izigame.me

tldr: The original Soul Reaver is a great reminder of what Soul Reaver is and it's sequels should have been. It's worth purchasing just for this game. It's a real design achievement and easily one of the better platformers I've played to this day. You can tell the developers had real ambition and a clear vision, if, though, not quite enough time as you can read in the bonus material. Soul Reaver 2 is a shadow of the original in terms of gameplay, but does a great job of expanding on the lore and story. The bonus material is really interesting for Soul Reaver fans.
The long version:
Generally:
Graphics - Generally, a great upgrade over the originals. SR1's upgrade is greater then that of SR2, but that's because it needed it more. They're both on par with each other and that makes for a good all round experience.
Audio - Superb. Great music. Great Voice Acting. Both Games.
Story - It's what I came for. Complex. Intriguing. Fun. Both games do a superb job.
Gameplay:
This is where it gets more complex;
SR1 is easily the better game, and makes good use of the spectral realm, this unique ability to shift in plains of existence, in it's puzzles and level and environment design which is all nice and varied. Fighting is good enough, and not too time consuming, with some satisfying boss fights which are mostly environment puzzles whilst under duress. There are many places to explore outside of the main quest line to achieve a new glyph and ability. I had great fun finding all these locations again, some I had even forgotten. I have nostalgia for the first Soul Reaver, and it was well founded. It's a great game, and a satisfying play. Love this game. Its easily a good 90% for me.
SR2 - I'm sure this game has its fans but for me it's a hot mess. Yes, the graphics are better, the controls, animations and motions of your character are more refined, the story is much more grand, the audio is as always very good, but... in a bid to make the game more "cinematic" choices were made: puzzles were cut down to a bare handful, and of those only one or two make use of the spectral ability and even then the level design literally tells you to perform the spectral shift by putting the glyph images on the walls - there's no real environmental need for the ability which makes the level design inferior and less appealing and less interesting then the original game. The unique ability to shift planes on existence is castrated since there is no real purpose for it in the game, other then somewhere to go if you take too much damage. There are no end-level bosses in the game, and when you think there is, you're literally invincible, which makes sense to the story, but isn't a true challenge and is unsatisfying. Exploration is eliminated - there are no paths off the beaten track, no mysterious places you can accidentally find - they don't exist. You traverse a linear path back and forth. Though you see the "path" in different ages of Nosgoth, it's still the same path, the same basic level design just slightly adjusted. So after the game designers had eliminated the puzzles, the level traversal, dumbed down the level design, limited exploration, removed the bosses, what was left? Combat. Unfortunately, the designers decided that combat, the weakest element of the original game, was the thing they wanted to focus on in the second game, and did they improve on it? No. Not one bit. In fact I think they even removed the lunge ability. But they needed to make people spend more time on the game so they removed the ability to jump in close to the enemy whilst causing damage, and increased the health of all the enemies so it takes longer to kill them all. But the combat just isn't that good, the pace suffers, because "time to kill" is just too high despite having this all-powerful "Soul Reaver" sword. You get bored very quick and so most of the time, I found myself just running past enemies. In some instances you are forced to fight, which is annoying but it's fairly infrequent. This game feels rushed and unpolished and definitely could have done with more time in the bake. The Meta-critic rating for SR2 is 80% but I'm telling you that is generous! It sits anywhere between 65% to 75%. It's saving grace is the audio and story dialogue which are top-notch.