Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
released on Nov 01, 1996
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is a top-down action-adventure video game with role-playing game elements. It is the first game in the Legacy of Kain series, and the only one developed by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics. The game was first released in 1996 for the PlayStation, and later ported to Microsoft Windows. A Sega Saturn version was announced during production but later cancelled before release. It was followed by four sequels, which were all developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive.
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some of the best voice acting in the medium of videojames.
the gameplay is not as good as the story being told and that really is such a shame, Vae Victus.
the gameplay is not as good as the story being told and that really is such a shame, Vae Victus.
Played this when I was a teenager and was sick with a fever for like a week. Honestly this time around it wasn't as fun. It's not a bad game but I also don't think it's great. The writing and voice acting definitely prop it up out of the mud. And have to give it credit for giving us a great anti-hero way back when. Now it's such a treat to hear our boy Simon Templeton when he talks to Raziel. "Ohhh it's him."
1/5 of "BC relives his teen years and plays all of LoK"
1/5 of "BC relives his teen years and plays all of LoK"
Ahead of its time. Very hard to get into it nowadays and desperately needs a remake.
I have been putting of actually releasing a review for a while now; for many reasons, but I will now do my best to force myself into actually releasing this one; in that way me actually releasing a review I wrote for once, is kind of similar to my experience with the Legacy of Kain franchise, which I’ve tried to get into for a while now.
I’ve had begun playing Soul Reaver, the second instalment in the series, for about an hour in 2022, but had set it off until now, because I had just completed Link’s Awakening and usually need some time between two Zelda(-like) games, to deflate for a bit, and because I knew, I wanted to experience the entire series (or at least the ones I still can cough, cough Huge thanks to @Detectivefail for helping me fix this hyperlink), I wanted to start with the first entry in the series, and that brings me here Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.
If you have ever heard about this series, but never experienced it by yourself, you have probably been exposed to tons of praise for their story, which is mostly deserved, being one of the earlier examples of an action game that cares about these aspects, while reportedly bringing on great voice talent to deliver it (I wouldn’t know, I played the German version).
But the game unfortunately fumbles when it comes to actually playing it.
One of the first things you will notice about Blood Omen is that it is surprisingly somewhat open world. There are still obstacles in the way, as to limit your progress to closed of areas, but the order in which and whether you even complete certain dungeons is let completely up to you, go ahead and call it a Metroid-Vania if you will.
Your gameplay loop will look something like this:
”Find a vista-marker/Ariel telling you where the next big dungeon is, which you can at that point either fast-travel to directly, or preferably walk to; finding smaller dungeons, Blood Fountains, villages and miscellaneous pick-ups along the way; beating said big dungeon and defeating the ‘boss’ (I will talk about these a bit later); and then maybe backtrack.”
I don’t have a problem with this loop in theory, as it is constantly engaging and doesn’t get repetitive, but this basis will start to show its cracks if you look at it a bit closer.
First of combat, which is probably the aspect of Blood Omen that you will spend the most time with.
At first glance this games combat system might seem surprisingly fleshed out, with you being able to select between multiple armor sets, weapons, spells, items and transformations, which Kain will gradually be unlocking on his adventure through Nosgoth, but you will be discovering fairly quick that just using the Repel Shield and your strongest weapon (regular-/flame- sword) is just the most effective strategy.
If you don’t remember to renew your shield and take damage for some reason don’t worry, because Kain is not only almost as spongy as some of the regular enemies in the late game, but you will most likely have acquired enough Hearts of Darkness (this games instant revives), to never actually be in any amount of danger.
The only way I actually lost health later was by walking through water or waiting for my magic gauge to fill up again after using spells or such; you will do this a lot and it takes multiple minutes for most of the game, as the magic- and health- bar kind of work as opposites of each other.
Not only do you need one to keep yourself alive, while you use the other one to take them, but your health bar will slowly drain with time, while your magic gauge will refill, which could’ve been a really cool concept if it didn’t force you to use spells (which drain magic) and transformations (which also drain magic), for puzzles and straight up locking you progress if you don't refill it so often; which to be fair is somewhat remedied by the regular magic-pick-ups towards the end of the game and this system being easily cheesed as you can just either use one of your hearts of darkness, refilling Kain’s health or switch to the axes and the Flesh Armor, which automatically fills up your health every time you defeat a living enemy.
This games swordplay in general was just not very enjoyable to me. The game sometimes fails to signify if you are currently even damaging an enemy, which gets worse with boss fights and later way too spongy types of enemies. There is one boss fight, in which you first must defeat a guy that destroys the ground beneath you, but just ignores you otherwise, even if you hit him.
Kain will sometimes just not feel like attacking and instead yell out “Vae Victis!” and pose when you press the button to attack; this will also be a common occurrence and happen at the exact moments you don’t want it to happen during your playthrough.
You can skip this next paragraph if you want to, as it solely hinges on me talking about a weird link to another completely different game, I had made while playing, which is probably only interesting to me.
There is a point relatively early into the game where you acquire a lightning spell, which you can either use as a projectile attack or activating switches across gaps, which was the exact point where I drew a weird similarity between Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and another game I have played through and reviewed almost two years ago now, which is strangely similar in terms of puzzles, combat and the sort , being Lego Knights Kingdom. The connection is made even weirder by the fact that one of that games lead designers Alastair Cornish apparently had some kind of role within Eidos, which published the Legacy of Kain series and being credited in the game Nosgoth, the controversial last entry in the series. Just thought this was interesting enough for me, to keep in the review.
Now the game doesn’t only rely on its swordplay for combat, as already mentioned. There are some more or less useful spells, the Repel Shield probably getting the most use during yours and definitely during my playtime. Unfortunately, most other spells are severely outclassed by the items, whose power should be regulated by them being single use, but they are just so abundant that you will never be in a shortage of them.
You can only chose one spell, item or transformation to be used at a time, if you want to change them, you can either put up to four of each in a quick-menu, which were actually really tedious to access for me, because I for some reason decided to play this on the PS Vita and am now probably the only person to ever do so, as accessing said menus (or the map) requires you to hit the touch buttons on the back, which I didn’t even know existed and are situated exactly where you want to rest your hands.
Putting spells in and out of your quick menu will also be greeted with a loading screen, so I never really used any spells outside of the ones I needed for puzzles or again, the repel shield. It goes without saying that the same issue also applies to the items.
Moving around the world also is awfully clunky and slow. The devs knew this and tried to remedy this problem by introducing the Wolf-Transformation, which is faster, but weaker in combat and even clunkier to control, but it sometimes allows you to leap over small gaps; it sometimes also might just decide to not do this, but it also has the drawback of using up your magic, which is one better used in combat and two means that if you magic gauge is depleted, you won’t be able to use this transformation even if you need to, so you will just have to wait again.
There is also the Mist-Transformation, whose only use cases are walking over conveniently placed patches of water or moving through hard to see cracks in the wall, while using up your magic while being even less useful than the wolf and leaving you open to enemy attacks, while giving you no way to counterattack.
The Bat-Transformation is the only one that doesn’t use up your magic and thus is the best one. It lets you fast-travel across the world to various Bat-Beacons scattered around Nosgoth.
The final transformations name is offensive and will for that reason not be mentioned by name here. I also didn’t ever feel the need to use it. If I had to say something interesting about it, then I would like to mention it being the only one you can upgrade (as far as I know) and is notable for breaking my game when I used it in the upgraded state, luckily not enough to where I couldn’t finish it as this takes place during the last hour of playtime.
Still on the topic of moving around the world, this game visually doesn’t hold up to a point where it made it hard to differentiate between things you can or can not interact with. For example, you will usually not be able to move behind a roof, but there was at least one where you could do it and collect optional items. This isn’t the end of the world but did impair my experience with the game.
~1/3rd of the screen will be used up by really nice looking, but distracting UI.
I did enjoy the janky, early 3D cutscenes though.
I won’t really talk about the contents of the story in this review as the only things you need to know are, it isn’t really that present for most of the game, but when it is, it is a nice break of pace and fairly good, while not reaching the heights it will in later entries. It is the one thing I would recommend you play this game for, outside of historical relevance.
I will be honest. I didn’t really enjoy Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain as you might’ve noticed, but that doesn’t detract from its significance to the development of this medium. Completing it also made me pick up Soul Reaver again, which I have mostly really enjoyed so far.
If anything, I won’t ever forget my time with this first entry in the Legacy of Kain franchise.
I’ve had begun playing Soul Reaver, the second instalment in the series, for about an hour in 2022, but had set it off until now, because I had just completed Link’s Awakening and usually need some time between two Zelda(-like) games, to deflate for a bit, and because I knew, I wanted to experience the entire series (or at least the ones I still can cough, cough Huge thanks to @Detectivefail for helping me fix this hyperlink), I wanted to start with the first entry in the series, and that brings me here Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.
If you have ever heard about this series, but never experienced it by yourself, you have probably been exposed to tons of praise for their story, which is mostly deserved, being one of the earlier examples of an action game that cares about these aspects, while reportedly bringing on great voice talent to deliver it (I wouldn’t know, I played the German version).
But the game unfortunately fumbles when it comes to actually playing it.
One of the first things you will notice about Blood Omen is that it is surprisingly somewhat open world. There are still obstacles in the way, as to limit your progress to closed of areas, but the order in which and whether you even complete certain dungeons is let completely up to you, go ahead and call it a Metroid-Vania if you will.
Your gameplay loop will look something like this:
”Find a vista-marker/Ariel telling you where the next big dungeon is, which you can at that point either fast-travel to directly, or preferably walk to; finding smaller dungeons, Blood Fountains, villages and miscellaneous pick-ups along the way; beating said big dungeon and defeating the ‘boss’ (I will talk about these a bit later); and then maybe backtrack.”
I don’t have a problem with this loop in theory, as it is constantly engaging and doesn’t get repetitive, but this basis will start to show its cracks if you look at it a bit closer.
First of combat, which is probably the aspect of Blood Omen that you will spend the most time with.
At first glance this games combat system might seem surprisingly fleshed out, with you being able to select between multiple armor sets, weapons, spells, items and transformations, which Kain will gradually be unlocking on his adventure through Nosgoth, but you will be discovering fairly quick that just using the Repel Shield and your strongest weapon (regular-/flame- sword) is just the most effective strategy.
If you don’t remember to renew your shield and take damage for some reason don’t worry, because Kain is not only almost as spongy as some of the regular enemies in the late game, but you will most likely have acquired enough Hearts of Darkness (this games instant revives), to never actually be in any amount of danger.
The only way I actually lost health later was by walking through water or waiting for my magic gauge to fill up again after using spells or such; you will do this a lot and it takes multiple minutes for most of the game, as the magic- and health- bar kind of work as opposites of each other.
Not only do you need one to keep yourself alive, while you use the other one to take them, but your health bar will slowly drain with time, while your magic gauge will refill, which could’ve been a really cool concept if it didn’t force you to use spells (which drain magic) and transformations (which also drain magic), for puzzles and straight up locking you progress if you don't refill it so often; which to be fair is somewhat remedied by the regular magic-pick-ups towards the end of the game and this system being easily cheesed as you can just either use one of your hearts of darkness, refilling Kain’s health or switch to the axes and the Flesh Armor, which automatically fills up your health every time you defeat a living enemy.
This games swordplay in general was just not very enjoyable to me. The game sometimes fails to signify if you are currently even damaging an enemy, which gets worse with boss fights and later way too spongy types of enemies. There is one boss fight, in which you first must defeat a guy that destroys the ground beneath you, but just ignores you otherwise, even if you hit him.
Kain will sometimes just not feel like attacking and instead yell out “Vae Victis!” and pose when you press the button to attack; this will also be a common occurrence and happen at the exact moments you don’t want it to happen during your playthrough.
You can skip this next paragraph if you want to, as it solely hinges on me talking about a weird link to another completely different game, I had made while playing, which is probably only interesting to me.
There is a point relatively early into the game where you acquire a lightning spell, which you can either use as a projectile attack or activating switches across gaps, which was the exact point where I drew a weird similarity between Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and another game I have played through and reviewed almost two years ago now, which is strangely similar in terms of puzzles, combat and the sort , being Lego Knights Kingdom. The connection is made even weirder by the fact that one of that games lead designers Alastair Cornish apparently had some kind of role within Eidos, which published the Legacy of Kain series and being credited in the game Nosgoth, the controversial last entry in the series. Just thought this was interesting enough for me, to keep in the review.
Now the game doesn’t only rely on its swordplay for combat, as already mentioned. There are some more or less useful spells, the Repel Shield probably getting the most use during yours and definitely during my playtime. Unfortunately, most other spells are severely outclassed by the items, whose power should be regulated by them being single use, but they are just so abundant that you will never be in a shortage of them.
You can only chose one spell, item or transformation to be used at a time, if you want to change them, you can either put up to four of each in a quick-menu, which were actually really tedious to access for me, because I for some reason decided to play this on the PS Vita and am now probably the only person to ever do so, as accessing said menus (or the map) requires you to hit the touch buttons on the back, which I didn’t even know existed and are situated exactly where you want to rest your hands.
Putting spells in and out of your quick menu will also be greeted with a loading screen, so I never really used any spells outside of the ones I needed for puzzles or again, the repel shield. It goes without saying that the same issue also applies to the items.
Moving around the world also is awfully clunky and slow. The devs knew this and tried to remedy this problem by introducing the Wolf-Transformation, which is faster, but weaker in combat and even clunkier to control, but it sometimes allows you to leap over small gaps; it sometimes also might just decide to not do this, but it also has the drawback of using up your magic, which is one better used in combat and two means that if you magic gauge is depleted, you won’t be able to use this transformation even if you need to, so you will just have to wait again.
There is also the Mist-Transformation, whose only use cases are walking over conveniently placed patches of water or moving through hard to see cracks in the wall, while using up your magic while being even less useful than the wolf and leaving you open to enemy attacks, while giving you no way to counterattack.
The Bat-Transformation is the only one that doesn’t use up your magic and thus is the best one. It lets you fast-travel across the world to various Bat-Beacons scattered around Nosgoth.
The final transformations name is offensive and will for that reason not be mentioned by name here. I also didn’t ever feel the need to use it. If I had to say something interesting about it, then I would like to mention it being the only one you can upgrade (as far as I know) and is notable for breaking my game when I used it in the upgraded state, luckily not enough to where I couldn’t finish it as this takes place during the last hour of playtime.
Still on the topic of moving around the world, this game visually doesn’t hold up to a point where it made it hard to differentiate between things you can or can not interact with. For example, you will usually not be able to move behind a roof, but there was at least one where you could do it and collect optional items. This isn’t the end of the world but did impair my experience with the game.
~1/3rd of the screen will be used up by really nice looking, but distracting UI.
I did enjoy the janky, early 3D cutscenes though.
I won’t really talk about the contents of the story in this review as the only things you need to know are, it isn’t really that present for most of the game, but when it is, it is a nice break of pace and fairly good, while not reaching the heights it will in later entries. It is the one thing I would recommend you play this game for, outside of historical relevance.
I will be honest. I didn’t really enjoy Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain as you might’ve noticed, but that doesn’t detract from its significance to the development of this medium. Completing it also made me pick up Soul Reaver again, which I have mostly really enjoyed so far.
If anything, I won’t ever forget my time with this first entry in the Legacy of Kain franchise.
I played Blood Omen directly after playing Zelda: A Link to the Past and my god are these two games similar and very very different at the same time. Zelda gets so many things right and it's strange to see Blood Omen, released over 4 years later, get so many of them wrong. Wonky combat system, uninspired level design, weird inventory management, storyline at times strangely disconnected. The game feels like it is just going to fall apart at any moment of it's playtime. And even my incredible amounts of low-poly nostalgia couldn't make me not cringe at the incredibly ugly 3d animated cutscenes.
Despite all that, Blood Omen manages to create an unparalleled dark, gothic atmosphere. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing. The voice acting is on a level I don't remember ever hearing in a video game. Kain's voice actor went full in on his role. The way Kain is written is very engaging, developing slowly from being just a bitter, arrogant, self-centred misanthrope into contemplating the strange, cruel world around him and developing a complex relationship with fate.
The spells and magic items are so good. They are so over the top and gory and brutal, they really feel like the type of magic a bloodthirsty vampire would use. The first magic item flays the skin of the enemy, killing them instantly, and at first it feels a bit overpowered are extremely brutal. But it just keeps getting better from there. Expect to kill enemies in very very bloody ways. The mind control spell also gets my commendation for how well it was implemented.
Favourite spell: Blood Shower
Also, the UI design is so good. Bring back that UI that takes up almost half of the screen for no good reason.
For all it's flaws, I love Blood Omen with my entire heart.
Despite all that, Blood Omen manages to create an unparalleled dark, gothic atmosphere. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing. The voice acting is on a level I don't remember ever hearing in a video game. Kain's voice actor went full in on his role. The way Kain is written is very engaging, developing slowly from being just a bitter, arrogant, self-centred misanthrope into contemplating the strange, cruel world around him and developing a complex relationship with fate.
The spells and magic items are so good. They are so over the top and gory and brutal, they really feel like the type of magic a bloodthirsty vampire would use. The first magic item flays the skin of the enemy, killing them instantly, and at first it feels a bit overpowered are extremely brutal. But it just keeps getting better from there. Expect to kill enemies in very very bloody ways. The mind control spell also gets my commendation for how well it was implemented.
Favourite spell: Blood Shower
Also, the UI design is so good. Bring back that UI that takes up almost half of the screen for no good reason.
For all it's flaws, I love Blood Omen with my entire heart.
This review contains spoilers
Amazing game with a great atmosphere and story.
I loved Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. I had heard of the “Legacy of Kain” series but I did not now what the correct order of the games was or what it was all about in the first place. After discovering that this was the first game, I played it and was immediately impressed.
In this game, you play as Kain, a nobleman who was murdered and resurrected as a vampire. Hungry for revenge, he sets out to kill The Circle of Nine, a corrupt oligarchy of sorcerers who were responsible for his death and vampire curse. Over the course of time, you are consumed by your curse and start to see it as a blessing instead of a curse, corrupting you from inside and make you even more hungry for power. One by one, you slay the members of the Circle of Nine and take their token, making you much stronger and feared. In the end, you place all the tokens on the Pillars of Nosgoth, cleansing them from the corruption of the insane sorcerers and restoring balance to the world, or so is the plan. In an epic plot twist, Kain discovers that he himself is considered one of the nine mad sorcerers and has to make a choice, which spawns one of the two possible endings. In one ending, Kain refuses to sacrifice himself, letting the world crumble and turn into a barren wasteland with him as the most powerful entity in existence. In the good ending, he sacrifices himself to restore balance to the world and make sure that all the vampires are extinct.
I really liked the gameplay mechanics in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. In its core, it is just a top down third person RPG, but the vampire aspects and skills make this game an innovation of its time. You can explore the many dungeons on your own pace and there is no specific path that you must follow, making the game nonlinear.
What makes it unique is that you constantly need to keep an eye on your blood meter, which serves as a health bar, and as some sort of timer, because it depletes automatically over time. There are many human, animal and fantasy creatures in the world to feed on, but you need to think carefully about wounding them so you can feed, or outright kill them, if the situation becomes dangerous. When there are three enemies at once for example, you cannot take your time on slowly wound one enemy, because the other two are still on your back.
Besides your health meter, you also got a blue magic/mana meter, which is used to cast unique spells. This bar replenishes over time, but can be filled up faster by drinking the blood/energy of ghostly enemies.
You also need to stay away from drinking the blood of demons and undead, as they poison and hurt you. For the demons and undead, it is clear that you need to avoid them, but there are also some mutants in the game, which are tricky and mysterious at first, making you doubt if they can be fed on. Many times, the answer is no.
On your quest, you come across many upgrades, unique gear, new magic attacks and shapeshift spells. You collect Rune Pyramids, Blood Vials, drink from Blood Fountains to increase your strength, acquire weather resistance upgrades and much more. If you take the time to explore every inch of the dungeons, you can find some crazy powerful stuff.
There is a night and day cycle in place, in which Kain becomes more powerful in the night, and when there is a full moon, in which certain doors are also accessible. This is another unique and great mechanic.
Graphicly, this game looks amazing. The detail in the surroundings, characters and effects is stunning. It has a dark, Gothic theme over it and the lighting in certain areas looks very pretty. The effects of the blood, and the blood drinking animations are also very solid.
The music and ambient sounds are dark and unsettling, enhancing the Gothic theme even more.
The controls, navigation and menus are a little confusing and “illogical” at first, but when you get used to the unique layouts and shortcuts, it works fine.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is unique in every way with its excellent mechanics, powerful story, balance, fun factor, and challenge. There is so much to do and explore and the visible progression in your character’s development with your new spells, weapons and upgrades really motivates you to play for hours on end.
I can only praise this game and would recommend it to everyone.
I loved Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. I had heard of the “Legacy of Kain” series but I did not now what the correct order of the games was or what it was all about in the first place. After discovering that this was the first game, I played it and was immediately impressed.
In this game, you play as Kain, a nobleman who was murdered and resurrected as a vampire. Hungry for revenge, he sets out to kill The Circle of Nine, a corrupt oligarchy of sorcerers who were responsible for his death and vampire curse. Over the course of time, you are consumed by your curse and start to see it as a blessing instead of a curse, corrupting you from inside and make you even more hungry for power. One by one, you slay the members of the Circle of Nine and take their token, making you much stronger and feared. In the end, you place all the tokens on the Pillars of Nosgoth, cleansing them from the corruption of the insane sorcerers and restoring balance to the world, or so is the plan. In an epic plot twist, Kain discovers that he himself is considered one of the nine mad sorcerers and has to make a choice, which spawns one of the two possible endings. In one ending, Kain refuses to sacrifice himself, letting the world crumble and turn into a barren wasteland with him as the most powerful entity in existence. In the good ending, he sacrifices himself to restore balance to the world and make sure that all the vampires are extinct.
I really liked the gameplay mechanics in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. In its core, it is just a top down third person RPG, but the vampire aspects and skills make this game an innovation of its time. You can explore the many dungeons on your own pace and there is no specific path that you must follow, making the game nonlinear.
What makes it unique is that you constantly need to keep an eye on your blood meter, which serves as a health bar, and as some sort of timer, because it depletes automatically over time. There are many human, animal and fantasy creatures in the world to feed on, but you need to think carefully about wounding them so you can feed, or outright kill them, if the situation becomes dangerous. When there are three enemies at once for example, you cannot take your time on slowly wound one enemy, because the other two are still on your back.
Besides your health meter, you also got a blue magic/mana meter, which is used to cast unique spells. This bar replenishes over time, but can be filled up faster by drinking the blood/energy of ghostly enemies.
You also need to stay away from drinking the blood of demons and undead, as they poison and hurt you. For the demons and undead, it is clear that you need to avoid them, but there are also some mutants in the game, which are tricky and mysterious at first, making you doubt if they can be fed on. Many times, the answer is no.
On your quest, you come across many upgrades, unique gear, new magic attacks and shapeshift spells. You collect Rune Pyramids, Blood Vials, drink from Blood Fountains to increase your strength, acquire weather resistance upgrades and much more. If you take the time to explore every inch of the dungeons, you can find some crazy powerful stuff.
There is a night and day cycle in place, in which Kain becomes more powerful in the night, and when there is a full moon, in which certain doors are also accessible. This is another unique and great mechanic.
Graphicly, this game looks amazing. The detail in the surroundings, characters and effects is stunning. It has a dark, Gothic theme over it and the lighting in certain areas looks very pretty. The effects of the blood, and the blood drinking animations are also very solid.
The music and ambient sounds are dark and unsettling, enhancing the Gothic theme even more.
The controls, navigation and menus are a little confusing and “illogical” at first, but when you get used to the unique layouts and shortcuts, it works fine.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is unique in every way with its excellent mechanics, powerful story, balance, fun factor, and challenge. There is so much to do and explore and the visible progression in your character’s development with your new spells, weapons and upgrades really motivates you to play for hours on end.
I can only praise this game and would recommend it to everyone.