So I finished the #legacyofkain #soulreaverremastered collection for #nintendoswitch. I actually pre-ordered the collector's edition from #limitedrungames, which finally came in last week after over a year of waiting, which included two last minute delays. I am pleased with what I got, all the superfan collectables are pretty nice.
Going back to the #soulreaver games...a mixed bag. The remaster work is overall pretty nice. Raziel and Kain's updated character models look pretty good and everything has a higher res coat of paint. The only thing is...everything is darker and makes the characters pop out less, due to being less brightly shaded compared to their originals. It is a nice feature to switch from old to new models on the fly, so you can always go to the original style, if you prefer.
Speaking of dark...the brightness, or lack thereof, makes the screen pretty hard to see in some areas (at least on the Switch version). Even cranking the system's brightness up all the way still had me stumbling around practically blind in some areas since the enviroment was so dark that if I was playing in a room with a lot of light I could barely see (looking at you Dark Forge! I get that it's the theme, but c'mon!).
The new 3D camera helps a lot with the still janky early 3D game platforming (if you know you know). It still fights with the old camera sometimes and you need to swing it around again. Still an overall improvement.
The modernized controls work well and are very much appreciated when the #gog and #steam versions didn't give good controller support. Adding the compass and a map system to Soul Reaver 1 was a nice touch, but even as a new player, I couldn't see either of those things helping with finding your way. A mini-map would have gone better; even as a seasoned vet, I would still get lost sometimes. Both games could have used this since the compass and map system of 2 is pretty useless as well.
Soul Reaver was a lot of fun going back to and getting 100%. Going back to #soulreaver2...I forgot how much the story carries that game. The combat is a step down from the original; I found after the first few fights I would just avoid them and only fight when it was mandated to progress. I usually found it easier to just run around enemies swinging instead of using the lock on system since dodging was...dodgy so enemies got more hits in. This is especially true with the demons you start fighting midway through the game.
The puzzles in SR2 are still fun. The block moving puzzles (which I Iiked too) from SR1 have been replaced with more context based ones that often have you switching reavers to solve. Aside from the story, this is the highlight of the game.
Another flaw is that the game is very linear. Even going back to different areas in different times, everything is mostly the same and there are no collectibles, side forges, nothing.
Overall, I still really enjoyed both games and the remaster was pretty well done. I'm hoping a physical version will be announced at some point for the recently released #legacyofkaindefiance remaster...
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