Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996)

Gamer comrades! I need some advice. I started playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (the '96 version) on a whim before starting the Soul Reaver remaster. I think I'm about halfway through (around 6 hours and 30 minutes), and while it's interesting, not a bad game, and not that long, I'm not sure if I should continue.

It's very much a game of its time and I don't blame it for it. But it is kinda slow and with tedious elements. I'm intrigued and not bored, but I also don't feel motivated to play it anymore. Instead of continuing, I could watch the Dungeon Chill video to see what happens and how it evolves.

What would you do?

This title is a dark, atmospheric action-RPG that blends gothic storytelling with hack-and-slash gameplay, with one of the most badass protagonists of all time, Kain, a nobleman turned vampire, on a bloody quest for vengeance and power. The game is rich in lore, with a mature narrative, excellent voice acting, and a haunting soundtrack that elevates its grim tone, I particularly like dark fantasy and this game has a very unique aesthetic to it.

While the isometric visuals and controls feel dated today, they were ambitious for the time, the combat is simple but effective, and the puzzle elements keep exploration engaging, similar to something like The Legend of Zelda. Load times and backtracking can be frustrating, but the compelling plot and unique anti-hero protagonist make it a cult classic. This is a bold, story-driven vampire epic with flaws, but unforgettable atmosphere and it's mechanics are engaging enough to make up for it's limitations.

What truly sets the game apart is how it embraces moral ambiguity, the protagonist is not a reluctant hero or a misunderstood savior, but a selfish, cruel, and fully aware of it. The narrative constantly challenges you with themes of fate, corruption, and sacrifice, making the journey through Nosgoth feel tragic rather than triumphant. The overworld is vast and interconnected, encouraging exploration through constant acquisition of new abilities like mist form and bat transformation, which opens new areas and reinforce a satisfying sense of progression.

Even decades later, this game stands as a foundation for what this series would become. Its dialogue, brooding tone, and willingness to let you embody a villain were rare for its era. Though modern audiences may struggle with its pacing and technical limitations, those who appreciate rich world-building and dark fantasy storytelling will find a rewarding experience. It’s not just a vampire game, it’s a grim, operatic descent into power, destiny, and damnation.

VAE VICTUS!

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.

Vampire: a bite to the Past

Beat in 55 days 14 hrs with prestige prince. I found 51% of secrets, had 2058 kills, 606 feedings and 753 mutilations. I almost had max health and mana but saw no need to scour the world for secrets. I did not like how some places could only be passed during the full moon, and how that concept was not mentioned at all in game. I had no idea what to expect when I started this game and was surprised to die at the beginning. I managed to kill 1 enemy and thought I was missing a defensive move or something. It was easy enough to avoid enemy attacks by moving in and out between their swings, and I absolutely loved the mechanic of draining enemy blood for healing. I also loved the different kinds of blood; blue from undead to restore mana, green from nasty monsters that was poisonous, and I don't know what black blood did. It was cool how in many dungeons enemies would respawn as ghosts, making the world a bit more grounded and offering some strategy around keeping healing sources alive. I had trouble with the orange mage enemies because of their ranged attacks. Even shooting them from range was not perfectly safe. I got stuck right after getting that magic missile spell because I missed a switch, and had to check a walkthrough. I played the entire game zoomed out and likely would have seen that switch if I was zoomed in. I had trouble sneaking around in human form because I did not realize it used mana. Later on I made sure to keep my mana high by letting the game run while I did something else. I most often found it better to avoid enemies and hazards using the alternate forms. The biggest trouble I had was defeating the spear knight boss because I could not figure out how to damage him. I had to check the walkthrough to find out that weapons had a special attack from tapping the attack button twice. I had been just pressing once or holding the button down. Would have been nice to be told that in game. The rest of the game was not too much trouble, and I watched both the good and bad endings.

I used mostly the iron sword for early to mid game for its quick hit and run attacks, and the decent area effect. Later on I paired it with the flesh armor to maximize healing, but the sword was nearly useless against the strongest enemies. I thought the mace sucked until I learned about the double tap special. Then the stun was great for human enemies, whether I wanted health or not. It was not so good against multiple enemies. I did not like the axes at all because they were too slow to do hit and run attacks. The special whirlwind attack was powerful and good for taking out multiple enemies, or I could just avoid the enemies or use repel magic to avoid damage. The flame sword was the overall best weapon and I combined it with chaos armor and repel; this combo was efficient for killing all enemies and most bosses. It was good for destroying enemies that revived, but had to be balanced against not being able to drain burnt blood. The soul reaver was fun with 1 hit kills, but the mana cost made it less efficient than repel + flame sword. I never used the wraith armor because why allow damage to directly drain mana when I could spend that mana to be immune to all damage? That was redundant and I think the wraith armor should have increased damage taken while boosting mana regen for a mage style. I did not bother to use the bone armor much because it also seemed a bit redundant with the alternate forms and just killing everything. I preferred the basic iron armor until the late game because it supposedly had the best protection. The equipment really needed numerical stats to tell exactly what was different, though I did like how everything was useful in its own way. The worst part of the game was the menus; the loading time to access them and how awkward they were to navigate. They strongly discouraged switching gear and broke up the gameplay far too much. The quick menus for spells and items were a little better but I still had to deal with the menus when I wanted something other than the 4 slots. The game really needed a full size quick menu with access to every spell, item and equipment. It boggles my mind how they created and kept such an unhandy interface. The spells were cool and I liked the puzzles around controlling enemies. It was weird though how taking over the spirit of skeletons would allow the body to get back up and attack its own spirit. I mostly used repel, followed by the occasional nuke. The blood healing nuke was useful to convert mana into health. I did not use the big nukes much and did not get the lightning spell. Whenever I needed health I would teleport to home and drain the first gravedigger until I was full. I used light magic quite a bit early on to see better, though later on it was not needed. This game was quite dark. I barely used any items at all; a few healing and poison cures, and some shurikens just to get rid of them so I could pick up more. I used energy banks to keep repel going during the final boss. The offensive items were redundant and I saw zero need to use them. I used mist form to avoid enemies and traps, but a few times I was cornered by multiple enemies and had to revert to normal to fight my way out. I used werewolf form to get around faster and jump over traps, though the speed made it difficult to control and the dark fur made it difficult to tell where I was. The speed helped during combat though I only found it better than other weapons during the full moon. The werewolf was needed for a teleporting boss to keep up with her.

The music and voice acting were excellent and really helped with the grim atmosphere. The story was hard to follow with all the weird names and lack of text to read. Kain himself was great and it was fun playing a villain/anti hero. The gameplay was worse than Zelda games, with serviceable combat, a good variety of appropriately themed abilities, some metroidvania style backtracking, simple puzzles, and that very awkward interface. Despite the flaws, I would have loved this game back in the day and it is definitely still worth playing.

7.8/10

This is so weird.

I am constantly nagging about stuff that is bothering me about Blood Omen. I see so many flaws that I feel could be easily avoided. But at the same time something about this game really fascinates me. I can’t really say what exactly. It’s just the general atmosphere and how everything fits together that makes it so unique.

Though I complain a lot about it while playing this game is something really special and that keeps me going.

A dark and twisted Legend of Zelda. There are plenty of elements that feel dated and can arguably hold it back from appreciation, but I would encourage you to push through them. This game finally got released on GOG and from what I've read it's probably the definitive version of the game that you should play. If I had a little more patience, it's the version I would have bought. Instead, I played it off the PS3 store as part of my October horror binge. They hadn't announced the release on GOG prior to my purchase.

You play Kain. A decadent blue blood who is assassinated at the start of the game. In raw anger and narcissism, he accepts a Faustian offer to come back from the dead to extract his revenge. What ensues is a sadistic and decadent conquest to Godhood.

The writing and voice acting is superb even by modern standards. It surpasses Metal Gear Solid (which I do like). Simon Templeman is awesome as Kain and so bougie in all of his deliveries:

"The town of Steinchencröe bore with it the infamous aroma of its inhabitants. In life, I would not have graced the place with my presence. In death, I merely added to the stench."

The art direction and music are as strong as the writing and voice acting. It's surprisingly colorful in contrast to other similar thematic games like Diablo 2. Despite these lush and decadent colors, the dynamic lighting and plethora of gore still convey an oppressively dark atmosphere. This was probably the goriest game at it's release. It never feels grotesque thanks to the isometric view and pixel art. Still, the dated graphics don't hide just how twisted and sadistic the characters are.

Game play is a bit dated, but manages to be cathartic thanks to the large arsenal at Kain's disposal. It's an isometric action adventure game most akin to Legend of Zelda. To be fair, even OG Zelda didn't have great combat. There are puzzles, though they're rarely more complicated than push a switch or kill an enemy. That said, this game is filled to the brim with secrets and heavily rewards exploration.

Throughout the journey you unlock artifacts, spells and weapons. Artifacts are single use items that can stack up to 99 times. Spells are reusable but limited by mana. Spells and artifacts boil down to kill and utility. There's plenty of overlap in how you use spells, but each one adds flavor to game play. You have an artifact that flays the flesh off your enemy, one that causes their body to shrink until they implode, another that causes their flesh to rot and spread maggots. I mean hell, you have a spell that calls down a lightning storm that will destroy an entire screen of enemies. By the end of the game, you are a veritable evil God and it's a blast to play through.

The last thing I will highlight is the inclusion of fast travel that feels thematically appropriate since it's done through bat form. This is a feature that would go on as a standard inclusion in almost any open world exploration game. This wasn't the first game to include it, but it's a welcomed feature that further encourages exploration. It was needed given a massive flaw to the game...

Load screens... while this game is technically open world, it's divided into numerous small quadrants, similar to Legend of Zelda. The big difference here is that each quadrant requires a loading screen... to switch equipment requires a loading screen... to enter a building requires a loading screen... This adds up significantly and if it weren't for the fast travel, I would have cut down my exploration significantly because of it. Another issue, which the GOG version apparently fixed, is slow downs when a certain amount of pixels were on screen. This would happen with a ton of enemies or particle effects on screen and are commonplace late into the game. Finally, combat is janky when you try to fight at angles. Sometimes your attacks won't hit or enemies will clip attacks through walls/barriers. I think the game is worth pushing past the jank.

From its moody visuals and audio to its delightfully extra and grimdark dialogue from literally everyone, Blood Omen is a game that's all about letting the player be a bloody, literally, vampire. But how well does it go about that task?

First things first, the presentation is aged. Very much so. Despite being a 2D game on the PlayStation and PC, in 1996, the graphics are kind of... Well... Aged. Everything is quite blurry and messy, even on PC. Compare this to Symphony of the Night which released one year later and also seeks to depict a moody gothic atmosphere and it's clear which one wins in the art department. The FMVs also aged terribly and even go into narm territory in some instances. On the flip side, I did find the lighting effects and general art direction to be pleasing. I just think it was not executed as well as it could be, by trying to be too detailed on limited hardware.

Sound wise, the game features some very good voice acting (Kain, Mortanius, and others) which makes up for some very bad voice acting from some of the bosses, mostly those with higher pitched voices. The music and ambiance is very moody and gothic; very reminiscent of Planescape Torment. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of repetition, particularly Kain's war cry and some of the human healing potions.

So visually and aurally, this game is hit and miss, more hit than miss on the audio side. How's the gameplay?

The game is certainly not the most original or groundbreaking. It's a isometric perspective game, you enter dungeons and solve puzzles. It's basically a Zelda game with 75% less puzzles. The basic melee combat is kind of lackluster at the beginning to be totally honest. You can wack people with a sword and the final hit will stun them, allowing you to drink their blood for a health boost. But then you get some spells. And some upgrades. And those spells are some of the most fun and broken magic I've ever seen. A form that lets you be impervious to physical damage and walk through some cracked walls? Dope! A spell that reflects all ranged attacks back at the attackers, which instantly kills them if it hits? Double dope! It makes you impervious to all damage in general? And you can attack out of it? And it stacks with the armor that reflects melee damage back at the attackers? Amazing! You want a sword that instagibs anything including most bosses? You got it! You want axes that you can pull a whirling dervish off with? Blood Omen's got you covered. Wanna be a werewolf? Wait what? Sure! Wanna turn your foes into a pile of putrid goo that turns anyone who walks into it into another pile of putrid goo? Yes! Wanna turn em inside out? You know you do. Wanna suck every single enemy on screen's blood? You're hurt, of course you do.

This game has so much fun and bloody overpowered magic that it honestly bumps the whole game up a star. If it wasn't enough that the magic is fun, the game also features a very ahead of it's time fast travel system which makes getting around the somewhat convoluted overworld a breeze. Good thing too because Kain is SLOW.

The story is presented in a very melodramatic and gothic manner which is exactly what a game like this needs. The basic premise is that you are a nobleman who is seemingly mugged and assassinated at random and then brought back as a vampire by a necromancer. Turns out it goes a whole lot deeper than you could have ever imagined, and you will carve a bloody swathe through all of Nosgoth to get to the bottom of this. Kain is kind of a judgemental dick, and I absolutely love that about him.

Overall, the game is not the best game in the world and it shows it's age very much in several places. But as far as feeling and mood go, Kain lives up to his legacy.

Blood Omen is probably the best 2D RPG - Action game I have ever played. The storyline is amazing, the gameplay is fluid and attaching and the characters are well built and designed to be unique and remembered.

The learning curve might be a little steep at times, but when you understand the basics and you start slashing enemies and drinking blood from peasants, you feel the power of Kain, and you get connected to his feelings and story.

I didn't expect a game from the '90s would give me this fun in 2020, but it delivered amazingly.

The transformations, the weapons, its different consumable items, spells and armors to use and discover, the transformations and the voice and CGI driven story arch is amazing, and it sticks with you.

The 2D world is well detailed and the lighting work is stunning for a game this old.

With this game you get the feel of those good old times when a game was worth by itself, no DLC's, no added stuff. Just a complete really well-crafted piece of art with all the content out there for you to enjoy.

I completed the game on 42 in-game days, probably 20 ~ 25 hours of gameplay. Its puzzles can be frustrating at times and you might get stuck, but it's really rewarding when you find your way out and keep on going with the story. The more you play, the more powerful you are, and the more you love the game.

It has only one real drawback: load times are long, so arm yourself with patience. It is still more than worth it to play. And also, some boss fights can get a little repetitive since the same combat technique is used for some bosses, but since the narrative is well designed and delivered, you will always want to slash those bastards hard.

This is one of the best games in the Legacy Of Kain Series. Don't let this jewel go by without playing it.

i'm liking this a lot so far! i'm playing it with a walkthrough closeby, checking it every so often to make sure i'm not missing anything due to the cryptic nature of games from this era. the voice acting and world-building are really exceptional! the gameplay isn't really doing a lot for me (however, the new spells and weapons are fun to try and unlocked at a pretty rapid pace), but it's functional enough that i'm more than willing to play through it all to see where the story goes.

i'm about four hours in right now, just about to start chapter 4 of 9, according to the walkthrough.