I have been waiting to replay the Kain series for a while now and now that I have my PS2 back it's the perfect time. I own 4 of the games and played all 5. I rented Blood Omen 2, its easily the worst in the series, not a bad game but not as good as the others. Also its more of a side story so it doesn't really matter if I play that one. So I will play the 4 main games in the series of course starting with Blood Omen. This time I will probably do a much better job of following along with the story cause instead of year breaks between games I will play them all back to back. Glorious voice acting is upon me, to this day it's still the best voice acted series out there.

I have a feeling this one not many played. It came out in 1996 about a year into the PS1 life. I was following the game for a while cause it was am epic  Zelda game with Vampires, what is not to love. What I didn't expect was how well told the story and voice acting was. Remember at this time we were playing games like Resident Evil, so going from that to this is world's apart. This game also introduced me to Silicon Knights, I knew they had a great future after playing this game, sadly this maybe their greatest achievement. (Yes I know Eternal Darkness was excellent but this game was special). It is a shame they lost the rights to Kain as I wonder how the story would have turned out. This game has a story for babies compared to what happens later on in the series, it went completely crazy with the time travel.

I started the game up yesterday, I still remember all the lines to the opening movie, "Call your dogs! They can feast on your corpses!". What struck me the most is how PCish this game feels. It has this early 90's PC game sound and look to it, you'd expect dialogue like this from a PC RPG. It was different than what was mostly on consoles at the time.

The game is still a blast to play minus the annoying load times which is the only major blemish on an otherwise great experience. The world is gigantic with plenty of areas you quite can't reach yet just like Zelda. Combat is a bit slow but the variety of spells and objects makes it interesting enough and the difficulty is balanced very well. I have played for about 5 hours now and still have a long long way to go, this is one of the largest top down action RPGS out there.

I have gone through a few dungeons which are basically trap riddled, enemy filled areas with many switch "puzzles" (not so much puzzles as its more find the switch of the door kind of thing). This is where masterpieces like Zelda set themselves apart, when you get into a dungeon in Zelda you are in for one incredibly designed, puzzle/action filled area. Here it's a linear trek that's disguised as a maze. The most complex puzzles come from using one of your spells at the right time or pulling three switches in the right order. I still have not acquired the control mind spell which adds a bit of the Zelda puzzle flare to the game but never to it's full potential.

I still have a long way to go. I have played the first half of this game a bunch of times, for some reason I never finished it after the first time I did. So I have strong memories of the start, I still remember everything up until about Vorador's mansion, after that my memory is fuzzy besides a few major moments at the end.

So have you guys played this game? Have you played the Soul Reaver games but never this one?

Dvader said:

I don't know, he seems to fight with every company that works with SK. Also he takes forever to make a game, this one took over 3 years and they had to double their team. He is ambitious but I don't know if he knows how to manage.

Legacy of Kain turned out well, right?

But for his other games, I think his ambition is destroying him...maybe his pride.

I can't believe the Canadian government gave him 400million to waste it on Too Human 2.

What a silly title: Too Human 2!

ASK_Story said:

Legacy of Kain turned out well, right?

But for his other games, I think his ambition is destroying him...maybe his pride.

I can't believe the Canadian government gave him 400million to waste it on Too Human 2.

What a silly title: Too Human 2!

Yeah LoK was excellent, so was Eternal Darkness. The MGS remake was fine, it was what it was. Then they took forever to make Too Human and they are stuck on that series. They haven't done much cause they take so much time to do anything.

What is going on with Canada??? It should be called Two Human or 2 Human.

Ravenprose said:

The only game in this series that I played was Soul Reaver on Dreamcast. It was good, but I never finished it.

Good, just good... never finished... *cries*

Agnates said:

Soul Reaver was pretty sweet and run in silky smooth 60 fps on Dreamcast. The PS version was really good too though, 30 fps but mostly the same. And yeah it had issues but it was at least far more organic and fluid than other (non-Zelda) games of the era like Tomb Raider, and it did have just a few block puzzles too, which was nice. Awesome environments. Not to mention the gameplay was practically a 3D Castlevania done RIGHT Konami eat your heart out sort of thing. The combat felt really nice back then too, I liked using the different weapons in the environment to impale people with. I never got the sequels though, they didn't seem to advance the series in any way. I tried some Kain-focused game on PC (3D, not the original here) but that one sucked ass, it was horrible.

Yup, I totally agree. The Kain game you played was Blood Omen 2, that is the black sheep, the one I don't own.