It seems that when the work on the game started, a design rule was established among all the members of the development team. At any point during the development, the game should have been running at 60fps. It was not an easy task, considering the difficulty in creating an entire continuous world filled with environmental special effects.
The result is a game gifted with an unbelievable gothic atmosphere. Soul Reaver 2 is a game made of darkness, a game that takes place in the world of the dead and in the world of the living beings. Throughout the game you will encounter dark passages, gothic churches, palaces and endless landscapes rendered in real time. The richness of special effects like waterfalls, rain, storms, fire literally shocked me. Also thanks to the absence of loading times, at the end of the game you really feel like you have been on a long journey. You’ll remember all the places you have seen during the game and you’ll ask yourself if that was really just a videogame.
The characters are built with about 3,000 polygons and are finely animated. You may encounter a few collision problems during the battles and some draw-in issues here and there, especially in the Spectral Plane, but this doesn’t affect too much a game that has the rare gift to fascinate the player. Raziel’s devastated body looks gorgeous in this Ps2 version. The textures are rich, varied, and the face is animated with care. The enemies are perfect. From Demons to Sarafan Warriors they have been created till to the slightest details.
Just like in the preceding episode, the game is rich in cutscenes rendered in real time and CG movies. The transition between in-game moments and these scenes is unnoticeable. Crystal Dynamics has literally created another world for Soul Reaver 2.
