You literally just switch on your autopilot and allow yourself to be swept along by the cut-scene driven storyline. Blood Omen 2 is certainly not for the feint-hearted - you also need a fairly brave computer to run it. The massive 2Gb install takes a while on a slow CD-ROM you're looking at anything up to an hour and the fantastic graphics demand a hefty processor too.
Visually Blood Omen 2 has a great industrial feel to it, similar to the Thief games. The atmosphere is also urban with plenty of people bustling about the city streets who react realistically to your presence.
Innocent citizens even scream and run away if they spot you drinking blood from a recently dispatched enemy. It's very linear, very simple and very enjoyable and charming while it lasts in a gruesome kind of way.
Nothing wrong with that, but under the blood and carnage you are left with very little depth, and ultimately the game doesn't leave much of a mark.
Browse games Game Portals. The innovations affected everything. Locations have become more extensive. Saves are now marked on special markers, which are outlined in blood in the game. Many unnecessary RPG elements have been mercilessly erased from the game. Most of the abilities from the previous game have been replaced with the vampire skills: Mist Form and Rage.
Some abilities require a full scale of "rage". The moment you pin a boss's patterns down is the moment you trounce him. That's not to say this setup is not without its charms. Even though nostalgia is not synonymous with quality, doing your best to stay alive until you can figure out a weakness and approach to dethroning a villain is still fun. Obviously I'll take sheer skill, reflex, and intelligence over routine and pattern any day, but Blood Omen 2 shows, however unremarkably, that there's still a small place in all of our hearts for this kind of design.
Because gameplay is not terribly broken, but rather simply mundane, it can be disregarded as uninspired, but not trashed, for it serves the purpose of being an acceptable means by which a phenomenal universe can be experienced and enjoyed. Other nuisances of note include once again being unable to skip lengthy real-time cutscenes that populate the game. I really don't want to listen to Umah inanely prattle on anymore.
You can, this time around, save pretty much anytime. Well, not exactly everywhere saving in the middle of multiple tiered boss encounters will divert you back to the beginning of the event itself, as one example. The other thing is that this game loves to crash. A patch has already been released, but the damage is done, the game has been played, and this review is getting written. Now, when I say the game likes to crash a lot, I mean a lot.
It won't like some of your gamepads. It won't like some of your options. It won't like your hardware. It just plain won't like you. Aurally, Blood Omen 2 manages to be almost as impressive as the last Soul Reaver was.
Along with dynamic and moody scores, the mystical steampunk world of Nosgoth is delivered with a similar era type acting and dialog that made Soul Reaver and its follow up so appealing, but largely without the sheer amount of flair, drama, and intensity. Kain, played by the same actor, sounds as he ever did.
The rest, on the other hand, sometimes lack, but never to degrees that cause them to descend below the ranks of average games. Aesthetically, Blood Omen 2 is pretty, but not in that gorgeous, want to wake up to it every morning kind of way. Even though the models themselves animate well, and are acceptable assemblages of polygons whee , facial animations don't seem nearly as good as Soul Reaver 2's, though I suppose they can't all be Moebius, and anything is better than puppet jaws or four frames of moving lips.
The fingers of Nosgothians move quite a bit and very smoothly though. Burns would be proud. The city itself, however dark it may be, has a lot of architecture and sets the mood pretty well, but texturing drags a bit on the low quality, blurred side of the spectrum, especially after enjoying the marvel of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and all its detail textured goodness.
See all. View all. Click here to see them. Customer reviews. Overall Reviews:. Review Type. All Positive Negative All Steam Purchasers Other All Languages Your Languages Customize. Date Range. To view reviews within a date range, please click and drag a selection on a graph above or click on a specific bar. Show graph. While it borrows heavily from Soul Reaver 2 , from its elegant voice acting to its story-driven gameplay, it's done away with all the downers that dogged Raziel's second adventure.
No more running cross-country just to revisit an old location, jumping over clueless enemies along the way. Each of Blood Omen 2's 11 chapters reveals an entirely new section of Nosgoth, usually containing crafty, region-specific enemies and unique non-playable characters.
Speaking of enemies, combat is where Blood Omen 2 really outshines previous games in the series. Between having access to any weapon an opponent drops and a nice blend of "Dark Gift" enhancements, Kain has an extensive arsenal of attacks and abilities.
Sneak up behind a guard in the mist for a one-hit Stealth Kill, surprise a demon from yards away with a leaping attack, or cast a soldier off a ledge after a firm choking. Kain is all about the killing, and having dozens of ways to get the job done keeps the game fresh. You won't get hung up on any tricky puzzles in BOif you can handle Soul Reaver 2's mindbenders, you can handle these.
Getting through tough spots usually just involves flipping the right combination of switches, but the game often makes you master a couple of Kain's Dark Gifts to get the job done. The "Charm" spell is particularly cool--it allows you to mentally inhabit nearby peasants and make them do your bidding. They're very helpful and often situated to reach areas Kain cannot. So show your gratitude by not killing all their cousins and friends in town. Ah, what the heck, go ahead.
Kain was never much for gratitude, anyway.
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