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Kain™ Soul Reaver 1&2™ Remastered™ is deified. The players tell tales of it...

TL;DR: It's really good, and I would recommend it both to the fans of the original games (not that they needed any recommendation) and to the newcomers alike. It has its shortcomings though.

When it comes to the Soul Reaver 1, I would say that this is the definitive version of the game from now on. I liked the new visuals, even though they do lose a bit of the dark and grimy atmosphere of the original, but even if you don't like the remastered look, you can swap it to the original PS1 crusty goodness instantly at any time, so the new visuals are an upgrade at best and inoffensive curiosity at worst, depending on who you ask, they can't ruin the game for you because the devs gave us options, which deserves major props.

The real reason why it's the definitive version of SR1, though, comes from the rest of the changes. From the tighter controls, the ability to move the camera with the analogue stick (in a platformer game, no less), to the addition of the map, which is pretty vague, but still helpful enough and contains the collectables tracker for each zone; reaving souls never felt better.

They even included the cut day/night cycle, which was absent from the original release. I think it's cool and makes you feel like you're in a living and breathing world a bit more, and it even affects the gameplay a tiny bit, which is also kind of awesome. Sometimes it gets too dark though, which doesn't seem to be intentional, and I wish you could toggle it off if you so desired, especially when it gets bugged.

Speaking of bugs, there are plenty. I fell through the floor a couple of times and had other weird stuff happen, but gladly nothing that made my save file go through the purifying cycle of life, death and rebirth, thank the Elder God for that. Players are reporting losing their progress all the time, so I would definitely suggest saving your progress in new slots as much as you can.

Speaking of the game itself, it's a semi-open world action-adventure, which feels like a 3D metroidvania in many respects. It can feel somewhat dated in many areas, especially when it comes to the abundance of block puzzles, and can be a bit frustrating when you're figuring stuff out for the first time, but once you do figure it out, it's a blast. The game is really impressive for its time and continues being impressive nowadays, with lots of cool detail and original mechanics. It's set in a vampiric post-apocalypse, which is a rather unique setting for a fantasy series, the atmosphere is engrossing, the narrative and writing are great and intriguing. It's a classic for a reason.

Soul Reaver 2 is a bit of a different beast. Gone are the sprawling areas with lots of additional content and exploration, this time around we are reaving souls in a very linear and much less ambitious action-adventure game. The puzzles got better, but the combat really took a hit and feels off, and the level design is much simpler. While in terms of its mechanics and the actual gameplay it's a lesser title, the real star this time around is the writing and the story, which took center stage. This is what makes SR2 the classic that it is, the story, the dialogue, the expressive cutscenes, the voice acting; it all comes together to create a much deeper narrative filled with character development, twists, turns and memorable quotes. It's great stuff, and I love that it's much more connected with Blood Omen in terms of its story and characters. The environments, the music and the atmosphere are still stellar as well.

When it comes to the remastered side of SR2, though, it's honestly really disappointing. I know, I know, the devs faced some technical limitations when it came to this game, and the scope of the project didn't allow them to go hog wild here, like they did with SR1, which arguably needed it more. Still, I'd argue that what they ended up doing made the game look worse that it originally did.

Sure, the new models are more high-poly and have cleaner textures, but at the same time many of them (Moebius being a clear example) seem to be less expressive compared to the original models, which really hurts the cutscenes. And since the environments look almost identical to the original game, these new and shiny models tend to stick out like a sore thumb and feel like they don't belong. The game just looks more cohesive with its original visuals. Also, I really, really don't like new Kain, I feel like his original model, despite being more simple, looks miles better, his new face was distracting in every cutscene he was in. Thankfully, once again, you can return to the original graphics anytime.

The devs also fixed some bugs from the original game, like the infamous crow bug, while introducing some new ones. And, while the opening for SR1 was re-rendered in HD, the opening for SR2 was clearly AI-upscaled, and it looks godawful. And here it is, this is the extent of upgrades, if one can call them such, that SR2 received. It feels like all the love and resources went into SR1, and SR2 was an afterthought. Which is a shame and left a sour taste in my mouth, as I love SR2 and I wish it received better treatment. They even included an achievement for SR2 that requires you to kill an enemy that only gets spawned by another enemy... That seems to be bugged, because this other enemy only spawns it once in a blue moon, it's completely random and only serves to waste your time. A shame.

On a more positive side, there's plenty of bonus content here, and it's really good. Lots of concept art (for a Blood Omen/SR1 remake as well, it seems), fan art, interviews, music, even playable incomplete SR1 levels that were cut from the game. Although even here it feels like more love was given to SR1, as pretty much all the SR2 bonus content is lifted from its original console release, but it's great nonetheless.

Overall, despite all my gripes (mostly related to the SR2 portion of this release), I really enjoyed my time and I'm glad that we can finally play these games nowadays without having to resort to the emulation or fan patches. Hopefully, we get the BO2/Defiance collection as well sometime in the future, and it would be great if BO1 at least got ported to Steam some day, it's one of the best games in the series that sadly gets overshadowed by its sequels.