Is Legacy of Kain Worth Buying?

just download it user

Most people could care less, I mean shit so long as you wait about 2 weeks to a month any fresh recently released stuff won't bring any heat on you if it's AAA otherwise who gives a shit?

In my opinion the best game in the series (Blood Omen) isn't on Steam or GOG. And unfortunately we won't get a solid version of it til those Russians behind Blood Omnicide finish it.

The PC version of Soul Reaver was a really rushed port. I remember it had this bug where all of the boss themes just don't play. And it completely lacks mouselook.

Which is jarring when playing SR2 by comparison which is a much better port and includes mouselook. But it's a worse game in general that was mostly full of B-C grade ideas that didn't make the cut in SR1. (Like 90% of the game was exploring elemental Reaver chambers which were going to be an optional unlockable thing in SR1 but were cut for time)

Defiance is a Devil May Cry clone and not a particularly good one.

Blood Omen 2 is probably the most forgettable game in the series and it's unsurprising since it was recycled from a game that was going to release on the Dreamcast until Sega hastily discontinued it.

The LoK series never had great gameplay, but it had an excellent story. I recently played all the games. and enjoyed them, but if OP can't stomach the outdated graphics and some questionable gameplay decisions, then you might as well watch a walkthrough on youtube. Oh and before playing Soul Reaver 1, play Blood Omen 1, you will have to pirate this game, since it's not sold anymore, and it's in copyright hell. And remember play/watch the games in release order, this is very important.

You can just emulate the PSX version

In terms of "just watch a playthrough on youtube" I dislike this line of thinking since part of the appeal to playing Blood Omen for me was the feeling of playing it.

Specifically something not a lot of people are aware of with Blood Omen is the game is full of secrets, really well hidden ones. There's an enormous amount of hidden areas and hidden secrets, some of which are hidden in such a clever way. Like for instance

This is debatable. I'll say Blood Omen and Soul Reaver had excellent atmospheres and the plots with both were mostly good. (I'll say mostly because SR1 ends in a cliffhanger and parts of the plot just don't happen entirely because it was cut. Like one of Raziel's brothers just doesn't appear in the game despite being planned and his clan appearing as enemies).

However the storyline to Legacy of Kain was clearly not intended to have sequels. The devs of Blood Omen stated they would've gone in a completely different direction had they not lost the rights to Eidos. (Their idea was to make a game about Vorador as a prequel). Soul Reaver itself started as a new IP that was turned into a sequel to Blood Omen. This would occur again with Blood Omen 2. Soul Reaver 2 has a notable lackluster storyline that is mostly just really confusing and focuses a lot on time travel and prophecy. Defiance is also really lackluster overall in terms of story.

I don't actually think it is

I know Silicon Knights went out of business in 2014. They also stated that they sold publishing rights to the game under "Financial duress". Eidos actually sold the PS1 version of the game on PSN.

In my opinion, the reason Eidos started to put Legacy of Kain on Steam was solely due to Nosgoth and their attempted reboot of Legacy of Kain that was still in development. Hence why they didn't bother with re-releasing any other back catalog games from around the same time period like Revenant. Blood Omen had a PC port that's notoriously hard to get working on modern PCs. Since they didn't have the source code it makes sense they'd just skip over it rather than try and get it working.

Interestingly enough one of the original creators of Blood Omen called the series "diluted and dysfunctional". Which I personally agree with. It's unlikely there will be another game in the series at this point and I'd rather see it die than get rebooted like Thief 2014.

Blood omens original creators are notoriously butthurt about losing the IP after the first game.
And I cant blame them i would be too.

I can see why. It's clear the devs behind it really cared about the game and that it was just going to be the first of many of what they wanted to make.

Apparently they were also going to make "Kain 2" but Eidos was dissatisfied by the quality of what they were working on and axed it.

Then again Silicon Knights wanted to make Too Human as far back as the PS1 and were basically given creative control on the game. To the point where it turned into a bloated terrible game that they sued Epic over, and got counter sued because they used the engine without paying royalties for it.

Honestly, i find all legacy of kain games save defiance to be utterly frustrating.
Either the hitboxes, pacing, fucking block puzzles or annyoing combat, its like they are trying their hardest to make the games shit when i just wanna have a confusing and grimdark adventure.

they are pretty mediocre games with good writing. that's their best quality. combat's boring, puzzles are boring, the level design never really hits any of the high points and a lot of content got cut in all the games.

also the console versions are usually the best ones.

That's really only Soul Reaver. Which had almost half of the game cut

Blood Omen by comparison was pretty much finished when it released. There was only really small things cut that most people wouldn't have noticed. Like one of Kain's swords was cut, Kain was supposed to have a shield at one point, there was going to be a secret area with a pirate ship (that's still in the game you just need the walk through walls code to access) and there was going to be this minigame where you'd play chess with Vorador by mind controlling chess pieces.

Most of this was really small and will probably get reimplemented once Blood Omnicide is finished. Especially the chess match since it used pre-exisitng sprites for the characters and the voice acting remained in the files. They apparently cut it because there was some bug they couldn't fix.

Life sucks

They're at least still working on it.

I remember a few years ago they hadn't updated for like 3 years and their site actually went offline. And I immediately thought the project was dead.

The original developer is long dead so it's perfectly okay to pirate all the games.

They are worth playing just for the story alone, not worth buying as it puts money into Eidos' pocket (or Square Enix Europe if you prefer that name). I want the series to stay dead as we've seen what they did to Thief, I will never forgive them for that. Devs today just don't understand how to make a good story game, they are completely retarded and I would never put my trust into any team to make a good (rebooted) LoK game.

Legacy of kain always had this air of edgy 12 year old fantasy about it.

Didn't help that the only person I knew who liked the games was a kid with an iq of 80 (being generous there).

The characters are edgy but it's really not that bad, since they still end up being fairly convincing.

Take that back or I'll rip out your mom's spinal cord and stab you with it, human.

You have no taste.

Not exactly.From their about page: