Should I give this game/game series a look? -

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

They're low-poly count and easy to texture, and they're easy to animate and subject to physics and/or player interaction. At the time, CPU and graphics resources were very limited, so boxes were the go-to element if you wanted things in your environments that players could manipulate to solve puzzles and/or destroy without having to worry about deforming your level meshes or dealing with complex animations.

What's funny to me is that even games back then were making fun of them. There's that Lara Croft parody character in Spyro 3 who complained that she spent the entire day shoving boxes around.

I haven't played the PC port but I can't imagine the game is very good without a controller.

One of the reviews on GOG noted that the original allowed for up to five different movement speeds in addition to 8 degrees of direction on an analog stick. Meanwhile the PC version only has two speeds and 4 directions.

I was expecting it to be something similar to Tomb Raider, which is playable on PC but somewhat uncomfortable with a keyboard, but that right there says that a controller is basically required for Soul Reaver. People have found workarounds, like Xpadder and such, but it doesn't always work apparently.

 

[Vapewizard]

If I want to play the first game in the mana series should I get Sword of mana or Adventures of mana? Sword would be easier cause I already have visualboy advance while I don't know yet how how vita/android emulation works, but it's possible that someone here would be more familiar with this series and would tell me that Adventures is better.

 

[TheImportantFart]

Is Haven any good? I know it's just come out, so most people may not have had a chance to play it, but it looks really beautiful and peaceful.

The one thing putting me off is that while I've heard the combat's real-time, videos of it look more turn-based (I don't like turn-based combat much) and I've also heard the story's a bit weak. Plus, the game seems to lean more towards co-operative play and I don't have anyone I can play it with (my other half struggles with the Lego video games, so anything more complicated than that won't go down well).