Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was released in mid-summer 1999 for the PC and Sony Playstation. In January of that following year, the game was ported to the Sega Dreamcast, with many improvements over the PC and PSX versions. Since I didn’t have $20 to spend on the PSX version, and I will not buy the PC version (I use Windows XP, and this game does not officially work with XP), I had no choice but to buy the Dreamcast version. Best $8 I spent for the system.

The story, in short, is this: You are Raziel, vampire lieutenant of Kain, über-vampire. For evolving into a winged vampire, you have been executed by submersion in the Lake of the Dead. You wake up, though, and you want revenge. That’s the entire game.

This game incredibly well, and for a good reason. I play this game when I’m waiting for a new one to be released. Yes, I know there’s a sequel (I got it before I got this one) with an improved game engine, but this game had the better story, and was a lot longer. I was told that SR1 (for purposes of brevity, I will, from here on in, refer to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain as BO1, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver as SR1, Legacy of Kain Series: Soul Reaver 2 as SR2, and Legacy of Kain Series: Blood Omen 2 as BO2) took Crystal Dynamics over three years to complete, and they still didn’t get it done. I’ll talk about that a little later.

Graphically, this game is nothing short of amazing, given the time. We now live in an age of the incredibly-well crafted Shenmue II (which, while very pretty, is still the second most boring game ever, after Shenmue I), but for a game released on August 16, 1999, it’s still very good looking. The sequel did improve on this (for instance, Kain was 40 bones for the entire body in SR1, and there were about 30 for the face alone). The backgrounds are extremely detailed, but there are a few issues with collision. Whenever I jump on a ledge, and I would normally make it, sometimes the game gets weird and won’t let me. Other than this very rare occurrence (it’s more common in the PSX version), this game was incredibly fantastic-looking.

The controls are perfect for this game. My choice of controller would be the Dual Shock for the PSX (I really don’t like the Dreamcast controller; it’s too bulky and cumbersome) in this case. Since I wasn’t able to shell out $15 for an adapter that I’m sure wouldn’t work very well anyway, I stuck with my trusty blue Sega. The use of an analog stick is absolutely necessary in this game. In fact, the game requires you to use it. The D-pad is used for glyphs. The sequel improved upon this, too. All in all, the controls were okay, but they needed work.

Now I come to the auditory criticism. The music, as it turns out, is by 80s wonder-band Information Society, and this sounds absolutely nothing like them. It’s really good (not to slight InSoc in any way), and fits the mood of this game: light goth. The voice acting is the best I’ve ever seen in games to date. Even with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s VAs (including Burt Reynolds, Ray Liotta, and Jenna Jameson, to name a few) and THPS4’s (Bam Margera, Tony Hawk, and Jenna Jameson, to name a few), I still insist that this blows them all away. The dialog was written so well, I have a very hard time trying to describe it (I’m writing a long poem that covers the entire game for a class) for anyone, especially my girlfriend. Of course, in order to explain it to my girlfriend, I’d need a girlfriend. There were some characters taken out, but the voices can still be heard (thanks to the efforts of Ben Lincoln, webmaster, Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds). I’ll get to that later.

It’s now later, and I have yet to explain my beef with Crystal Dynamics. I love this game, if you haven’t guessed, but there is one thing that still gets me: excised material. If you play through the game, you will find the names: “Raziel,” “Turel,” “Dumah,” “Rahab,” “Zephon,” and “Melchiah.” These are the six lieutenants of Kain. You are Raziel, so that means the other five are in the game, right? WRONG. There are only four others. They couldn’t finish this game, so they had to cut one of the brothers from the game. That brother is Turel, who, oddly enough, has become a fan favorite (not this fan, though, my favorite character is Rahab). There’s also a human priestess missing, along with a third battle with Kain (where Kain is supposed to die), all of the stages that go with them, more Reaver upgrades, one more glyph, and some new abilities. Ben Lincoln, the aforementioned webmaster, set up The Lost Worlds to shed light on this stuff. Since then, Eidos Interactive (the distribution company) and Crystal Dynamics (the creators of the game) have been swamped with mail regarding a re-release of Soul Reaver, with all of this in. I agree with them, but only to a point. I say the world should be a 3-D remake of BO1’s Nosgoth (all LoK games take place in Nosgoth), taking 2000 years of decay into effect. The game would be about 200 hours long, 5 GD-ROMs (6 PSX CD-ROMs), and very hard. If I had that version, I’d be more than happy with Amy [Henning, president of Crystal Dynamics] and Crystal Dynamics.

In short, I say this game is great. I can’t recommend this version, considering how hard it is to get (and not many people have Dreamcasts, but anyone with a computer can play PSX games), but this game is essential to any collection. My own library was incomplete without it.