80%PlayStation

First of all, Legay of Kain is very different from the rest of its series (I think a single picture on the Internet will be enough to inform you). It looks different and it plays different. Actually it not only looks different : it looks older and, well, plays older too. The game has only taken the flaws of the PS1 generation, to the point that I have often wondered if it wouldn't have played better on SNES. Anyway.

At its core, Legacy of Kain is more of a pure ARPG, with a lot of dungeon crawling and even hack'n'slash stuff most people probably weren't aware of at the time, since its LoK's prior to Diablo.

So yes, basically we're facing a very brutal 2D Zelda (in every sense of the word brutal), devoid of absolutely everything that makes a Zelda comfortable, gameplay-wise. It's strangely effective and really addictive after the first few hours. The care given to the lore, with the extremely dark atmosphere and score, probably has a lot to do with this but I ended up very satisfied (although tired by the loading times... d*** PS1!).

75%PlayStation

Классный лор, неплохой геймплей. Эдакая мрачная версия Зельды. Но какие же долгие в игре загрузки всего и вся. Тут куча магии и оружия, но лишний раз так лениво переключаться между ними из за скорости входа в инвентарь и выхода из него. Да и сама игра плохо себя чувствует, теряя изрядное количество кадров в секунду, когда на экране появляется больше трёх врагов или проджектайлов.

100%PC

*Warning: 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.

75%PC

If one can deal with the slow movement, laborious combat and ponderous pacing, then riches await in the form of a unique story and world of Nosgoth. You play as Kain, the titular vampire recently brought back to life by Mortanius, the Guadian of Death and member of the Circle bound to the pillars of Nosgoth. Nosgoth, as is revealed, is not a place anyone should ever want to live in and inhabit, and this is all richly detailed in the 2D sprite graphics. Nosgoth is, however, a place of incredible intrigue and full of secrets and optional areas that reward exploration. There's even a mechanic that involves phases of the moon and that certain dungeons only become available when it's a full moon.

The dungeons mostly involve pushing buttons, dodging traps, pushing boulders and such, while dealing with the various human and nonhuman enemies. A few more mechanics are involved later on, such as mind control, but again is mostly to just for pushing a button to open up a path. The puzzle solving is all fairly easy and most are just there as interactions to unlock secrets, which there are plenty of with exactly 100 littered throughout the world.

The game provides a number of options in dealing with enemies, but is limited and made frustrating by the inventory system. Besides an arsenal of weapons and armor, Kain learns magic spells and can use items. The inventory system allows for up to four "hotkey" spells and items, and require going through a series of menus to get to spell you or item you may need that isn't hotkeyed at that time. I remember playing on the CD-ROM (and PSX) how incredibly frustrating this was because every time you moved to your inventory it caused a loading screen, and then a second loading screen back to the world. The GoG version alleviates the loading screens but not the tediousness of inventory and menu navigation. Made even worse is when Kain has to switch between weapons, which aren't hotkeyed, to solve puzzles, but then that weapon takes up two hands so Kain cannot use magic to deal with the next puzzle, requiring another trip to the inventory. Overall, a system like Diablo, or even something like what Secret of Mana uses, would have been vastly superior, and would have even solved almost all of the pacing problems with the game.

While the game does provide options, it's quickly apparent that spells/items are vastly superior to weapons. My attempt to limit the number of times I had to go into the inventory meant I either outright avoided enemies or used the most efficient means item/spell possible at that point in the game. Most of the enemies are fairly bland, and most of the bosses are laughably pathetic in challenge and essentially require no special tactics to deal with.

As Kain is a vampire, he requires nourishment in the form of blood from the human inhabitants. Using the plain broadsword or mace stuns the enemies allowing Kain to suck out their blood and refill his health, but some of the other weapons have tradeoffs where they kill enemies outright by doing more damage. Enemies that die inside dungeons and homes can respawn as shades which allow Kain to suck out their spirit force for mana. Later on Kain gets access to an ability that pulls the blood out of everything on the screen, which is easily the coolest ability in the game.

The spell effects and spritework is quite good, but I found it a bit challenging to find the details in things due to the overhead nature and camera. The music is serviceable, but mostly there to add to the ambience.

Overall, the combat hasn't aged well at all, but the excellent world building, compelling story and masterful VA performance by Simon Templeman (playing Kain) still makes this worth playing--on the GoG version at least. It's interesting how little the story of BO has to do with two of it's sequels (SR1 and BO2) yet is almost essential to fully understand the events of SR2 and Defiance.

60%Emulated

Blood Omen arguably shows its age most in the frequent loading times, sometimes janky hitboxes, and the clunky inventory that all too often staggers the pacing. A good 20% of the screen is taken up by the health, mana, and inventory icons, making for a limited view. The camera can be zoomed in and out at will and I found this to be a necessary evil—the distant angle makes it hard to see some enemy types in dark settings while the closer option utilizes some dizzying screen panning to keep the action in front of you.

Despite being somewhat of a dungeon crawler, there really is no incentive to deal with most enemies other than to make your life a little easier. There is no leveling system or loot, only the occasional item found in barrels and the equipment mandatory to progressing. Even so, there are a lot of secrets hidden throughout the environments and exploring is often rewarded with blood fountains that fortify your abilities or health extending vials. Shops and friendly NPCs are absent, forcing you to burglarize the locals for supplies as they chase you through the streets. What really caught me by surprise was how competent the writing and voice acting are across the board—Kain’s observations of his surroundings and descriptions of the brutal spell effects are always a treat to hear, and the story is compelling to follow. In fact, the overall presentation is fantastic and the dark, brooding atmosphere amplifies the feeling that you are completely on your own with everything and everyone being out to kill you.

Pretty early on, it is apparent that magic is much more powerful than your melee weapons, but almost every piece of equipment remains useful throughout the game. While the level design is okay, there is a ham-fisted over-reliance on floor hazards that can make a lot of areas tedious to traverse. It can be challenging to keep your health at a decent level in the early game, but the further you progress, the more the balance tips in your favor. Some spells are stupidly overpowered and I found the final stretch to be underwhelming, mostly due to my tendency to hoard items.

70%PC

Really cool game and story wise, just a little bit dated though. I've used a mod to make the game run better on modern hardware.

70%PlayStation

Normally this isn't my type of game, but I enjoyed it.

80%PC

Gameplay: 4
Story: 5
Graphics: 4
Sound: 5
Replayability: 4

80%PlayStation

Game was painful to play midway, but once you get the powerups it becomes fine.
The atmosphere and story were what kept me playing.

50%PlayStation

To be honest I've never been a fan of Silicon Knights work, and Blood Omen didn't change that opinion. There's a lot I can respect about Blood Omen though. The story is dark and serious, as is the whole game really. It's a very gritty action-RPG about a vampire on a mission of revenge. The action is super violent, with no shortage of the ability to be sadistic to everyone you encounter. You've got some cool abilities, like shape shifting, brutal magic, and horrific weaponry. However none of that matters because Blood Omen plays like a janky mess. Yeah I get this game is from 1996, but there's older action-RPGs than that which still play fine today. The biggest problem here is the camera. How can you screw up a camera in a 2D overhead game? Silicon Knights pulled it off. If you zoom the camera all the way out, the lack of detail is detrimental to actually playing the game. If you zoom the camera in, the camera will erratically pan all over the place making this player get nearly nauseous. I also found the level designs to be sprawling and messy, filled with repetitive enemies and spikes galore. Voice acting is quite good, but the music is bland, and though the graphics are well animated, the lack of detail really hurts the experience. But truly the worst thing is the constant loading. Just going into your menu can take up to five seconds alone. So overall, I can see the plot potential and good intentions of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. But the execution was highly lacking, with the overall experience feeling amateur and sadly slipshod. I'm glad Crystal Dynamics took over development for this series after this.

80%PlayStation

The start of one of the most heartbreaking series ever a story across history of vampires tyrants manipulating time streamers and deceit.

70%PlayStation

Pro: Nice lore and story. Awesome writing, voice acting and music. Unique atmosphere, genuine grimdark.
Con: Clumsy controls and camera. Mediocre graphics. Game-breaking bugs.