1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
 Great game... if it weren't for the bugs., 2003-07-14
Well, I initially played and beat this came on my friends XBox. I'm a huge fan of the LOK game series so I spent two 6 hour sessions parked in front of my friends TV playing this. And it didn't take twelve hours because I'm a bad player. It's just an incredibly long game.
Anyways, I really liked this game and I wanted to own it and be able to play it whenever I want, not having an XBox or any of the other next gen consoles I opted for the PC port. I'm always wary of multi-console/PC ports but it was really the only way I could get to play this game. I got the game and noticed a few differences from the XBox version, first of all, Kains magic powers are an indigo colour instead of the pink they were in the XB version. The graphics look really great, I wasn't expecting this game to run as well as it does because of the way the graphics look.
Lets talk a little bit about controls. I don't really use the keyboard to control this game. There's no need. I have a mock-playstation gamepad that was über-cheap and I never expected it to actually come in handy. But anyways, with this particular gamepad, the crontrols were already fully mapped perfectly. This makes the fighting a whole lot easier. The only problem I have with the controls is that there doesn't seem to be a way to look around. When I'm near a cliff or an edge that might be fatal to fall off and I need to look down to survey it, I have to go into options and switch to keyboard + mouse controls, very annoying.
Now for the bugs. I haven't noticed any other reviewers mention this, but this game crashes incessantly. It's possible it could just be my particular system but I doubt that. My PC is WELL over the recommended system requirments and still this game tends to crash every ten minutes and for such a long game (that doesn't have the ability to skip cutscenes) it can get really annoying to have to redo all your progress over because the game crashed before you could save. And it's also not very fun to interrupt the continuity of the game every five minutes to save for fear of the game crashing. It would be nice if Eidos released a patch to fix the controls and this annoying crash bug. But apparently not many people have purchased this PC version so it probably wasn't reported to them.As for the game it's self? Well, the game play, in my opinion, is very fun. This game is, however, ludicrously violent. You're encouraged to kill the innocent bystanders throughout the game. This seems to have been a complaint in the reviews I've read about this game. But I think people have failed to realize that the character you're playing as is "Kain" and he is by no means a nice guy, even in an anti-hero kind of way. Kain is quite simply the most evil character around and I think the game developers did a good job of allowing people to fully experience that.
The voice acting, as with most Eidos games, is superb.
The story is the weakest point of this game, but I guess they needed something to tie in and help explain Soul Reaver 2 a bit more.
I also feel that while the original Blood Omen is arguably the best RPG of all time, this game is straight forward action, it contains no element of RPG and it's pretty linear game play also. I don't think it makes for very good replay value other than just wanting to experience the story again.
2 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
 Vampire goodness, 2002-11-15
Wonderfull. Could use a better sound track and voice layout. Don't get me rong the voice acting was great, but the screams arent that convincing... The gore is good, in fact I love it. Hell, this game is so dark you even end up ripping the throat off your... Well I wont ruin it, you can buy and play this game to find out what happens. Not as good as Soul Reaver games, but it is better than most of the crap put out now-a-days. Buy it, play it, love it. A game for the whole family.
1 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
One of the Best Action Games of All Time, 2002-09-05
You don't even need a gamepad for this game. The contols are extremely easy. The graphics are superb as well as the gameplay. The storyline is magnificent. This game has beautiful cinematics. You'll be glad that you didn't waste time beating the game. The ending is very good. You will not be disappointed.
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
Whoa!, 2002-06-19
This game is awesome!! The storyline may be a little off but that isn't a big deal. For those who like games with good graphics, gore galore, and fast paced action, this is the game for you. It is a little expensive but it's worth it.
2 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
 Horrible game controls. VERY adult content., 2002-04-16
On the positive side, this game is seriously beautiful. Just looking at the environments kept me playing when the gameplay didn't. But the control system--terrible. The way the world whips around constantly at the slightest mouse movement made me want to throw up. You'd think you could fix this tendency by altering the mouse sensitiviy, but you'd be wrong. At the lowest setting BO2 still resembles the jerky camera parts of Saving Private Ryan--and I mean that in a bad, unexciting way. Also, what's up with no strafe controls? You can't bind any keys to move your player sideways. When you get in a fight the keys that previously and redundantly (since the mouse does that already) rotated the character are mysteriously transformed into the missing strafe keys. Why Eidos would abandon the tried-and-true Quake-type controls in this game is a mystery. I suspect it's an artifact left over from BO2's console port. With its whacky control system, the hardest part about BO2 is keeping your lunch down.Also, parents should take note of the "Mature" rating for this game. If ever a game deserved an "M" rating (or worse), this one does. This is coming from someone who's enjoyed other "M" rated games like Soldier of Fortune which features gory, war-type violence directed at armed soldiers (with a penalty for killing civilians). But Blood Omen 2 takes violence in a very dark direction. As a vampire you're encouraged to view humans as food and feed on them wherever you find them. In practical terms, this includes walking up to old ladies and clubbing them to death as they scream for you to stop. They fall down and try to crawl away while begging for their life and you have to beat them to death before you drink their blood (necessary to refill your health meter). While I generally view "kills" in video games as cartoonishly entertaining, I found this level of violence disturbing. I suppose it's passed off as "natural" vampire behavior (though I wonder about the public response if these were, say, Harp seals being clubbed instead of people). Everyone's got their own standard regarding game violence. Mine's pretty liberal, but this is the first game that made me feel like I'd seriously signed up with the Dark Side. The Mature rating means someone out there thinks it's suitable for your 17-year old son. I suggest you make that call yourself.
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Amazon Sales Rank:#18964