Did not play original. Recommendation. Advice.

[Halcyform]

Title.

For whatever reason, this title never ended up on my play list. I've played games such as Legacy of Kain (all of them) and others that are similar. Been gaming since atari/coleco vision and have been a console gamer up to PS4 generation. PC gamer now.

Would you recommend the game and why? I see mostly positive reviews but some reviews are concerning. How's the port in comparison to the original. I'm leaning towards purchasing 1 and 2 but some advice would be appreciated.

And, no, I'm not a SJW. I'm not going to be offended by the game. Unless there's unnecessary censorship that you find in so many games today.

[Komarimaru]

It's a simple hack and slash game with simple gunplay, letting ya change between light, heavy or special weapons and grenades to mix up ranged combat. You don't control your melee combos, they happen automatically as ya button mash.

It's fun for what it is, was a mind blowing game for its time. Think Wolfenstein themed, but Legacy of kain combat with some minor, sometimes frustrating, platforming. Overall a fun game.

[klimat13]

I played both games way back in the day, haven't played Terminal Cuts yet, so my memories are old, but here what I can recall.
BR1 and BR2 are actually very different. You need to keep that in mind.
One of the biggest differences is the camera: in BR1 it's always behind your back while in BR2 you can rotate the camera around freely. As a result BR1 controls and feels more like Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy if you ever played this one while BR2 controls and feels more like a Devil May Cry game. Getting into BR2 was actually jarring for me after the first one.
I remember BR1 melee combat being pretty straightforward with auto combos on button mashing, I also remember it being very fast and quite acrobatic with jumps and jump kicks. There is also a harpoon chain you can use to pull enemies closes MK Scorpion-style. BR2 combat I remember being much more combo oriented, also noticeably slower and tankier, I remember using block button a lot in BR2 while in BR1 I'm not sure if there even was a block button at all. BR2 harpoon is also much more fancier, since instead of just pulling enemies towards Rayne you can now push and pull them in any direction whatsoever, also BR2 harpoon is much slower as a trade off.
Another huge difference is gunplay: in BR1 you can pick up any weapon your enemies drop, you can carry a lot of those and you also automatically throw weapons away as soon as they run out of ammo, so often in the heat of battle it makes sense to fire your guns away, kill enemies and instantly pick different guns from them in a constant loop. In BR2 you can't pick up normal guns enemies drop, instead you have a limited amount of guns that are special vampires weapons you get as you progress through the game, you also never throw them away and you use enemy blood as ammo, you also use enemy blood to regenerate your health, so most of the time you don't even want to charge your guns at all since you'd rather heal yourself instead. So you end up not using your guns very often at all in BR2, which I guess makes some sense given a much bigger role of melee combos, still it's kinda underwhelming. Also I'm pretty sure BR1 had auto lock on while in BR2 there is a manual lock on button you'll have to use a lot.
I remember BR2 being much more interactive as far as the world itself and enemies go. You'll be constantly throwing enemies into fire, huge spinning metal fans, from the rooftops and so on.
As far as the story and setting go, I think BR1 wins hands down. Gothic castles and Nazi demon abominations are much more interesting from normal modern day streets with mohawk wearing punks galore. Also BR1 strory is more grounded and is complete while BR2 in my opinion goes way over the top and ends on a sequel bait that never followed.

All in all both games are good, but the first one in my opinion is the better of the two. BR2 absolutely has its moments though, also I have to admit many of the negative feelings I had about it came from the fact it was so different from the first game which I did not expect or asked for. If you get to BR2 prepared for that fact and with an open mind, you'll have much more fun.

[Corey]

BloodRayne is a no-nonsense third person hack and slash where literally the only thing you do is dispatch monsters and nazis in different very violent ways with your blades, guns, and a few vampiric powers.
I don't think the game is groundbreaking in any way (and I don't think it was when it came out, it wasn't very well received in the press either), it is good at what it does though and pretty fun IF you can overlook some shortcomings and some meh design decisions along the way, especially in today's standards. I just replayed this out of nostalgia, and while I had fun again for the most part, there were a few annoyances that hurt the experience for me, especially in the last act of the game.

What this game nails absolutely is the violent, fast-paced combat, which shines even more in Act II. You can perform simple attacks with your blades while moving around quickly, use different WWII era weapons (light guns: pistols, SMGs; Heavy guns: assault rifles; Special guns: Shotguns, LMG, RPG), dual-wield machineguns in each hand, slow down time while raining lead, all-the-while performing an awesome looking sideways-somersault. You can enter a Blood Rage mode which has it's own set of attack animations, slicing up and wreaking havoc to anything in front of you.
On top of the frenetic action, what makes the violence "look good and feel awesome" here, are the blood effects, which (without trying to sound like a psycho, lol) is the game's best looking feature by far. I have to give the devs this, they managed to create one of the best blood effect in gaming history. Well actually they did this in their previous game called Nocturne, BloodRayne uses the same blood-gfx and system as in that game. Again, without sounding like a psychopath, it's somehow really satisfying when you look back on the room you just wreaked havoc in and bask in all the ultraviolent glory :)
The story and plot is really superficial, simplistic, servicable, it exists just to propel you forward in your violent delights. The protagonist is really cool though, voiced by the amazing Laura Bailey whom you might recognize from a lot of great games.

As for the shortcomings, it really hurt my experience that there is no mid-level saving. The game only saves at the beginning of each level, so if you happen to mess something up and die mid level, you have to start over. This was especially annoying for me in the last act: there is an enemy type which, if you're not careful in melee range, can kill you in mere seconds without any visual indication. The enemy just becomes kinda "glued" to you and your HP goes down fast without you noticing. Which is absolutely annoying even by itself, add to this that you can't save mid-level, and you might be in for world of hurt.. This forced me to handle all these enemies in a certain surefire way, so that I would able to avoid them killing me in seconds, but this felt very restricting and fighting these enemies was just not very fun, for me at least...
Also there were 2 levels which I absolutely hated in the last act, I'll name them but I won't spoil them: Unholy Mecha, and The Bridge. It's not that these levels were hard, it's that the former feels completely unnecessary with shoehorning in a new combat mechanic/sequence that breaks up the pace, and the latter has a bad trial and error escape sequence that can just easily cut your 10 minutes of gametime short because of the dumb save-system.

The remaster while running good, also has some issues: there is no anisotropic filtering, the AntiAliasing does not work currently at all, and there is a hardcoded 60 FPS lock on the game which might not be too good depending on the monitor you have (if you have G-Sync or FreeSync though this shouldn't be a problem). The in-game cutscenes also play in 30 FPS which also can be a bit jarring. If you're going to play with a controller, prepare yourself for non-existent button prompts too: instead of Xbox or PS controller prompts, you will see "Button 1", "Button 2", "Button 3" etc. labelled prompts which might give you a hard time figuring out which of your controller's button is which in-game action.
I had to use a 3rd party app called dgVoodoo2 to force anisotropic filtering and AntiAliasing in the game, other than these, I didn't have any problem with it.

Overall though I still find this game good, although I might be forgiving a lot of the game's shortcomings because of it's lead character and out of my love for the game that preceded this back then, Nocturne (BloodRayne was born out of that game). Nocturne had such an amazing world building and atmosphere that this game tries to carry too with less success, but the fact that the devs tried to continue that legacy makes me admire BloodRayne a bit too.
If you're in for a fast-paced action game I'd still recommend this for you, maybe watch some opinion pieces and gameplays on youtube before fully deciding.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by klimat13:

I played both games way back in the day, haven't played Terminal Cuts yet, so my memories are old, but here what I can recall.
BR1 and BR2 are actually very different. You need to keep that in mind.
One of the biggest differences is the camera: in BR1 it's always behind your back while in BR2 you can rotate the camera around freely. As a result BR1 controls and feels more like Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy if you ever played this one while BR2 controls and feels more like a Devil May Cry game. Getting into BR2 was actually jarring for me after the first one.
I remember BR1 melee combat being pretty straightforward with auto combos on button mashing, I also remember it being very fast and quite acrobatic with jumps and jump kicks. There is also a harpoon chain you can use to pull enemies closes MK Scorpion-style. BR2 combat I remember being much more combo oriented, also noticeably slower and tankier, I remember using block button a lot in BR2 while in BR1 I'm not sure if there even was a block button at all. BR2 harpoon is also much more fancier, since instead of just pulling enemies towards Rayne you can now push and pull them in any direction whatsoever, also BR2 harpoon is much slower as a trade off.
Another huge difference is gunplay: in BR1 you can pick up any weapon your enemies drop, you can carry a lot of those and you also automatically throw weapons away as soon as they run out of ammo, so often in the heat of battle it makes sense to fire your guns away, kill enemies and instantly pick different guns from them in a constant loop. In BR2 you can't pick up normal guns enemies drop, instead you have a limited amount of guns that are special vampires weapons you get as you progress through the game, you also never throw them away and you use enemy blood as ammo, you also use enemy blood to regenerate your health, so most of the time you don't even want to charge your guns at all since you'd rather heal yourself instead. So you end up not using your guns very often at all in BR2, which I guess makes some sense given a much bigger role of melee combos, still it's kinda underwhelming. Also I'm pretty sure BR1 had auto lock on while in BR2 there is a manual lock on button you'll have to use a lot.
I remember BR2 being much more interactive as far as the world itself and enemies go. You'll be constantly throwing enemies into fire, huge spinning metal fans, from the rooftops and so on.
As far as the story and setting go, I think BR1 wins hands down. Gothic castles and Nazi demon abominations are much more interesting from normal modern day streets with mohawk wearing punks galore. Also BR1 strory is more grounded and is complete while BR2 in my opinion goes way over the top and ends on a sequel bait that never followed.

All in all both games are good, but the first one in my opinion is the better of the two. BR2 absolutely has its moments though, also I have to admit many of the negative feelings I had about it came from the fact it was so different from the first game which I did not expect or asked for. If you get to BR2 prepared for that fact and with an open mind, you'll have much more fun.

Very good observation, one little note - BR1 is more of a shooter and less of a slasher, while br2 is opposite, also BR1 has also more of classic free movement of PC games like ability to jump on anything, while Br2 has more consolish platforming movement where you have to jump here and there tricky way and use special case items, which could be frustrating at times, also there are some obvious invisible wall here and there which is annoying.

Level designer if more wider and grand in br1, more tiny in br2, but it gets compensated by more details on level.

Br1 still has more of pc in dna, for example due of more ram like many pc games br1 could afford enemy bodies and debris to not vanish, while br2 more consolish and bodies vanishing fast, as well as ruined environment pieces, which is also frustrating.

Br1 had all but very cutscenes played in real time engine, while br2 has way too many in-engine pre-rendered cutscenes that did not age well and looks way worse than real time graphics in game.

in general Br1 feels more like Max Payne and The Suffering , BR2 feels more like Devil May Cry and Prince of Persia.

[klimat13]

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Br1 still has more of pc in dna [...] while br2 more consolish...

Yup, that's a very good way to put it.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Halcyform:

. Unless there's unnecessary censorship that you find in so many games today.

This game is definitely unnecessarily censored. So I recommend not buying it for that reason.

[yannypr]

Won't go into any detail, but BR1 did not age well at all. BR2 aged a little better. Plot is pretty simple and straightforward. It's there to give Rayne an excuse to rampage through a nearly endless supply of monsters. Still deserves a sequel.