Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver cover
Developers
Crystal Dynamics
Publishers
1999-2009 Eidos Interactive
2009-2023 Square Enix
2023-present Crystal Dynamics
Retail re-release Sold Out Software
Engines
Gex Engine
Release dates
Windows September 8, 1999
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Metroidvania, Hack and slash
Themes Fantasy
Series Legacy of Kain
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on HowLongToBeat
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on IGDB
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on MobyGames
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on Wikipedia
Legacy of Kain
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain 1997
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1999
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 2001
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 2002
Legacy of Kain: Defiance 2003
Nosgoth Cancelled

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a singleplayer third-person metroidvania and hack and slash game in the Legacy of Kain series.

General information

Steam Community Discussions
GOG.com Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SafeDisc DRM[Note 1]
Windows
Gamesplanet logo.svg
Icon overlay.png
Includes Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 and Legacy of Kain: Defiance.
Windows
Publisher website (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Windows
GOG.com (unavailable)
DRM-free
Removed in 2021 in anticipation of important updates.
Windows
Steam (unavailable)
DRM-free after installation through Steam client (notes may include more details)
Removed in 2021 in anticipation of important updates.
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

Patches

Patch 1.2 is the latest version. Digital distribution versions are already patched.

SR1 Patch

Improves compatibiltiy with modern versions of Windows and features audio, video, input, and misc enhancements for the game while also fixing various bugs.
By express request of the mod's creator, Wrace, PCGamingWiki is, for reasons known only to Wrace, forbidden from providing any direct links to the mod - including to the author's own official mod page. As such, please copy and paste the following search query/queries into any search engine:
Wrace Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver sr1patch
By default, adds music from other Legacy of Kain games, specifically Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2, which was not re-used from this game, and changes Raziel's appearance.
Remove additions
  1. Download SR1 Patch.
  2. Extract all files to the game directory by overwriting existing files.

To disable the non-vanilla changes of the patch:[3]

Skip intro videos

Delete, rename or remove video files
  1. Go to <path-to-game>.
  2. Delete or rename crylogo.bik and publogo.bik.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Crystal Dynamics\Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver\1.00.000[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/224920/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\savegame.her[Note 4]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/224920/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Widescreen resolution

Hor+ widescreen support[4]
  1. Open kain2.exe with a hex editor such as HxD.
  2. Press Ctrl+F and change the Datatype option to Hex-Values.
  3. Type 0000203F in the text field.
  4. Replace the 0000203F value with:
    • ABAA2A3F to set 5:4 aspect ratio
    • 8988083F to set 25:16 aspect ratio
    • 5555053F to set 16:10 aspect ratio
    • 0000003F to set 15:9 aspect ratio
    • 0000F03E to set 16:9 aspect ratio
    • 0000B43E to set 21:9 aspect ratio
  5. Save the changes.
  6. Download dgVoodoo 2.
  7. Extract dgVoodooCpl.exe, dgVoodoo.conf and the contents of the MS folder to the game directory.
  8. Run dgVoodooCpl.exe and click .\ to set the game directory as config folder.
  9. Go to the DirectX tab and set the desired resolution.
  10. Uncheck dgVoodoo Watermark.
  11. Click Apply and OK.
  12. Set any 4:3 resolution in the game settings.

Notes

Causes the disappearance of the textures on the sides of the screen, which gets worse with wider aspect ratios.
Use SR1 Patch.

Windowed

Use D3DWindower
  1. Run D3DWindower as administrator.
  2. Click on Add Program and add kain2.exe to the list.
  3. Select the game and click on Program options.
  4. Under the Common tab, Tick Use Windowed Mode.
  5. In the DLL field, click ... and add D3dHook.dll from the source folder.
  6. Click OK, then right-click on the added game and select Run (R).
Use SR1 Patch

Input

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Sound, Music and Speech.
Surround sound
Use SR1 Patch
Subtitles
Use SR1 Patch
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Use SR1 Patch.
French
Retail and GOG only. Patch for other digital releases here.
German
Retail and GOG only. Patch for other digital releases here.
Hungarian
Use SR1 Patch.
Italian
Retail only. Patch for digital releases here.
Japanese
Retail only
Brazilian Portuguese
Retail only (GreenLeaf). Patch for digital releases here.
Polish
Use SR1 Patch.
Russian
Use SR1 Patch.
Spanish
Retail only. Patch for digital releases here.

VR support

3D modes State Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision
See Helix Mod: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
vorpX
Z3D
User created profile, requires DGVoodoo2 v 2.6, see profile introdution.
Note: Profile may not work with the latest wrapper, in case of issues please report to the vorpx forum.

Issues fixed

Crash when the game starts

Use SR1 Patch

Crashes with resolutions larger than 640x480

Use SR1 Patch

Raziel runs in circles if a gamepad is connected

Use SR1 Patch

Hardware acceleration not available for AMD GPUs

Go to the game directory and delete atiumdag.dll

Crashes when reaching Melchiah gates after loading a game

After doing all the puzzles before Melchiah, if you load the game again and try to reach the gates before the boss battle, it'll crash.
Use SR1 Patch

Audio issues

On modern computers, audio may have issues such as dialogues skipping at certain points.
Use SR1 Patch
Set a lower sampling rate

Notes

44.1 kHz or 48 kHz should be fine.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 6
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95, 98
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 200 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 320 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 6 compatible


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
  2. Applications writing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.
  3. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/224920/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (224920) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.
  4. When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References