Despite the compelling main character and strong voice cast performances (the protagonist and the great Tony Jay above all), and despite the wealth of spells and items to use, nothing can change the fact that Blood Omen is a poorly designed game with bad combat, annoying inventory management, suffocatingly frequent load times in the PS1 version, poor performance, poorly told story, overpowered spells trivializing combat and pathetic boss fights that all boil down to activating the barrier power and holding down the attack button for three minutes.

Navigating the towns is an absolute pain, laid out as hedge mazes the way they are, nonsensically too, as you can't walk behind houses because you collide with their roofs on a 2D plane. if it weren't for the map, these would be a nightmare to traverse; instead, it's just tedious.

You can tell there were rooms in some of the dungeons that were designed to be challenging, with hordes of enemies attacking you... too bad you can just use of of your many screen clearing attacks that completely negate the need for combat of any sort. is there anything worse than game design that renders the gameplay optional and redundant? It doesn't help that melee combat is bad, boiling down to trading hits with unflinching enemies with too many HP. A parry button would have done wonders for this game, but such wasn't the case.

And yet... Blood Omen has charm, enough to warrant a playthrough to hear what Kain will say next in his tragic, cynical, unhinged tone, commenting on the horrid events of the world that surrounds him. That is the strongest aspect of the game and it can make you bear its dreadfully slow and clunky gameplay.

Redeeming qualities are rare in bad games, and you must take what you can.