Blood II is notorious for being nearly impossible to play because of poor PC optimization. These days 99% of games will play if you have compatibility mode enabled on Windows, but not this one. I have three copies of this game including the Steam one and they all suffer from the horrible inability to predictably load without crashing. Weirdly enough, it's not a single problem that stops this game from running. There can be five or six problems, including the game not being able to find the "CD" file (Even though it's a digital copy) the video card not being compatible, or a dozen other things that are just the result of sloppy coding by the developers.

If you actually manage to get the game running, there's no guarantee that you will be able to run it again because the thing that worked to get it running previously may still result in a crash until you try it ten more times. It's an anomaly that I have never seen in a video game. This game also may crash during game play, for example, if you kill certain enemies, they may float up into the air and freeze the game, forcing you to restart.

If you actually get the game working it's occasionally fun but usually just extremely frustrating. I played on the medium difficulty and had to restart each section at least 20 times because, for some bizarre reason, the enemies in this game deal random damage amounts that are typically unavoidable. Enemies can also shoot you through walls and the game really likes to put them in a place where when you enter a room you die immediately. Granted, you can save anywhere, but to me that defeats the purpose of playing. It's more logical just to memorize where the healing items are and run past as many enemies as possible. There's also a really horrible part at the beginning of this game where you are on an airship and the game refuses to give any healing items. If you didn't save any up in previous sections, this area is impossible to complete.

I've beaten many of the hardest FPS games ever made and this one just mostly felt broken and agitating. I don't think I've ever been this irritated playing an FPS game. Between enemies jumping on top of the player's head and random explosions killing me from across the map I'm shocked and amazed I was able to complete this jittering mess. And that of course is if you don't take into account the fact that you need a computer science degree just to get the game running. The only reason to play this would be if you want to complete both games in the Blood series, but this game is so different from the first game that they don't even seem related.

Not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be.

Also more Stephan Weyte as Caleb is the best thing ever.