Within the last 2-3 years, I got a wild hair up my ass to play through the entire Legacy of Kain series. I know I played the hell out of a demo for the first Soul Reaver, maybe even rented it. Then I know I rented and finished Soul Reaver 2 and was completely absorbed in the story and the world. The next game in the series, Blood Omen 2, held no interest for me, so I waited. When Defiance finally came out, I was excited, but never got around to actually picking it up. It had been too much time away from those characters and I just didn't have that urge anymore. Something like 8 years went by, and then the original Blood Omen was release on PSN as a PS1 classic. I decided to take the plunge, and finally close my loop on Legacy of Kain.

Blood Omen was a game that I had no memory of. I know I saw it once in the rental store, looked on the back to see it was a 2D game in the vein of Zelda, and immediately put it back down. This wasn't the Legacy of Kain I knew and surely not one I wanted to play back then. Jumping into it was pretty cool. Getting to see where Kain came from was neat and the story was interesting enough. A few things came to mind pretty quick though. First, storytelling in games have come a long way. The story is relatively well put together, and the world is well realized, but the delivery mechanism is, well, old. The gameplay held up even less so. (I actually found a review I wrote back in 2010 when I first finished it, check it here) It seems like they were going for a dark Link to the Past (huh, Darksiders...right?), but didn't quite nail the controls down. It was neat, but nothing I plan on ever revisiting.

Next up was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. In which all of Blood Omen is cut down to a sentence of plot summary from the end and we are introduced to Raziel. Now Raziel is immediately a more interesting character than Kain. I like Kain ok, but right at the start of Soul Reaver, Kain's a dick, and you want to destroy him so hard. There's a super intersting story to how Soul Reaver came about, but I'll let Amy Henning give you the story on that. So now we've got a full 3D world to run around. The combat became significantly more complicated what with locking on and strafing and other such nonsense. It didn't work great, but as a PS1 game, it was pretty good. The story revolved around Raziel hunting down his old Vampire brethren to murder their mutated asses. Having a big open world was nice, and no loading times were even nicer. But it was easy to get lost and if you forgot which direction you were supposed to head in, good luck. This is where the series started for me. And, for all intents and purposes, this is where it started for the developers. Some of the groundwork for the entire series is rooted in this game. And then you get to Kain, and it's so awesome, and you're gonna fight him, and then...it ends. Well, shit. I hope there's a sequel soon.

Enter Sould Reaver 2 (The Legacy of Kain Series). Which might as well have been called, "Fuck you Kain, it's my series now bitch! <3 Raziel xoxo." Raziel became the real star of the show. I guess. I don't know who's the leader in this game. Sure, you play as Raziel, but you watch just as much of Kain. They were doing their very best Kojima impression. Play for an hour, watch for 20 minutes. Not a good impression mind you. Anyway, story was BIG in this one. You travel through time a bunch, fight a bunch of dudes, and even get a pretty sweet twist ending. As we're in the modern PS2 era here, the gameplay became much more palatable. There was still some issue with responsiveness, but for the most part, it worked. And gone was the open world, which was a good thing. For one, they got to focus the action in a more linear fashion, so very limited getting lost time, and also push the story along at their pace. I actually had a pretty good amount of fun with this one. And the time travel double/triple cross storyline is so ridiculous and stupid, that it's impossible not to like. They set some things up for the next game and you can tell things are coming to a head. Soul Reaver 3 is gonna be bitchin! Wait, it's another Blood Omen? But I don't...what?

Sorry, you didn't win today, but here's your consolation prize: Blood Omen 2 (The Legacy of Kain Series). So instead of giving me the story I wanted, you gave me the story no one wanted. Wonderful. Blood Omen 2 picks up from nothing. It inserts a time in Kain's past that has essentially no connection to the original Blood Omen. And best of all, the game plays worse than Soul Reaver 2! So to sum it up, pointless story and bad gameplay. Yeah, this one wasn't exactly a winner. Kain got beat by this dude and sleeps for 200 years, then wakes up to walk around this city and pull levers to open doors for about 10 hours. The story is completely forgetful because WHO CARES!? WHERE'S RAZIEL AND TIME TRAVEL AND ALL THAT CRAZY CRAP!? Guh, anyway, with the exception of two plot points, one about the big bad (which is explicitly explained in Defiance) and another involving the last of the pre-vampire people (which is basically rendered impossible in Defiance), this entire game can be forgotten. Lucky for us, those two don't come up until the last hour of the game. I just, I don't know if I have the patience anymore guys. That was such a let down. I mean, it had tank controls for the love of pete. How does that happen?

Lucky for me, Legacy of Kain: Defiance was on a sweet sale on gog.com, so I decided to finish it. It's kind of a shame that Defiance was the last game they were able to make. The combat was simplified enough to the point where it was actually kind of fun, and the story telling got to a good point here. Splitting the time in the game between Raziel and Kain works pretty well. There are times, especially in the beginning, where I did not care what Kain was doing, but had to get through it to see what Raziel was up to. They do a good job of making them play slightly different so it actually feels like two different characters. They try to explain the mind fuck that has been the story of this series, and do a pretty good job of it, even if I had to jump on the internet immediately after finishing it to make sure I understood it. When there are multiple timelines to your story, you're pushing it. Raziel and Kain get their ending. We learn who the Elder God is, why the vampires are vampires, what the hell Raziel is, and what the deal with the squigly sword is. My biggest gripe was the lack of camera control. They went for a Devil May Cry type system, but it was a little two easy to get ahead of the camera changes and not see what you were doing. Oh, and the platforming, holy hell, the platforming was terrible. Though now that I think back on it, it was awful through the entire series. So, I guess they nailed it...?

All in all, it was a fun trip down memory lane. While I'd be hard pressed to recommend these games to anyone these days, I will say this: if you really want to relive the Soul Reaver series, just play Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance. Every other game is either pointless in the grand scheme or boiled down to a few sentences. It is nice to see that Crystal Dynamics moved on to a series that was in bad need of a reboot with Tomb Raider and Amy Henning moved on to write Jack and Daxter and Uncharted. Kind of rare to see when so many companies are shutting down left and right. So with that ends my classic game run for the time being. Gotta catch up on my steam sale purchases. But I'll find another old series and I'll let you read about it.

Until then, stay living in the past.  It was way better then, right?