THE GOOD:An excellent storyline, giving you the origin of vampirism as a curse rather than a blessing in Nosgoth.
Detailed levels with a good learning curve and tricky puzzles.
Excellent voice acting.
THE BAD:
Poor collision detection for non-player charcters who exhibit ghost-like abilities at times.
Linear level design.
SUMMARY:
Let's start with the good. This is an improvement over the PS2 version in looks, the characters look nicer and move smoothly but it still has scars from those dark days (clothes sitting halfway into the wearers body, Kains claws poking out of the back of his hand when his fist is clenched). Slowdown rarely occurs and when it does it's usually because you're approaching a large, complicated area. The fighting, though basic in terms of attacks, has a nice level of tactical requirement, having to judge when an opponents guard is down or when they're about launch an unblockable attack adds some variety to what could have been simple button mashing. The powers Kain has and acquires are good too with most levels requiring you to use them in a variety of ways so you never feel like they were tacked on but are instead integral to the game.
It does have bad points though. Most annoying for me was the, at times, attrocious collision detection exhibited by a variety of things. Kain has excellent object collision, he is unable to enter walls or pass through objects as is right and proper. Non-player characters however display an odd tendency towards dying with their head disappearing into a wall or other solid objects or being half buried in some stairs. Most annoyingly if their weapon is in the wall/object/stairs too you can't pick it up. At one point a guard seemingly possessed the wraith-like ability to pass straight through a crate, this was pretty galling as I was about to use a stealth-kill on him. Apart from this one instance this did not effect the game but it does look bad when you're playing it. I was quite surprised though by the nature of the game itself, the levels are strongly linear. If you can get lost for long in a level you deserve an award. I don't mind knowing where I'm going but being lead by the hand isn't the best way of doing it. It is also impossible to return to a level after completing it. A nice touch would be the ability to return to a level and use some of the new magical abilties (i.e. telekinesis, charm and jump) to reach secret areas with the promise of extra lore coffers or special weapons that can actually be carried between levels (another bad point, weapons are lost at the end of a level). Soul Reaver 1 was a classic in this respect, with tons of secrets scattered throughout the levels.
Don't get me wrong this is a good game but I would have waited a few months more if they could have tidied up some of the problems (damn poor PS2 conversions!) leftover from its console of origin.
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