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[Vieo]

Which one do you think was better?

I really enjoyed both, but I think I liked Blood Omen more because it was a bit better at that whole 'gothic world' sorta thing. The 2D art style was really great for it's time. It sorta reminded me of a 2D top-down view Castlevania. Kain was also a lot more interesting than Raziel because when he was slicing people up he would yell stuff. Though, Raziel is missing his lower jaw so I didn't expect him to talk much. That whole sucking-blood out of someone's neck at 7 paces thing Kain did was also pretty cool.

I stopped playing after Soul Reaver(I think I was playing the Dreamcast version). I'm not even sure what game the series is up to or who's currently working on it.

 

[ToyMachine228]

Silicon Knights vs Crystal Dynamics

 

[scissorfight]

Bloode Omen is one of my all time favorite games. No game has created a better atmosphere with a combination of music and voice. I was completely blown away at the time...it's simply one of the coolest games ever.

I'd kill for a next gen remake of this, since the only thing the PS game was lacking in was graphics and (somewhat) combat. Blood Omen 2 is an abomination that should never be spoken of.

Soul Reaver was good, but it doesn't touch BO.

 

[Draft]

Blood Omen was an awful, awful game that was pulled from the depths of mediocrity by outstanding dialogue and voice over. Story weren't too bad neither.

Soul Reaver stumbled just a bit on the story front, but still came correct with the voice acting. Aside from that though, it's one of my favorite games ever. The seemless, no loading world, the sick art direction, the melee combat (come on, harpooning vampires is like the best thing ever) and maybe 6 of the best boss fights ever thunk up on the PSX.

Series went downhill after Soul Reaver, though. Defiance is kind of ok, but they really wimped up Kain.

 

[Dr_Cogent]

I loved the original Soul Reaver game.

 

[GitarooMan]

I never played Blood Omen, but I loved Soul Reaver (except for the Halo2 esque half-assed ending because we couldn't finish development in time). I've been a big fan of Crystal Dynamics for years and this is one of their best.

One of the great tragedies of the 32-bit age is that a shit company like Eidos bought a great company like Crystal Dynamics (and refused to make any more Gex titles )

 

[Alucard]

Soul Reaver. Loading times in Blood Omen = pain in the ass. Plus, I just liked the characters more, and the visuals and locations didn't hurt either.

 

[dark10x]

Soul Reaver II is the best of the series IMO.

Most interesting locales with the most variety and far and away the best chunk of story.

 

[Lain]

I love the whole LoK serie, but i preferred Blood Omen over Soul Reaver. both nice games as far as i am concerned, but Blood Omen had the better story and character, and being able to use different powers, go into houses at night to drink the blood from sleeping people, shifting into different forms and all that stuff was just too good.

 

[Shikamaru Ninja]

Blood Omen was the best. It had an amazing story, groundbreaking presentation and just a great mix of scenario design and gameplay. There was never a true sequel to the game that really built on Kain as the baddass character and ability to transform into a wolf, myst, and bats. There were a ton of characters and enemies in this game that were cut down drastically and recycled in the future Crystal Dynamics games.

Soul Reaver was a good game. However, to me the PSX hardware (DC port was blah) could not cut it. They were forced to create a LoK game around a world void of any life. Tons of nothing surrounding nothing. The story was sooo lame. I mean the dialogue was well writen, but the content was reduced.

Soul Reaver 2 had a lot of cool story moments. My main gripe again, is that Crystal Dynamics whole idea of story is to explain Blood Omen over and over.

 

[_Angelus_]

Actually I love the whole series but if I had to choose one then Blood Omen gets my money easily. Yes-it had Snes type visuals/slowdown for its day but I loved the whole over head camera,the hard as fuck dungeons,the story,the morphing abilities, the cinematics,and the game was pretty long too. The load times were bad though. Has anyone ever tried playing this on their PS2,does it shorten load better overall?

 

[MattKeil]

All the Kain games work together very well as a unit, but my favorite remains Soul Reaver. The boss fights alone put that one on top of the LoK heap. Of all the games to do the Ocarina of Time ripoff thing, I think Soul Reaver did it best. Too bad about the half-finished thing.

Soul Reaver 2 was a massive step backwards in gameplay and design. No bosses and it's essentially one long straight road from beginning to end...then you double back and go to the beginning again for the finale (another Halo connection!), which was, admittedly, pretty cool. SR2's main strength is that it has the best writing in the series, which is saying something. I love the overblown baroque style dialogue in LoK, and SR2 had tons of it, and they even revealed some pretty big things in it, to boot.

My favorite exchange in the entire series is in SR2 when Raziel catches up to Kain at the Pillars of Nosgoth and Kain makes the allusion to the coin of his destiny spinning to a halt, but hints that Raziel is key to helping Kain escape his doubly-doomed fate.

Raziel: You said it yourself, Kain. There are only two sides to your coin.
Kain: Apparently so. And yet, suppose you throw a coin enough times? Suppose, one day...it lands on its edge?

It's such a great image and such a perfect summation of exactly what Kain's trying to do. I really hope they keep this series going, or at least that someone out there gives Simon Templeman more work in the game industry.

Sidestory: Waiting in line for Episode I in Santa Clara, my friends and I ended up next to the CD Soul Reaver team, who told us a bit about the delays and what had to be cut out of the game to make release. Later on a USENET thread, I recounted the story, only to be rebutted by one of the heads of the project (might even have been Amy Hennig herself, don't remember now), who couldn't understand where I would have heard such a story. I responded with, "From you guys in line for Star Wars," after which nothing more was really said about it. In retrospect I guess that may have gotten someone in trouble, but nobody told us it was classified info at the time.

 

[MattKeil]

Actually I love the whole series but if I had to choose one then Blood Omen gets my money easily. Yes-it had Snes type visuals/slowdown for its day but I loved the whole over head camera,the hard as fuck dungeons,the story,the morphing abilities, the cinematics,and the game was pretty long too. The load times were bad though. Has anyone ever tried playing this on their PS2,does it shorten load better overall?

Yes, turning on fast-load on the PS2 cuts the load times by about half. Makes the game much smoother to play.

 

[Ranger X]

To me, the first Soul Reaver beats the crap out of all the rest of Kain/Raziel games.

 

[_Angelus_]

Yes, turning on fast-load on the PS2 cuts the load times by about half. Makes the game much smoother to play.

Thanks for that bit of good news. I never got around to playing it on the PS2. This will be be a good one to go back and play again-shorter load times will especially make it better.

 

[MattKeil]

Thanks for that bit of good news. I never got around to playing it on the PS2. This will be be a good one to go back and play again-shorter load times will especially make it better.

I actually recommend playing through the whole series in order. It's amazing how well it unfolds. Even the seemingly disconnected Blood Omen 2 is essential for understanding what's happening in Defiance.

 

[_Angelus_]

I actually recommend playing through the whole series in order. It's amazing how well it unfolds. Even the seemingly disconnected Blood Omen 2 is essential for understanding what's happening in Defiance.

I actually enjoyed Blood Omen 2,yeah I know I'm sick in the head.:lol Some of the stages like the graveyard with the poor saps that were wrapped up in spider cocoons was really atmosphereic at times.

I need to play the last one that was released and I'll be up to date with them all. I hear its got a wonky camera though,any truth to that?

 

[Mejilan]

I picked 'em all up some time ago, but only really got around to playing the original Blood Omen and Defiance.

Needless to say, the original LoK:BO kicked the ass=turds outta Defiance.

 

[Gribbix]

I need to play the last one that was released and I'll be up to date with them all. I hear its got a wonky camera though,any truth to that?

Yes, sadly the camera is pretty bad. It's clear that the folks at Crystal Dynamics are big fans of Ico, unfortunately the Ico camera doesn't work well here.

 

[Ark-AMN]

I do feel bad for Denis Dyack in that he always seems to lose control of all the IP's he's created so far. First Crystal Dynamics took Blood Omen, and now Nintendo has Eternal Darkness IIRC.

I just hope Denis was smart about not giving MS any rights over Too Human. Even though it seems that SK's partnership with MS is all abotu TH now (Sega is another partner for a different game).

 

[hobbitx]

Both of the original games blew my mind when I played them. They we're both so awesome on their own different levels. Blood Omen was probably the best thing since Zelda and Soul Reaver was just free roaming godliness. I had a blast with both games, I'll never understand why people praise the sequels. They don't even have a quarter of what the original two games did, just bad, linear action games, which is just sad to see considering how much potential both titles had for expansion. The stories are phenomenal in all the games except BO2 which as mentioned earlier, was a complete bastardization that needs to be forgotten.

 

[MattKeil]

I had a blast with both games, I'll never understand why people praise the sequels. They don't even have a quarter of what the original two games did, just bad, linear action games, which is just sad to see considering how much potential both titles had for expansion. The stories are phenomenal in all the games except BO2 which as mentioned earlier, was a complete bastardization that needs to be forgotten.

You answered your own query there. The story is the justification for BO2 and SR2. BO2's story meanders, and the relevance isn't apparent until you play Defiance, but the revelations regarding the Hilden are integral to the events in Defiance. BO2's primary crime is some of the most boring level design of this gen.

 

[EAJAPAN]

Blood Omen > Soul Reaver
Kain > Raziel
Defiance = surprisingly excellent

 

[hobbitx]

You answered your own query there. The story is the justification for BO2 and SR2. BO2's story meanders, and the relevance isn't apparent until you play Defiance, but the revelations regarding the Hilden are integral to the events in Defiance. BO2's primary crime is some of the most boring level design of this gen.

Yeah, as much as I bash the newer games, the storyline, beautiful gothic worlds, and top-notch voice acting always bring me back. I thought Defiance was awful, and it's camera did frustrate the hell out of me, but the cutscenes are downright addictive with this series.

It's been such a long while, can someone link me to a good series plot overview? I remember someone posted one a while back, but I never saved the link.

 

[lordmrw]

Soul Reaver II is the best of the series IMO.

Most interesting locales with the most variety and far and away the best chunk of story.

Oh yeah! i got my copy of the PC version of Soul Reaver 2 back, and I'm planning on playing through it again. Last time I played through it, I was using my Celeron 633 with 192 megs of RAM, so now that I have a beast of a system, it'll be smooth like butter.

I would have played through Defiance in the meantime, but I sold my videocard to my brother like an idiot, so now I can't play that, invisible war, or KOTOR again like I've wanted to.