Soul Reaver 2 is pretty good so far. It's missing the sad, isolated vibes of the first game, and the sort of tragic trajectory Raziel was forced into by the Elder God that made the game seem so contemplative is also gone. Instead, Raziel is a lot more willful and, frankly, fucking pissed. It's an interesting direction to take him as a character, but it also feels pretty natural. Raziel had a fucking awful streak of luck. Betrayed by his surrogate vampire father Kain, forced to toil in a burning vortex for a millennia, only to be revived as something new and horrible against his will and railroaded into a destiny he didn't want, only to learn that it wasn't even the first time. Upon arriving in the past at the beginning of Soul Reaver 2, he's immediately manipulated by Moebius, then Kain again, and then the Elder God--this time in the flesh--and he decides he's had enough of everyone's bullshit and takes a stand for himself. Raziel no longer carries the weary, reluctant tone in his voice in the first game. No, he instead mouths off at every one of his malefactors if he so much as catches a glimpse of them. Upon being told he's to be the "savior of Nosgoth" for the third time, with varying levels of sincerity, he retorts with anger, "I am so sick of hearing that phrase."
And yet, despite all of their trickery, he knows each one of them has a grain of truth buried beneath their layers of obfuscation, Kain especially. Kain is fully aware that every time he appears before Raziel, he's at risk of death. Raziel is equipped with both the physical and spectral forms of the Soul Reaver, so not only would killing Kain be easy, it would completely obliterate his soul. Raziel himself is aware of this, as well, so he understands the weight of Kain appearing time and time again.
So, not only has Raziel evolved in an interesting way, but so has Kain. Through use of something called the "Time Streaming Device", Kain has closely examined, for over a millennium at this point, hundreds or more future timelines, which is what makes him set in motion the events leading to Soul Reaver and Soul Reaver 2. Kain describes his destiny as flipping a coin--the literal two choices you could select at the end of Blood Omen being either side of it. Sacrifice himself to restore the pillars and thus the world, or refuse the sacrifice and let the pillars and the world fall into decay and ruin, two choices he describes as unfair, because he posits he never truly had a choice for himself. Both choices leave Kain unhappy.
"But," Kain says, "suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
Kain saying that line literally made me reflexively say, out loud, "these games are so fucking cool."