

Trek to Yomi is the tale of Hiroki, a Japanese samurai from his days as an apprentice and to his adulthood, his life shaken early by a bandit attack to his village, a raid lead by Kagerou, from then on the main villain of Hiroki's story. Despite being told by his master to stay put and hide, driven by his master's daughter (and future love interest), Hiroki roams the streets of the village as it is razed, helping wherever he can.

This leads me to the combat which is...passable. You have a basic set of moves, combos achieved by linking light and heavy attacks, a turn-around move in case an enemy gets behind you and a dodge I rarely found myself using. Combat is usually approached in a 2D plane, whilst exploration uses all three dimensions multiple times. At least on the game's equivalent of Normal difficulty enemies tend to attack you in turns, and while they are quick to take the place of any dead comrade it never really is enough to hide that fact. Combat can be somewhat stiff, and while you learn more combos at time goes on, with some of them having distinct usages (like some of them dealing extra damage to armoured enemies), you never really get the feeling that combat itself ever improves in any meaningful way, even with ranged weapons getting introduced. You'll find that one combo that essentially works on every enemy effectively, by either dealing extra damage or stunning them for a finishing execution which will restore your health (parrying and riposting heals too, but in a lesser way and pulling them off is harder) and stick to it the entire game, because every other option is either not as helpful or has some rather strict and at times hard to decipher timing that makes them undesirable.

So clearly, combat was not the game's focus, no, that was the presentation and writing. Trek to Yomi's a indie game, one that I will probably use as an example of how you can make a game look greay without the need for insane graphical fidelity: the black and white coloring, the lighting, the old camera filter, the letterboxing and the camera angles make the game look like an interractive movie, a visually astonishing one that left me with my jaw on the floor multiple times despite the character models not looking like something from a AAA production. Normally I wouldn't be sold by something looking like it's an interractive movie, but there's enough gameplay here to not have bothered me, instead leaving me with wanting to see more of what the devs had in store for me.

The story is okay, really. Hiroki, after witnessing the death of his master at the hands of Kagerou (not before disfiguring him), grows to become the master's daughter sworn protector. One day, the village is again sieged by bandits, and Hiroki separates from the rest of his comrades to deal with one of the leaders, only to then discover this was all a distraction to let Kagerou raise hell all over again. Returning to the ruins of the village, he arrives to late to save his love, as she has been killed by Kagerou himself, who then easily dispatches of Hiroki, who, now on death's door, finds himself to the titular Yomi, the underworld in Japanese mythology.

Yomi is a putrescent land, one filled with corrupted humans and carcasses, seeking either peace to their pain or a way to satisfy their bloodlust. Here, Hiroki's sense of guilt is explored, seeing the results of the war he could not stop, the ghost of his dead comrades who are blaming him for their death (or perhaps, a manifestation of Hiroki's guilt all inside his mind). It is arguably, from a visual standpoint, my favourite part of the game. Not so much gameplay wise, as the enemies introduced can be really annoying, but still.

Through Yomi, the player can decide if Hiroki's journey is one of love, of duty, or of pure revenge. And by that I mean at the end of the penultimate chapter you are given a three way choice on what to focus your task on the living world, with any previous choice not really mattering, making me question exactly why they were even there to begin with. Whatever you pick here will determine your ending, with Hiroki either rejoining his beloved in Yomi, Training his own apprentice or taking Kagerou's place and continuining the bloodshed. That is what I could gather from YouTube, anyways. I went with honor, and checked the other endings there, as you cannot load a save after beating the game, you have to replay it from the start, and the combat was just not good enough to entice me to do so.

I...I still don't know what to think. The game is okay, nothing more, nothing less, but it is an incredible looking piece of art, one whose visuals stuck with me. As a love letter, it is incredible, but as a game? It isn't anything that will make history, but perhaps that was not intended; like many acts of love, it is intimate, you can share it with others, but it doesn't seek approval from strangers, it is there to pronounce its affection, nothing less, nothing more. You may share in its love, or you may not. You may walk a path of love, or of revenge. What you make of it is your own decision. Hiroki's story is his own, despite the choice given to the player. I still do not have an answer to the question from the start of this review. Guess you cannot judge a love letter, after all.