Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered Review

Growing up in the 90s and having a PlayStation, I played Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. I remember thinking that it was interesting, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember how the game actually was, other than third-person action with vampires. When I heard about Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered I wondered what the difference would be from years ago, so I was excited to play it on my PlayStation 5.

When starting the game you get the choice of playing either Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver or Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. There is also the option of bonus content, but I decided to look at that later and go straight to Soul Reaver. When it started I was a little unsure how I felt at first but I was very excited to see Raziel as I am a huge fan of him, sadly my firstborn wasn't named after him, despite how much I argued for it.

As it’s a remaster, the first thing that stands out are the graphics are an improvement, but mainly the character models. The environments don’t look very different, and you can swap between the two to compare at any time by clicking in the R3 button.

Another thing that I noticed has changed from the old version was that you can now move the camera up and down to look around more, which was missing from the original because not everyone had a DualShock controller. The developer Aspyr has also added a photo mode, but I didn’t really use it for more than messing around with it for a bit, before carrying on with the game.

If you’ve never played these games, they see a vampire, Raziel, sentenced to death by his master, Kain. Raziel is saved by an Elder God and returned to unlife as a being able to consume souls to give him strength on his mission for vengeance. The first game sees you fighting Raziel’s vampire brothers and taking their unique powers (like a metroidvania) on the way to face Kain.

I had forgotten how frustrating parts of Soul Reaver got as it doesn't really explain what to do very well, and some puzzles in levels are real brainteasers. Eventually, I stopped playing Soul Reaver and skipped to Soul Reaver 2. The graphics are slightly different to the first game which was a little surprising as I had thought that Raziel wouldn’t change as noticeably since the developer could have just used the same model for both games. You can still swap from new graphics to old.

The main difference between the two games is that Soul Reaver lets you save within the pause menu, but in the second game you have to go to specific places to be able to save, which is a little annoying as parts of the game are very lengthy between save points.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered is lovingly stuffed with bonus content, absolutely celebrating the 25th anniversary of the original game. You can read the scripts for both games, check out concept art and character renders, read Nosgoth lore, and even play through cut content! The “Lost Levels” are broken and janky, and have no enemies or really anything to do, but they’re still very interesting to have a look at, and see what could have been.

The most disappointing part of the package are broken textures in some areas. In one area of the first game, I was going down a staircase and in both old or new graphics there was a repeatable glitch when moving about. Also, a Trophy popped for impaling enemies, despite me immolating them.

I really like how everything feels like it loads faster. Most noticeable when swapping between the Spectral Realm and Material Realm, it’s only a second rather than the four or five that I remember.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered is more than just a lazy reskin of the old games, with a compass and a map, it feels like a real celebration of the cult classics. I do wish they would have gone a little further and made things clearer, so that I wouldn’t keep getting lost all of the time. As a remaster, it’s great, but if you didn’t like the games the first time around, there’s nothing for you here.