Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered Review

A very long time ago I remember a game my dad installed on our new PC, it was Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. At that time I wasn’t very good at it, but I always remembered it fondly. Then came the follow-up to the series; the Soul Reaver games. They seemed well-regarded, and it was many years after their release before I got to them. I remember not getting far with the controls and putting the series aside, until now! Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered resurrects these classics back into the material realm, with a new coat of paint to boot.

Set in the land of Nosgoth, a place that has long fallen into decay due to a previous all round bad decision by the Vampire Lord Kain. One of his vampiric lieutenants Raziel, gains the ire of Kain by attaining shiny new wings, which leads to Kain tearing up Raziel’s new wings and is cast into the lake of the dead to rot for centuries. Once Raziel is freed from the lake of the dead, now a Wraith he is sent on a revenge quest through a ruined Nosgoth to stop his brethren and Kain. Soul Reaver 2 picks up right after the first game, with some time travel thrown into the mix as Raziel seeks to help restore a broken world. 

There is plenty of gothic atmosphere and vampire drama across the two games, but it’s not until the second that the narrative picks up. Over twenty years later it might not feel as fresh, but it’s a classic for a reason. Renowned game industry writer and director Amy Hennig played a big part in Soul Reaver (and Kain titles) before going on to do even bigger things with the Uncharted series. The story of Raziel, and to an extent Kain, have stood the test of time more than the rest of the game.

In this third-person action-adventure game, Raziel will run, jump/glide, punch and stab and push and pull a lot of things around. These things are somewhat better to do in the remaster with some QoL improvements, but it’s still built on a 20+ year old game. Platforming is awkward, especially when on narrow surfaces, let alone the frustration if you fall and need to work your way back to where you fell from. Then there’s the combat – attacking, blocking and dodging. None of them feel great, and these were improved from the original games. 

As a Soul Reaver, you can jump between the material realm and the spectral realm. Raziel does face limitations in the material realm; initially, he cannot swim, and his health slowly drains unless replenished by souls. There are ways around these barriers as you progress, but initially, it can be fairly quick to get sent back to the spectral realm. Of course, you don’t and can’t spend all your time hanging out in the spectral. You can’t interact with as much there, nor can you swim through water. It’s meant to be an interesting way to move through the realms as progression and puzzle solving will require you to utilise the benefits of each realm. Only it can be a pain to have to go find the nearest point in the spectral realm to be able to shift over, it’s only usually a mild inconvenience that stacks up on the other issues. 

I’m really torn on the Soul Reaver games, they aren’t bad games by any means. While being fondly remembered classics doesn’t mean they’re as fun to play after two decades of progress. Not to diminish by any means the improvements made to help make the games more approachable. While I have a few issues with the game which I will go into after, it still remained a collection where I wanted to experience the Soul Reaver story. I do hope we might get to see the rest of the Kain/Soul Reaver titles on the Switch/Switch 2.

From very early on it was easy to get disoriented when in enclosed areas. With no real distinguishing features, I would often be trudging through corridors where I wasn’t 100% sure I wasn’t just going back where I came from. While there is a world map, it definitely could have benefitted from a map of the area to reduce some sluggish exploration. The world map is accessed by a press of a button in Soul Reaver 1, but in the sequel you have to select it through the inventory. I don’t know if it was because the first game didn’t have a map and the sequel did, so there was no reason to make it easier to access. 

While there’s no escaping that several elements of the game have aged poorly, one of the most annoying is the Save system. For the first game you can Save from the menu anytime, although when you reload you don’t return to the spot you saved. In the sequel there is no save option in the menu, nor is there autosave. I fortunately found this out when I eventually came to a save point, not after dropping out and returning to the game only to start fresh. After jumping back into the original game, finding myself back at the starting point really knocked my enthusiasm down a notch. There’s a portal you can use to travel to the areas you’ve unlocked, but unless you remember exactly where you left off you’re going to have some legwork to do. 

Whether for the sake of authenticity or not, a remaster of a game from an era with less-than-ideal save systems should consider quick saves a quality-of-life improvement. Since not everything in a remaster is 100% authentic anyway, adding this feature wouldn’t be sacrilege. It wouldn’t fundamentally change the game—just reduce unnecessary padding.

At the click of the Right stick, you can seamlessly switch between the classic visuals and the updated remaster work. I know it’s not exactly the first game to do this, with the Tomb Raider remasters also being able to do this, but it remains cool. With rose-tinted glasses (and not having spent a lot of time with the originals) it can be a surprise that Raziel didn’t always look like that. Sometimes it’s fun just to switch between the two because it happens straight away.

With Soul Reaver’s connection to the Legacy of Kain series, the collection would have benefitted from also having Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain included. The Soul Reaver games give you enough to work from, but it would’ve been a nice inclusion. What’s included in this package is bonus content that allows you to view and play deleted sections from the games. lts a nice addition that not many games include. 

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered gives the series a fresh coat of paint and introduces quality-of-life improvements that make the games more approachable in 2025. However, they still show their age, and the lack of improvements to the save system hinders the momentum of an already challenging experience. Despite this, there’s still plenty to enjoy—especially for those who have been waiting for these classics to get a new lease on life.

Rating: 3/5