Thoughts on: Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen
One of my plans for 2025 was to replay through the entire Legacy of Kain series but, you know, 2025 happened (and I've gone on too much about it in this blog already). But 2026 is here, and it's time to get back into the swing of it - by playing the one game I hadn't actually played before. The first one.
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen is an excellent example of a game that's punching way above its weight, but it doesn't care in the slightest if half the punches aren't hitting the target because it's so goddamn passionate about, uh, its motivation for punching? That sentence may have lost its sensible track, it's a mess but there's a point - just like Blood Omen.
Disclaimer: I am an immense fan of the Soul Reaver games and have replayed all of them a number of times, but I'd never touched Blood Omen 1 until the year of our dog 2026. I would also be shocked if anyone who's deciding to dip into this series is starting from here, at this point. Between its decidedly different play style, the isometric view as opposed to the other games' 3D presentation and its generally muffled reputation, the game that started it all has become more of a curio for the fans to dabble in once they're knee-deep in Nosgoth, and that's further lead to Blood Omen being considered as something a little off topic; not quite related to the "main" games and thus not necessarily worth investing the time into. That's a really off-mark misconception. The sheer amount of worldbuilding, foreshadowing (whether intentional or the later games cunningly picking up threads for their own purposes) and loredumping that relates to the future games is bewildering, and Blood Omen barely even bothers with exposition dumps. Kain's frequent inner monologues offer tidbits of the world but much is left for the player to fill in the gaps, and there's something admirable in that. Playing Blood Omen gives the impression that Crystal Dynamics had a vague idea of what kind of game they'd like to make and asked someone to fill in the plot bits, without realising that person had entire tomes of worlds and characters they had created in their sparetime as a passion project and they're now going to dump every single bit of it in this unassuming action game. Blood Omen is so entrenched in its own lore that you can't help but love it - it screams of something that comes directly from someone's heart and that people put their genuine blood, sweat and tears into because they just believed in this experience so much. Kain's story starts simple - a nobleman is resurrected as a vampire to exact revenge and then tries to find a cure for his curse - but is soon expanded into so many different directions with all kinds of new players entering the field that hints at so much else going on in this world that it's almost bewildering. I feel like that's where the knowledge of the later games comes handy, particularly Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance which reference the events of this game so much that playing Blood Omen feels like a tourist sightseeing trip.
Shame the gameplay just doesn't hold up enough to carry that weight. Blood Omen has a strong concept, reminiscent of top-down Zeldas but a little more streamlined: Kain travels around Nosgoth in search of the plot McGuffins, accrues new items and powers that he can use to return to earlier areas for bonus areas and additional upgrades, and the game steadily keeps growing its challenge level to meet its protagonist's increasing repertoire of tricks. Kain being a vampire, he regains his health by drinking the blood of his victims and that means the player has to pace themselves in battle: kill someone too hastily and you lose out on a health top-up, accidentally drink the blood of demonic spawn and you'll find our own juices poisoned, and using the top of the range damage items is always a choice between clearing the room vs keeping your health up. There are a lot of neat twists to Blood Omen - but not quite enough to keep the bulk of the gameplay from feeling like a chore. The combat is awful: Kain's sword-swinging is unpredictable in whether a quick second button press results in a quick follow-up hit or him taking a moment to glare at the enemy, you can never tell if a hit is registering, and the only viable tactic for melee is boring hit & run repetition but the sluggish movement makes it awfully clunky. It's numbing - and there is so much of it, with each natural passage and dungeon filled with enemies, all of who respawn the moment you exit and re-enter the area (which makes exploring towns with multiple houses to enter a real bother). The game encourages the player to experiment with all the items, spells and alternative weapons and armour at Kain's disposal but switching between them is time-consuming and unintuitive, and a real hurdle mid-combat. The exploration aspect isn't much better, with Kain's default movement being so slow that crossing the wide open world is an exercise in patience; Kain can also transform into a wolf for both faster travel and the ability to leap across small gaps and vertical barriers, but the game can be very unclear which hills can be crossed, leading to plenty of annoying parts where you think you ought to be able to move ahead but this particular cliff has been deemed a no-go.
As a result I ended up only being able to play Blood Omen in short bursts - clear a few milestones and get to a couple of save points away from the last, then take a break to recharge. The moment-to-moment gameplay can be so monotonous and churning that you beg the question why bother wheny you're not having fun. But then, a bit of that Legacy of Kain magic appears: you find yourself in a genuinely evocative, interesting piece of environment, the plot movements suddenly add a jolt of motivation to see the next section, and the character interactions end up fleshing out this genuinely interesting game world enough that you want to keep exploring it, even if just for a little longer. As a construct of mechanical elements, Blood Omen struggles: the ideas are there but the execution is lacking. But as a piece of design, it's a genuinely interesting game at times. It's no wonder that this franchise in particular benefited from the move to 3D, where they could have so much more space both to bring their more vivid ideas into life as well as make the action gameplay not only more interesting but also shape it into something more befitting for the pace and the narrative they were aiming for. High ambitions and high jank - a memorable experience for sure, and one that I'm sure had a huge positive impact to so many people experiencing it fresh back in the day (even if there were no other LoK games, this would have created a cult fandom), but something that only those select few will play for anything other than historical reasons.