I completed this game on my Steam Deck, but for the latter-half I used a keyboard and mouse combination. Getting it running on the Deck was easy (thanks to the Proton defaults) so don't worry about that unless you're playing on Windows; this is just another of those games that spreadsheet OS can't deal with because it's older than a year or so.
That said, an actual review of this game is a bit tricky to write, because there's a remaster out that probably fixes a bit of the jank that's inherent in a game this old. There are one or two bugs in this version (across all builds of the game) and the controls don't translate too well in a modern way. You can get it to work and play comfortablish with some tweaking (the Steam Deck control mapping works wonders here) but there's no getting away from the fact this game is from an era when developers were still figuring out 3D worlds. While it's better than the first game (which isn't hard) it still takes a bit of getting used to.
I never played the Kain series growing up, I've only gone back to it recently because I was intrigued by the story. This is the third in the series that I've played (Blood Omen, SR1, SR2) and I'm working my way into Blood Omen 2 and Defiance right now. I only played the original versions of these games on Steam (except BO, that's GoG) because I already owned them. I would recommend that newcomers play the remasters for the above reasons.
SR2 is an interesting game because of where it sits in the timeline (or doesn't;) it was developed in tandem with Blood Omen 2 which plays havoc with the canon, and so resulted in SR2 also playing havoc with the canon. Time travel is the core theme (not a bad one,) in this game, and it means that while it's a bit tricky to keep straight in your head, the lore is "consistent" across the various games, if you squint a bit and stare at the picture long enough. The time travel elements do mean that scenery was re-used a lot, you will spend a lot of the game back-tracking over areas you've already been, because the game takes place over different periods, which *can* get quite old, quite quickly.
I recommend playing this game with a guide handy, even if you only look at it if you get stuck. The game is not long if you do play it this way, because while games used to be about "confusing the player to elongate the game," we've moved away from this design philosophy as a species, and we wouldn't dare develop a game with some of the assumptions this game gives you. When we only had one or two games a year, and the game we bought... we were stuck with, we liked it when games made themselves longer with stupid mechanics. We no longer like this.
If you do play this game optimally, it's four or five hours long. Once you realise you can just run past 95% of monsters, and you don't need to fight them, the game becomes a lot quicker. There are still "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" elements, like the insta-death mechanics of the eyes in the walls (again, we don't 'do' this anymore, because it's bad game design,) that you have to be aware of. You can't die, not really, the game is a walking story and that's about all there is to say about it. You get the best weapon immediately and never have to use any of the additional weapons (unlike the first game, where this felt fun;) and as I've said, the puzzles are massively toned down.
Do I recommend it... yeah, I suppose. If you've already got it in your library and you want to experience the game, along with the excellent voice acting, then you absolutely will get a kick out of Soul Reaver 2, just don't expect modern game design. Expect to be annoyed, and bored at times; expect to ignore enemies because they're not worth your time, and expect to be a bit confused by random characters being introduced at random times (thanks to the aforementioned time shenanigans.)
