Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered Reviews
The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remasters should scratch that nostalgic itch you have for these games, but if you didn't play them when they were new, you might want to give these games a miss. They're products of their time and don't hold up too well with antiquated gameplay, lack of quality-of-life features we've come to expect nowadays, and visuals that still belong 20 years ago. However, the games perform flawlessly on the Steam Deck. They require very little power draw to achieve 60 FPS and have good controller support. The only flaw I found was that the map is too far zoomed in on the first game's map screen, but aside from that, everything works as you would hope.
Fans of the games have waited patiently for this series to return, or even to have the original games available on modern hardware. While this collection does a respectful job of preserving the original two games, I do wish more work had been done to make the environments really stand out as much as the vastly improved character models do. Still, the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered Collection is a great attempt to improve these games, even if they never really played that well in the first place. While they are clearly dated in their design and feel, there is nonetheless something special about Raziel’s journey, and the technical might those games presented way back when.
A solid remaster mostly focused on improving the first Soul Reaver. It leaves the weaker sequel further behind, resulting in an uneven package.
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The Legacy of Kain series has long been missed, and it’s fantastic to get a chance to return to them on modern systems. Unfortunately, many of the gameplay systems feel dated, and there are a few bugs in Soul Reaver 2 that holds this collection back a little.