owsf2000 | Soul Reavers

Both finished, and I'm surprised how fast they went overall. Granted I kept a faq handy for when I got stuck. Normally it would be some super obvious thing I overlooked or simply assumed I couldn't do. Overall, I don't think I used them TOO much.

I can't say I ran into any of the buggy shit in my play through of Soul Reaver 2, although I kept a couple save games handy just in case. Well, there was ONE instance where I had killed a thrall that had one of those shield keys in the air forge. Problem is, I killed him against the wall and the shield wasn't dropped. Or rather, I have a sneaky feeling it did drop - inside the wall. Either way I had to reload my last save to give it another go, and from that point on I was careful to kill those critters away from the walls.

I think the faq mentions various bugs and game freezing issues as being related to using reaver codes to gain skills and stuff before the story assumes you get it - something I didn't do.

Oh well, those games are down. Before I pop in Blood Omen 2 I'll take a break and work on some other games. Next on the list, as my backloggery currently indicates, will be a run through the first .hack game series. There may be a couple other games to go before Blood Omen 2 as well, like Crystalis or another grandia game, but we'll see how things go and how long it takes me to go through .hack.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'd probably recommend playing Defiance before Blood Omen 2. I've been kind of wishy-washy about that in the past, but the more I think about it, the more I think you'd be better off with Defiance played first. Defiance follows more directly from SR2, if I recall correctly. (And, if nothing else, it's simply a better game than BO2.)

This is coming from someone who played BO2 before Defiance. But it's one thing to play the games several months or years apart and another to play them relatively back to back.

My reasons why (spoilers for BO2 and Defiance below in gray text on gray background, block-select to see them):

If nothing else it could possibly explain why shows up in BO2 as , given that . As for why shows up in the game at all, however, given that ... I have no idea, and it is not explained in the slightest, even in the context of all the time screwiness in SR2.

Seriously, spoilers for both BO2 and Defiance up there, and it will probably be meaningless to you if you don't want to see spoilers for the games before playing them.

Suffice it to say, whichever order you play them in, just keep in mind that a small bit, but by no means all, of the WTFness seen in BO2 might, might, be partially explained by Defiance, if you tilt your head to the side and squint really hard at it.

Out of curiousity, is there an actual ending of this series? After Soul Reaver 1 and 2 both ending on a cliffhanger "to be continued" note, I'm hoping Defiance at the least will have a proper ending. :/

Eh... kinda? Not really. Defiance does tie up the story-lines involving respectively, but that leaves the spoiler found in my previous comment involving . I consider that now to kind of sort of tie in to BO2, maybe as damage control on the part of the Defiance team to cover up for the shitty job the BO2 team did, but it's still a cliffhanger (which sucked worse since I played Defiance last, and didn't initially consider how it might have tied in to any of the previous games).

But then, BO2 also ends with a fucking cliffhanger involving the same character, so bah.

(Btw, when you don't reply directly to my comments but only to your journal in general, I don't get the nifty email from LJ telling me that I got a reply to a comment. Just an FYI. ^_^ Of course, I tend to check your journal anyway if I see new comments on an entry in my f-list, so it's not that big deal.)

Supposedly, there was going to be another LoK game called "The Dark Prophecy" or something, but then, like Shenmue III[1], it didn't get made.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Kain), regarding the future of the series:

The fifth and most recent game in the series "started life as Soul Reaver 3", but the developers decided to take the game in a new direction, uniting elements of the two sub-series into one game with re-vamped game systems. They picked the title Legacy of Kain: Defiance to reflect the new focus. However, Defiance did not meet Eidos' sales expectations, and this, combined with the exit of two key Crystal Dynamics staff members (director/writer Amy Hennig and game designer Richard Lemarchand) shortly after the release of Defiance sparked fan speculation that it would become the last Legacy of Kain game. The deaths of voice actor Tony Jay and Crystal Dynamics employee Kyle Mannerberg were regarded as further setbacks. Nonetheless, there are signs that Crystal Dynamics has not forgotten Legacy of Kain in the form of easter eggs in Tomb Raider: Legend, and statements from Eidos US CEO Bill Gardner expressing interest in reviving the Legacy of Kain series.

Development was started (in 2004) on a sixth game in the series, titled ‘Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy’. This may have been a continuation of the story after the events portrayed in Defiance. PlayStation 2 development was underway for at least 3 months before the project was canceled. The future of the series is unknown at this point.

Sadly, even if they do make another LoK game at some point, it will probably be BO2 quality or worse, in which case they may as well not even bother.

[1] - The fate of the Shenmue series is something I could rant about forever. Hopefully, the appearance of Ryo Hazuki in that Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILxmTzZd5Q)[2] thing might lead to... something, but I'm not going to hold my breath for a second.

[2] - Man, that music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozSwIMz9v9o&fmt=18) at the beginning of that clip (before it changed to that crappy "generic race music") almost brings a tear to my eye. Shenmue always had some (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1JTWXCHUb4&fmt=18) of (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1fyEAAmY2Y&fmt=18) the (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krk-1PnvpFI&fmt=18) best (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp-U3ZTEer0&fmt=18) music (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2A8D4A97B01DAD45&page=1). God dammit, now I want to play Shenmue again... except I also kind of don't, because the second game ends on such a crazy cliffhanger and it'll get me all depressed again. How the hell did I end up talking about Shenmue instead of Legacy of Kain here? o_O

Bah, that doesn't help encourage me to get back to Shenmue II you know. ^^;; I tried going through Shenmue a few times again for the game complete list a month back or so but ... I don't know if there's a problem with my disc or if it's a glitch that always existed in the game where occationally it'll fail to load a new area when you move to a new map. Gets stuck at a black screen where the date is shown and... weirdest shit is even if I reset the game, the disc just stops working until I unplug the dreamcast for a while so...

I'll probably give it another few chances later.

Don't get me wrong, Shenmue is awesome, up until the last 5 minutes or so of Shenmue II. And even those last 5 minutes would have been awesome as well if they'd only fucking made Shenmue III.

Also, I never had any problem with it not loading areas properly. Sounds like you have some weirdness going on. At least with the Dreamcast versions of Shenmue I and II (the second being the Euro import). I still haven't tried to play my Xbox version of Shenmue II yet.

Drat. Might be either something with the Dreamcast or the disc in that case, or a little of both. Haven't had problems with my xbox Shenmue II like this (That I remember) although when I think about it I -think- I had a problem with the not-loading of areas with shenmue when I first played through it. But only at the beginning... I'll give it another go after I run through the original .hack series.

Also, this is the main issue I have with multi-game series, especially when they're designed from day one to be multi-game. You never know if the series will be completed, and with some companies *coughSEGAcough* if something isn't a smash hit, it gets cancelled.

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