Legacy of Kain has been one of my favorite games of my entire life, I'm what you can call an angry cranky millennial but back then I thought (and I still think) eating souls was cooler and edgier than drinking blood.
LOK:SR did something great for me, establish the hunger mechanic as the necessary evil. I always though, if I am eating the souls...where do they go?
Am I destroying the entire existence of someone? Is this worst that death?
Presenting Raziel as the victim because Kain was just a whiner, made me hate Kain.
How can you hate a character that you played before and loved hearing shout the most overly complex lines of voice acting over a minuscule event? That's just evil mastermind.
But you gained: Dual Realms? You can't really die? Bro, you are a wraith, how cool was that? I kept looking at the model to see where did the jaw go? 1 second ago I was a pretty vampire now I have no jaw? Crazy story telling, instant hook for me.
Making you go against your brothers? Eating their souls? Isn't that cannibalism?
You spend the entire game doing that, feeling that it is your right to take revenge. You must avenge yourself. Eye for eye.
The game revolved in the theme of eat or be eaten, Raziel as a victim facing his most inner fears and doubts, going against its brethren, evolving in a way or mutating if you will, to catch up.
The game always pushed that on you, you were into it because you were invested in the story, you wanted to know and you wanted to take part on this.
But then the worst decision happened, some game designer decided that having pushing blocks are a great idea. A lot of them.
Soul Reaver might as well be called Legacy of Kain: Block Pusher.
There is an unbearable amount of pushing block mechanics, these mechanics are one of the worst mechanics ever. It gets abused so much. It always make me re-think about grabbing the game.
I HAVE SPENT RIGHT NOW 2 HOURS PUSHING BLOCKS. 10/10 experience would recommend.
But I love this game, so I cannot just drop it. I'll just swallow the stupid block mechanic pill and keep pushing blocks.
And the worst part? We still have game designers thinking that pushing blocks around is cool. Spoiler: It's not.