Recently I learned of the survey sent out by Crystal Dynamics asking what players would want in a new Legacy of Kain game and my heart almost jumped out of my chest. I think I played the Soul Reaver demo on PSX as a kid at least fifty billion times. I loved every game in the series growing up. The genuine gothic themes mixed with fantastic characters, writing, puzzle platforming, and combat mechanics were everything I wanted in a game franchise. The thought of Legacy of Kain coming back makes every follicle of my body fizzle with excitement. Taking the survey made me wonder what a new title in the series would look like, and then I realized I hadn’t even played the original Legacy of Kain game, Blood Omen. So, obviously, I had to play through the series again. Most of them I hadn’t played for over a decade, so I was interested in seeing what elements held up to today’s standards. After finishing all five Legacy of Kain games, I figured I had to rank them.
Two of the better written characters in gaming
The Worst – Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2
I’m not gonna lie, this one was a bit of a letdown simply because I remember loving it to bits as a kid. I used to think it was my favorite… never trust a kid’s judgment. Blood Omen 2 was hindered by a short development time and the switching up of the development team. The story doesn’t really add anything of substance, the combat is tedious ‘rock-paper-scissor’ type stuff, the environments are mostly bland and forgettable, and the puzzles are barely puzzles at all.
Video credit to HampsterStyleLives.
Just Cheat It
Blood Omen 2 is the only game I would say is worth skipping but if you really want to finish it for completionist’s sake, press L1 – R1 – L2 – R2 – Square – Circle – Triangle in sequence at the main menu to start with the soul reaver. It makes all the combat way less tedious. I know cheating sucks, but I don’t think the game provides enough enjoyment to deserve your frustration.
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- The bosses are pretty bland too
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- There are a few cool visuals though
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen
This one took me by surprise. All of these games look pretty ugly but the visuals from Blood Omen are laughably bad. After actually getting into it, though, the visuals shifted from vomit-inducing to charmingly vomit-inducing. Being a 2D mid-90s action-RPG, I hedged as I stepped into it, expecting to sprain something on janky mechanics. But I was pleasantly surprised. The gameplay is fun, with a variety of attacks and spells, and somewhat challenging enemies.
Video credit to IntroVault.
The Writing
What really stands out is the writing. Kain, though irredeemably evil, is fascinating and entertaining. The dialogue and voice acting are great, which is admirable for the time. It’s the only game of the series to fully show off the world of Nosgoth. The implications of the story resonate through the series which keeps impressively consistent while delving through a lot of time travel stuff. I can’t say I loved every moment of Blood Omen, it has some conveyance issues and the core loop eventually gets a bit old. But it definitely blew my expectations out of the water.
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- You can go into Beast form to run faster
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- And use big spells to kill multiple enemies
Legacy of Kain: Defiance
The Combat
Now, I’m a big action guy. Two of my favorite genres are hack-n-slash and Souls-like. So Defiance’s Devil May Cry-inspired combat was a very welcome addition for me. It’s just complex enough to make you feel like a badass for pulling off nice combos and not so complex that it takes half the game to master. When I first started the game, I thought I would be putting it at the very top. It has by far the best combat mechanics of the series.
Video credit to Slyzer.
That being said, the fun factor drops off considerably as you get further into the game. There’s very little enemy variety, with the major change being in how big their health bars get. It does the annoying hack-n-slash thing where it locks you into a room and throws enemies at you until you beat an arbitrary amount. And with how large their health bars get, it ends up feeling like they’re only there to pad the game time out. That being said, Defiance gives you the best way to show off Kain and Raziel’s skills. The biggest disappointment though is the shift away from the elaborate puzzle designs set up in the Soul Reaver games.
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- Fun, action-packed battle mechanics
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- And some pretty cool looking environments
The Story
Defiance works well at bringing the whole story to a close, giving satisfying ends to both Kain and Raziel’s arcs. There are a lot of good moments in Defiance, but it struggles a bit with the pacing. The constant shifting between characters in every chapter makes both stories feel like they’re rushing. I get that it’s the nature of trying to fit two conjoined stories into one game. It is epic to see both characters’ storylines spiral into their eventual clash, but it pulls too much away from the careful and precise writing. When it comes to story, the Soul Reaver games take the win.
Ranking Legacy of Kain Games – 3rd: Defiance
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
If this was being ranked purely on storytelling, then Soul Reaver 2 would be above all of the Legacy of Kain games. Here is where you’ll find the most interesting revelations and the most emotionally hitting scenes of the Legacy of Kain story. It’s so enthralling to follow Raziel as he is led like a pawn through his destiny. He has to be my favorite of the ‘naive protagonist’ trope. Though he is essentially being pulled through the plot by a string, at no point is he boring. Due to excellent writing, and just as good voice acting, every cutscene is a pleasure to watch.
Video credit to HampsterStyleLives.
The Environments
The biggest downsides to Soul Reaver 2 are the environments. Though they are visually more interesting than their predecessor, they lose that interest when the game forces you to run through them over and over again. My biggest criticism against the Legacy of Kain series is that they tend to find less-than-ideal ways to pad the games out. None of them are very long. I was able to get through the whole series in just over a week with a moderate dedication to playtime. So I can see why they felt they needed to add padding, but the ways in which they do hinder the gaming experience. I rolled my eyes every time the game forced me to backtrack through the map. The Forges, though, I loved them.
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- The spectral realm is such an interesting mechanic
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- These big guys look intimidating and are annoying
The Forges
In Soul Reaver 2, the main progression is done by visiting Forges that add new elements to your sword. They’re all big fun puzzle dungeons, each using the motif of their applied element. I love the way the Soul Reaver games do dungeons. They work as multilayered puzzles, where every room of the dungeon has its own puzzle that then applies to the overall puzzle of the dungeon itself. This is where the Soul Reaver games shine immensely over the rest of the series. Though the other games have puzzles in them, none of them are even approaching that of the ones found in the Soul Reaver games. Having to choose between them, Soul Reaver 2 definitely fits in the number two spot.
Ranking Legacy of Kain Games – 2nd: Soul Reaver 2
Though some of the puzzles are head-scratchers, a bunch of them feel a bit like Zelda dungeons where you’ve already solved it before you’ve even had a chance to think about it. Developers always seem to be too scared to truly stump us. When I play a game that forces me to stop and think about how to solve something rather than go through the obvious motions, that game instantly skyrockets through my list of favorites. This brings me to the best Legacy of Kain game.
The Best – Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Soul Reaver might not be the best in all individual categories but it delivers by far the best overall gaming experience.
Video credit to Upscale.
The Core Loop
I’ve already said that Defiance has the best combat but Soul Reaver offers a better experience by not constricting you. Soul Reaver makes up for its simplicity by making combat more of a puzzle. Instead of just slashing at an enemy until they die, you have to find some water to throw them in or a spike to stab through them. Then you have to eat their soul or else they’ll come back to life. You’re not pulling off satisfying and flashy combos, but instead thinking of how best to approach each situation. But also, you don’t really have to fight at all. Some encounters are made more convenient by clearing the enemies but for the most part, you can run past everything. The developers knew they had more to offer than combat, that being exploration, level design, and puzzles.
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- I love the gross boss designs
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- Every defeated boss gives you a new power to explore
Exploration
Soul Reaver and Blood Omen are the only games in the franchise with any kind of proper exploration elements. Blood Omen 2 and Soul Reaver 2 are completely linear, and Defiance has some exploring but not much. As you progress through Soul Reaver, you unlock abilities that you use to find secrets. It’s a maze-like Metroidvania-style map design and it works to give you more purpose in searching around. Instead of just health and magic upgrades, you can also find entire levels which lead to new spells.
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- You can slash and shoot enemies
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- PSX graphics in all their glory
Level Design
The dungeons are mostly like the ones in Soul Reaver 2, where there’s one big puzzle segmented by a bunch of individual puzzles. Soul Reaver excels simply by having puzzles that are actually puzzling, and each dungeon ended with a boss fight which would be its own puzzle. My favorite has to be the block puzzles. I found myself actually stopping and having to think about how it all works. The dungeons are way more thought out than in Soul Reaver 2. With the Forges, you are only trying to get the Forge to turn on so you can get a new element. They all pretty much play out the same.
The Soul Reaver dungeons, on the other hand, are like giant contraptions. You have to do stuff like get the airflow running in one room so that vents will blow air in another room, then be aware of how that affects other rooms. It makes the dungeons feel a lot more tangible. Soul Reaver also introduced the mechanic of switching to the Spectral Realm which shifts the environment. They use it beautifully for all of their puzzles.
Ranking Legacy of Kain Games – 1st: Soul Reaver
The Future of Legacy of Kain
After all of this, what would I actually want from a new installment? It might possibly not be a ‘Kain’ game at all. I love the story and the characters, but they finished it. Defiance tied it all up nicely. What would be great to see is a new story with new characters set in the world of Nosgoth. Kain is a fantastic character, but he works better as a secondary character rather than a main protagonist. He’s so wise and unshackled that playing as him feels like it cheapens him as a character. He works best as a kind of puppet master to the plot antagonist with dubious motivations. They’ve explored the ‘breaking free from destiny’ type story, we need something new.
What’s interesting is that they almost made a new game already. Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun was in development for a few years before ultimately being canceled by Square Enix in 2012. It was set in Nosgoth and was said to be inspired by the first Soul Reaver. There were going to be new characters with an open world, violent combat, dungeon crawls, puzzles and boss encounters. It would also bring back the shifting between planes of existence mechanic. This sounds like the exact game that I want. I really hope that survey wasn’t just some whimsy, and that there’s some chance we’ll see something new. I do suffer quite badly from elevated hopes.
