Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen – The Beginning of a Dark Saga (1996)

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is an action-adventure game developed by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics in 1996 for PlayStation and a year later for Windows. Currently it’s available for purchase on GOG. I’ve played it on my relatively old laptop using Heroic on EndeavourOS. It ran perfectly fine… after hanging on the first movie few times. Though it crashed on one of the movies during gameplay once or twice near the end. I’m going to blame Wine for that issue (it’s a coin toss between that and some other thing just going wrong). Also, I guess It’s somewhat serendipitous that I’m posting this so soon after the Soul Reaver remakes dropped.

Overview

I’ve seen this game referred to as “Legend of Zelda for Adults”. From my cursory knowledge of LoZ it seems somewhat accurate, as it has dungeons with an upgrade that in then used throughout the dungeon with optional backtracking to previously visited places to get to items and secrets that have now become accessible. Blood Omen also happens to be a great vampire game, the best I’ve played so far. Kain has the classical spread of vampire abilities, ranging from controlling blood; through turning into bats beasts and mist; and ending with various kinds of magic.

Aesthetics

The game is pretty old, but despite that I personally think it still looks pretty good. Yes, the resolution is tiny; yes the sprites look kinda blurry when you play in fullscreen anyway… but it is clear enough and it does have it’s charm. The game is dark, grim and bloody. The last one is to be expected with a game about a vampire. On top of that they do manage to convey the dark, opressive mood of the world. The environments are varied and all quite pretty looking. From forests and towns, through swamps and snow-covered mountains and ending with scorched and ravaged wasteland Nosgoth as seen in this game looks very good, despite it’s aged presentation. The music is great; it fits the mood very well. Though certain tracks have an awkward pause as they loop. The other minor issue is that often when voice lines play, they replace the music. Speaking of voice acting. It’s absolutely stellar. Both the delivery as well as the writing. Kain sounds incredible. His and Mortanius’ lines were the most memorable to me, which isn’t to say any others were bad. On the contrary, all of them are very good… It’s just that all others have relatively little screen-time, compared to those two.

Story

Speaking of the writing, the series is renowned for its story. This title, while definitely good, doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Don’t take me wrong, It’s good, very good even — it’s just that I expected something… more. It might be that my expectations were overblown due to reading and hearing how great of a story this series has. The game starts from just before the moment the protagonist gets assassinated. Only to accept a bargain in order to raise from the grave as a vampire and avenge himself… …Which he does almost immediately. But his benefactor tells him that his killers were merely pawns in someone else’s ploy, and that he should seek the Pillars of Nosgoth. And so he does. While Kain just unquestioningly following along feels somewhat off… it does fit with his characterisation of an arrogant noble that also got magical vampire power. And is somewhat required by the fact that it is a game, after all. The story does involve vengeance; intrigue; demons and heroes; vampires and a bit of time shenanigans. I won’t talk much more besides one more minor nitpick: the final boss. If you missed one of the secrets, it might as well be a “Giant Space Flea from Nowhere” if not for a technicality (which is an optional thing, if not another secret).

Gameplay – Exploration

I’ve mentioned secrets; the game tracks how many secrets you’ve collected and there’s 100 of them (I got 70-something (and that was with looking up a few things in a guide)). Many of the optional areas don’t count as secrets there… and one secret area was so secret it was discovered only a few years ago. Some of the places can be accessed during certain times. Have I mentioned that Blood Omen has a day & night cycle? It does, alongside with changing lunar phases. There are a few places that can only be accessed during a night of full moon. They aren’t necessary, but are rife with useful loot, like enough “Hearts of Darkness” to face tank everything and still have a healthy margin. Those secrets are pretty much the old-school “smear your face on all walls in hopes of triggering something” kind of secrets, often requiring you to trigger a few things in one (or multiple) areas to open up a way to a stash of upgrades. A nice thing is that upgrades aren’t one-and-done kind of deal, where you use them only in their respective dungeon… for the most part. While the forms will come up relatively often, the non-combat spells come up less often and even then good chunk of those cases is a “Secret”. Outside of dungeons the game teases you with places you can’t reach, like a house with entrance blocked with a rock pillar. Once you get a way to shatter those, you might remember to get back there and collect the loot there. And there are many similar cases.

Gameplay – Combat

But now we come to arguably the weakest part of the game; or , if you will, the part that aged the worst. Namely combat. As I mentioned earlier and as you might have gleaned from the screenshots sprinkled throughout this post, Blood Omen is a 2D sprite based isometric action-adventure. The basics are pretty simple: you have a weapon with which you swing. You also have a spell “equipped”. When you press the attack, Kain attacks in the direction he’s facing (and he can face 8). Enemies are similarly limited. There are a few weapons with different uses. For example, the mace is very good at stunning human enemies, allowing you to slurp up their blood after usually to hits, instead of requiring over 4 with other weapons. The type of armour you wear also affects you slightly, though I’ve basically stayed with the armour that dealt damage back to the attackers; occasionally switching to the blood-draining one when I knew there weren’t any enemies with bad blood. Speaking of enemies and their blood: there are 4 types of blood: red, blue, black and green. Red is found mostly in humans and vampires and drinking it restores health. Blue is predominantly found in wraiths that appear once you revisit a room; drinking it restores magic. Black and green appear in demons, undead and some monsters; the former directly removes health while the latter poisons Kain. And then there are spells and consumables. They occupy the same slots and several of the consumables or “artifacts” are referred to as “spells” by Kain. They are fundamentally simmilar, with one costing magic per use and the other being “single use” (although the direct combat ones are pretty common). They offer a varied repertoire of abilities, from utility, defense and a couple ways to get rid of foes. Such as making them implode; turning them into goop; destroying their souls or ripping them into pieces. It all adds some more flavour to the combat, alongside the evil laughter of Kain, as he merrily swings his weapon. What I found quite aggravating however, was the wonky hit detection. Sometimes projectiles that are flying far away from you will hit you anyway. Other times enemy swings will miss you completely. And the same applies to your attacks as well. The other annoying thing is the necessity to open up the menu over and over to change weapons, spells and armour. It can get tedious, especially that Axes and the Soul Reaver (yes, the awesome sword is present here) make it impossible to use spells&artifacts.