conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
I finished Soul Reaver 2.
Yeah, I can see why this game isn't thought of as fondly as its predecessor— a lot of the things I so loved about Soul Reaver are, if not absent entirely, then vestigial. So SR2 has a big, interconnected world, but this time it amounts to nothing more than a trek from one end to the other: there are no collectibles, no side paths and secret areas, no using new abilities to uncover new paths. It has the appearance of SR1's world design— down to eliminating loading screens and creating a seamless space— but none of the substance of what really made it so memorable.
The worst hit, though, is the combat. The great thing about SR1 was how its combat was a sort of puzzle: the enemies were all vampires, and as such, were immortal to standard attacks and could only be killed by impalement, flame, sun or water— consequently, the important part of a given encounter was locating the weapons or environmental hazard that would vanquish them, with the actual fight being practically perfunctory. But in SR2, there are exactly zero vampires; all the enemies are humans (and later, demons), who do not require any special consideration and can be simply pummelled to death. So right away, it's already lost a lot of character in favour of a simplistic hack-and-slash. Worse, I don't think the hack-and-slash is any good! The controls are unresponsive and clumsy (dodges didn't always go in the direction I intended), and the rhythm of combat is awkward and jerky at the best of times, and liable to get stunlocked at the worse of times. It was mostly just frustrating; after a while, I just started running past every enemy I could.
Despite that, SR2 is not without its strong points. The presentation is, of course, aces; a lot of the actual story is lost on me, as someone whose only experience with Blood Omen is a Wikipedia summary, but there's so much intrigue that it's impossible not to get swept up in it anyway. The voice cast is the biggest reason for that, of course: Michael Bell (Raziel) has only improved since the first game, and hearing him spar with Simon Templeman (Kain) and Richard Doyle (Moebius) is incredble; each of these would be stand-out performances in another game, but here they're just one of many. It's becoming apparent to me that Legacy of Kain has perhaps the finest voice acting in the medium.
But the gameplay has its ups, too, particularly in the puzzle design. Now, I actually had no qualms with the box puzzles in SR1 (I found them uncommonly clever and well-implemented, and was impressed how much mileage they got out of moving blocks around), but SR2's addition of Reaver abilities is a massive improvement: it opens up new venues for puzzles while simultaneously obscuring what is one (or at least, they don't call attention to themselves the way boxes do). I also like how the forges tend towards a sort of puzzle-box design, where the entire dungeon is something to untangle and not just a house for a series of standalone problems. It's all quite satisfying to do.
Another thing I appreciated: no bosses. Not just because I have my issues with the combat in the game, but because I always appreciate when developers have enough confidence in their game to break from design orthodoxy in this way— to not include bosses simply because it's the done thing. Ideally, I would have just wanted puzzle-boss encounters like in the first game, but since SR2 did not go in that direction, I'm not missing the prospect of Raziel getting into bare-knuckle brawls or whatever. I think the game is stronger for it.
Overall, I did enjoy my time with Soul Reaver 2. It doesn't doesn't measure up to its predecessor, but it's still got its flashes of creativity, and its story is reason enough to give it the time of day. It's not a genre classic but it's agreeable.
My question to the forum: should I play Blood Omen 2 and/or Defiance? I'm at a point where I'm still enjoying and impressed with the series, but am also OK leaving it here if the series dramatically declines in quality, or gets markedly less mechanically interesting. BO2 is the one I'm most skeptical of, not only because it's made by a different creative team, but because the preview of it included on the SR2 disc made it look really stiff (not just the gameplay, but also the cutscenes). But I'm unsure about Defiance as well, since I'm worried it'll just be a straight action game.
Yeah, I can see why this game isn't thought of as fondly as its predecessor— a lot of the things I so loved about Soul Reaver are, if not absent entirely, then vestigial. So SR2 has a big, interconnected world, but this time it amounts to nothing more than a trek from one end to the other: there are no collectibles, no side paths and secret areas, no using new abilities to uncover new paths. It has the appearance of SR1's world design— down to eliminating loading screens and creating a seamless space— but none of the substance of what really made it so memorable.
The worst hit, though, is the combat. The great thing about SR1 was how its combat was a sort of puzzle: the enemies were all vampires, and as such, were immortal to standard attacks and could only be killed by impalement, flame, sun or water— consequently, the important part of a given encounter was locating the weapons or environmental hazard that would vanquish them, with the actual fight being practically perfunctory. But in SR2, there are exactly zero vampires; all the enemies are humans (and later, demons), who do not require any special consideration and can be simply pummelled to death. So right away, it's already lost a lot of character in favour of a simplistic hack-and-slash. Worse, I don't think the hack-and-slash is any good! The controls are unresponsive and clumsy (dodges didn't always go in the direction I intended), and the rhythm of combat is awkward and jerky at the best of times, and liable to get stunlocked at the worse of times. It was mostly just frustrating; after a while, I just started running past every enemy I could.
Despite that, SR2 is not without its strong points. The presentation is, of course, aces; a lot of the actual story is lost on me, as someone whose only experience with Blood Omen is a Wikipedia summary, but there's so much intrigue that it's impossible not to get swept up in it anyway. The voice cast is the biggest reason for that, of course: Michael Bell (Raziel) has only improved since the first game, and hearing him spar with Simon Templeman (Kain) and Richard Doyle (Moebius) is incredble; each of these would be stand-out performances in another game, but here they're just one of many. It's becoming apparent to me that Legacy of Kain has perhaps the finest voice acting in the medium.
But the gameplay has its ups, too, particularly in the puzzle design. Now, I actually had no qualms with the box puzzles in SR1 (I found them uncommonly clever and well-implemented, and was impressed how much mileage they got out of moving blocks around), but SR2's addition of Reaver abilities is a massive improvement: it opens up new venues for puzzles while simultaneously obscuring what is one (or at least, they don't call attention to themselves the way boxes do). I also like how the forges tend towards a sort of puzzle-box design, where the entire dungeon is something to untangle and not just a house for a series of standalone problems. It's all quite satisfying to do.
Another thing I appreciated: no bosses. Not just because I have my issues with the combat in the game, but because I always appreciate when developers have enough confidence in their game to break from design orthodoxy in this way— to not include bosses simply because it's the done thing. Ideally, I would have just wanted puzzle-boss encounters like in the first game, but since SR2 did not go in that direction, I'm not missing the prospect of Raziel getting into bare-knuckle brawls or whatever. I think the game is stronger for it.
Overall, I did enjoy my time with Soul Reaver 2. It doesn't doesn't measure up to its predecessor, but it's still got its flashes of creativity, and its story is reason enough to give it the time of day. It's not a genre classic but it's agreeable.
My question to the forum: should I play Blood Omen 2 and/or Defiance? I'm at a point where I'm still enjoying and impressed with the series, but am also OK leaving it here if the series dramatically declines in quality, or gets markedly less mechanically interesting. BO2 is the one I'm most skeptical of, not only because it's made by a different creative team, but because the preview of it included on the SR2 disc made it look really stiff (not just the gameplay, but also the cutscenes). But I'm unsure about Defiance as well, since I'm worried it'll just be a straight action game.