So many problems; solution found!

[Radasus]

TL;DR:
-opening scene black screen with fast audio
-keyboard/mouse controls feel broken
-combat has awkward, broken manuevers
-Spectral shift renders the game unplayable

So first and foremost, the opening scene when I start a game is entirely black, and I hear the end dialogue from the first Soul Reaver playing, but in rapid fire mode. So okay,I can just skip the blank cinematic and go on to the game without it crashing or anything at least. Then everything looks fine. Moebius and Raziel do a dialogue that lasts for a bit before I can actually get into the game play, but it eventually works. The controls feel clunky, especially if using the mouse (Which I just went straight up keyboard, hoping I could adapt; can no longer aim or configure anything to aim though) but all aside, everythign seemed smooth. Enter first combat. Again I noticed clunky controls when using the mouse, and when disabled it feels a little better, but there's still some problem with Raziel dashing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ly long distance when using his basic attack. Even so, manage to get past a few combats before I come to my next, perhaps biggest issue of all: When I shift into spectral plane, I can no longer function at all. Movement becomes running in place. I can still get from a spot to a spot by jumping, even phase through the first gate, but that's the limit of what I can do. The world is still in material plane coloration, conduits don't spawn in, I can see translucent versions of the guards standing around, and I can't even open up the power wheel.

I've looked up some of the errors, seen some things fixed by Vsync or something relating to graphics. I've tried going into my Nvidia settings and switching Vsync to on. I've tried adjusting the graphics settings in-game, though one of the setting causes a complete crash any time I try adjusting it. I'm begining to think that it's just a situation where I've got an old game on a new computer, and it can't be helped, but I'd like to think that since Soul Reaver 1 worked so well this one would at least be functional.

Since the opening scene takes so much time to get past, it makes testing these solutions exceptionally tedious, but I'd really like to play this game.

I am running windows 10 Home 64-bit, Nvidia GeForce GTX 670MX, 8GB ram,

[Raina Audron]

I don´t have any problems with the game on my win7 64-bit. That is why I am reluctant to upgrade, as many old games will be broken on the new win.

[Radasus]

To clarify one of my earlier statements, the game crashes when I go into options and try to change "Antialising Disabled", every time without condition

[Turelyon]

@Radasus, i have the exact same problems as you do with this game on win10, such a shame since is one of my fav games, i you guys know about any solution plz let me know ;D

[Lolligag]

I am having all of those problems. Same here win 10 64-bit. I am looking for solutions especially for cut scenes.

[Cain Coyote]

Originally posted by scorpolicious:

I am having all of those problems. Same here win 10 64-bit. I am looking for solutions especially for cut scenes.

Ditto that here.

[FallenAege]

Looks like the only solution for Windows 10 is to have a virtual machine running Windows 98.
Anyone got a spare .iso laying around?

[Radasus]

I finally got this working!
So I downloaded DxWnd and used it to get the program running. I found the program after having browsed a bunch of forum posts, but couldn't figure out how to get it working from there, that is, until today. Once you have the game in DxWnd, the settings need to be DirectX 8, the window size has to match the settings in game, frames per second have to be set to limit 1 msec, and I'm not sure if necessary, but I do not run it in a window. What is extremely important is that you run DxWnd as administrator, or the game will not launch at all. The game is now playable, and most of the errors I was experiencing are gone. I'm not sure yet if antialiasing options will crash the game, and it doesn't seem the intro video is working either, but all gameplay aspects are where they belong; no more dashing when attacking, spectral shift works now, and my keyboard controls are actually responsive.

[Irlandskii]

Originally posted by Radasus:

I finally got this working!
So I downloaded DxWnd and used it to get the program running. I found the program after having browsed a bunch of forum posts, but couldn't figure out how to get it working from there, that is, until today. Once you have the game in DxWnd, the settings need to be DirectX 8, the window size has to match the settings in game, frames per second have to be set to limit 1 msec, and I'm not sure if necessary, but I do not run it in a window.

Thank god this fix exists. I've done everything that you've said and the game runs perfectly fine, but I still can't seem to get the opening cutscene to play. My monitor shows the game trying to force the resolution down to 640x480, but I'm still only seeing a black screen with the sped up audio. Soon as the cutscene ends the game returns to my native resolution (1366x768) and it's smooth sailing from there. Any ideas what could still be causing this problem?

[Irlandskii]

Originally posted by wrace:

I also had the same problem with the intro (bink-movie) in SR2 (Win-10, 1366x768) before I applied the fix I wrote above. With it the problem is disappeared and all is ok (in fullscreen, of course) in SR2 again.
Moreover, another games (BO1 and Darkstone) are running in the true desktop resolution without additional widescreen patches (just by using the appropriate settings in the dgVoodoo).
P.S.: I also checked DxWnd and DxGL but they do not give the same effect.

I can't exactly say that I'm too familiar with how dgvoodoo works, but from a few google searches I understand that I need to place the setup app along with the contents of the MS folder into SR2's installation folder. Beyond that, are there any additional settings that I need to configure? As it is right now that opening cutscene plays in a wonderful green and purple color scheme.

[Irlandskii]

I went through my registry and only had to modify two settings to match yours, but that didn't seem to correct the issue with the opening cutscene on my end. I've even played around with changing the values of DisableVShader and HardwareTransform as some posts on Eidos forums also recommend I do, with no luck. Unless there's a second registry that you're looking at (From my registry I went from My Computer/Software/Crystal Dynamics/Soul Reaver 2), then there's something being overlooked if you're not experiencing the purple and green silhouettes.

[Irlandskii]

SR1 works fine when I use it with a wrapper, BO2 plays the opening cinematic before the main menu but everything after that crashes, Defiance runs just fine on its own. Swapping out binkw32.dll didn't make any difference unfortunately.

[Radasus]

I've played through all but BO2, of which I have at least started and played 5 minutes of, and so far SR2 is the only one I've had issues with. Defiance was almost flawless, only one crash throughout my entire playthrough and only minor issues with framerate during high particle battles. SR1 had an interesting issue when alt-tabbing, where when I returned to the game, some environmental textures would be missing, though it was so minor it was almost unnoticable, and it would fix itself either by alt-tabbing again or by just progressing further.

Luckily, with the fix, I've managed to get all the LOK game on steam working.

[Gonzaxpain]

I have played SR2 and BLOOD OMEN 2 these last few days using dgVoodoo 2.53 with zero problems. In the case of SR2 it fixed the intro and the lock-on when in combat. I didnt use it for SR1 so I don't know whether it would have fixed the sound problems or not (I found out about dgvoodoo after finishing that game). And of course I would NEVER even consider playing any of these games with keyboard and mouse, they were made to be played with a controller. I used the xbox360 controller along with Pinnacleprofiler to configure it and it was an absolute pleasure, even better than when I first played it on ps2. I also applied the widescreen fixes for all the games. I played them on Windows 10 64 bits, by the way, no compatibility modes whatsoever for any game using dgVoodoo.

[NightAngel]

yea i couldnt play it also sux

[Draco]

Not sure if anyone has suggested this or not, but I just tried a solution that worked for me. I can't promise it will fix everything, but at the very least when I tried it, the light attack and realm swap issues were both taken care of immediately.

https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9/releases

Go to this link, and download the d3d8.dll file, and paste that file into your Soul Reaver 2 game folder. Apparently, it allows for Directx9 to interpret Directx8 instructions. I don't know exactly what that means or how it works, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about code and how all the details work. All I know is that pasting the d3d8.dll file in my Soul Reaver 2 folder fixed the 2 issues I had with this. I'm running Win10, in case it matters to anyone.

Hope it helps, I loved this game and it's well worth the time it takes to get working.