by MrPopo Sun Nov 18, 2018 2:36 pm
The OST is indeed amazing. What ever else you might think about the game, the OST is fantastic.
Honestly, the keyboard controls weren't too bad. Most of the time the auto camera was sufficient; usually when it wasn't it was because I was intentionally trying to run towards the camera and see what was behind me (one boss fight) or when I was doing platforming from up against a wall, in which case even moving the camera manually didn't help much. Oh, and that one boss fight I needed to go into aim mode, but it was such a trivial fight anyway that it didn't matter.
So now I'm onto Soul Reaver 2, and it's amazing the difference in production values. Whereas Soul Reaver 1's story presentation felt like an underfunded indie studio biting off more than they could chew in Soul Reaver 2 apparently they had enough budget to really spend time with the story. While it leads to large dialog cutscenes it also is really able to fully realize the storyline that they had conceived. Similarly, the jump from PS1 tech to PS2 means that the models are far more detailed and the combat feels better. It's still better to skip enemies when possible, but at least now I don't feel like I'm gimped if I don't have the soul reaver out (and here it's a much more interesting risk/reward weapon). Really, the biggest issue now is the fact that you pretty much have to lock on, but lock on is the same button as sneak, so it makes you move really slow.
The other thing I've noticed is that the game is slow burning when I get to experience the puzzle gameplay. As I understand it it should still be there, but it seems they are saving it for after I get more of my bearings story wise. Based on what I've seen it also looks like they're bringing things back to a linear progression and likely dropped the health upgrades. Now there's just save points, rather than portals, and I have all my mobility upgrades from the first game. The game has called out various landmarks that I'm definitely going to revisit, but I suspect it'll be more of the plot dropping me off near them, rather than needing to do a long path back (though I could be wrong on that front).
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.