Still Worth Playing? | Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain Review

blood Omen Legacy of Kane not legacy of Kane blood Omen how dare you is a 2d top-down hack and slash edgy brooding vampire themed Zelda Style game you explore an interconnected Overworld fight through caves Dungeons and castles find Secrets discover new skills and powers and unlock new areas with those skills and powers and instead of collecting pieces of the Triforce you're collecting body parts and other belongings from the Guardians that you murder and if you don't believe me on the whole Zelda angle that was a quote taken directly from blood omen's producer who referred to it as a Zelda style take on a vampire action RPG it was developed by silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics for the PlayStation on November 15 1996. but for this video I'm playing the PC version which was originally released in 97 but lay in legal rights limbo for many years until it was finally released on Gog in 2021 but I'll get into that story a little bit later blood Omen is a grim got Gothic fantasy where you take the role of a cynical nobleman named Kane who finds himself out and about in the town of ziegstorel There's No Vacancy at the local Inn and upon exiting out into the streets Kane is attacked by a group of Bandits and killed but this isn't the end of young Kane as he suffers in hell with the sword that slayed him still thrust through his chest a necromancer named mortanius rescues Kane and offers him a deal so that he can return to the world of the living and seek Vengeance on his murderers it's not quite as straightforward as it seems though you're talking about a goddamn Necromancer here so yeah Kane gets to go back to the Mortal plane but he sent back as a vampire with all the vampiric weaknesses that come with that like a thirst for blood and an aversion to sunlight and water even rain and snow or like acid to his dainty skin but I mean doesn't really seem like there's too many drawbacks and Kane takes to his new form pretty well seeming to have no problem sucking the blood from enemies and Innocents alike as Kane you accomplish your quest for Revenge in like five minutes of being sent back so of course there's more going on here and there are bigger things in motion like the fate of the world itself and all of this Kane's origin tale isn't even where the real story of blood Omen begins Legacy of Kane is just the subtitle after all so strap in this is going to be a long one foreign you get this opening cut scene where we're witness to a purge of vampires which a certain vampire lord is none too happy about so he busts into this circle of nerds and starts wrecking The Joint blowing this lady's skin clean off her body I think every YouTuber who's ever made a video about this game comments on this scene but my God it's amazing so these guys are just getting slaughtered and people are shouting for Malik some guy in armor who shows up and gets himself bonked in the head cartoon style since our knight in shining armor Malik has [ __ ] up his duty so bad he gets strung up in front of this guy who goes on about how Malik has failed the circle and must now serve a group called The seraphim for eternity before having his soul ripped from his body and placed in his suit of armor the first thing he does is look right at his hands [Music] foreign [Music] we then witnessed this lady murdered by an unknown assailant and her blood didn't fill up that scale and knock things out of proportion for nothing let me tell you then we get a shot at some pillars in a field and a close-up of one of them cracking after all of this we hard cut to gameplay and are finally introduced to Kane so wait a minute back up what the hell is going on in this opening cut scene well as you play the game you'll begin piecing together the significance of it but in summary the legacy of Kane series takes place in nosgoth a world where humans and vampires live which is upheld by the pillars of nazgoth nine structures that are each protected by a different Guardian these nine protectors are called the circle of nine long ago the nine-backed group of Warriors called the seraphin now the seraphin had no love for the vampires of nazgoth in fact they hated them so they went on a holy Crusade attempting to purge the world of the vampiric races this is what we see in the very first scene of the opening cinematic as I said the world of nazgoth was comprised equally of human and vampires so a powerful vampire named vorador was pretty salty that the nine had chosen to back the vampire-hating seraphin and he decided to take revenge against the nine he managed to kill six of the Guardians in one Fell Swoop and also knocked out their boy Malik years passed the vampires retreated into hiding and the humans split off into two camps the followers of William the just and his kingdom of Willendorf and the legions of the Nemesis who are in League with a dark entity who is pretty much hell-bent on destroying the world the woman here is Ariel guardian of balance and when she's killed another of the Guardians nupraptor who was Ariel's lover flies into a rage on account of his girlfriend dying and turns against the other members of the circle nupraptors got a nickname The Mentalist so he uses his powers to drive the other Guardians insane this corrupts the pillars and throws the world of nazgoth into disarray and then and only then does our boy Kane come into the picture now Kane is a really interesting main character especially for video games of the time designed to be an anti-hero he's a human Noble whose Brash arrogant and contemptuous he's not really interested in doing good and is mainly driven by a thirst for revenge and his own bloodlust as he begins to Relish in his new afterlife as a vampire after Kane kills off the bandits that murdered him mortanius the Necromancer that brought him back to the world of the living informs Kane that while the bandits were yeah technically the ones who shoved a sword through his chest and caused his death there's a greater force at work responsible for his demise it is not overcame these fools were merely the instruments of your murder not the cause look to their masters look to the pillars and gain way to the Fortress of the Mind Kane travels to the pillars and runs into the ghost of Ariel who's just hanging out haunting the pillars floating around on her wispy little legs she tells Kane that he needs to restore balance to the World by defeating each of the nine Guardians whereupon he'll receive a token from them which can be delivered back to the pillars cleansing them of their corruption he's also told that restoring the pillars will cure him of his vampiric curse from this point on Cain becomes a bit of a pawn being used by various people and beings and we'll see how he deals with all his manipulation when we get to the end of the story but yeah largely blood omen's story is about the world of nazgoth and the major players so if you're more into World building as opposed to character development then this story is going to be a feast for you but I'd wager when most people hear Legacy of Kane they think of this game's sequel Legacy of Kane's Soul Reaver not Soul Reaver Legacy of Kane you animal that game while it does have a huge amount of lore in it is more focused on its characters especially the main character Raziel and tells a more personal tale so what's the deal with that what's up with the shift in storytelling style well let me tell you a twisted tale of game development woes and CD [ __ ] Publishers being seedy [ __ ] Publishers Activision is also involved not much has changed in 27 years [Music] foreign silicon nights was a small Canadian development Studio that created a few strategy games for the Amiga and dos they even worked on a d d game set in the mistara campaign called fantasy Empires you can actually pick up both fantasy Empires and their following game Dark Legions on Gog their first game cyber Empires isn't available though anyway silicon Knights and specifically its president Dennis diac had bigger Ambitions than just working on strategy games dayak and art director writer Ken McCulloch whom we will not speak of again and if you want to know why you can Google him but I'm not going to say anything else about him here had already completed a proposal for a game called the pillars of nazgoth in 1993. they had a dark fantasy world filled with vampires demons and a long history of lore that might even make a Tolkien scholar turn their head so while the rest of the team was hard at work finishing up development on dark Legions diac was having meetings with Publishers looking for anybody who'd bite on the concept that he had dreamed up they wanted to create a game like no one had ever seen before a big budget project with an intricately crafted world and a storyline aimed at older players later in 93 dayak finally met with Lyle Hall a producer at Crystal Dynamics at the time Crystal Dynamics was only a publisher but they would later move into game development and we'll get to that Paul shared dayak's vision for the game so they struck a deal Crystal Dynamics sent the team at silicon night several staff members to Aid with the development of the pillars of nazgoth one of whom was a design manager named Amy Hennig remember this name for later development progressed slowly and took over three and a half years the game was also given a new title blood Omen Legacy of Kane a bit punchier than the pillars of nazgoth in my opinion while work was tough and the team was strained the game itself was hotly anticipated it was even named the best game at the first ever E3 by Game Fan magazine before the game was finished Crystal Dynamics made deals with Activision and BMG interactive for international distribution with so many hands in the pot this caused some concern at silicon nights since this was slightly before the time of games having about a million Splash screens before the title so they put a disclaimer at the opening which read that the concept story and content of Kane were created and developed externally at silicon nights little did they know this was just the beginning of their woes upon its release blood Omen Legacy of Cain was well received by critics and met with successful sales shortly after Crystal Dynamics entered an agreement with Activision to create a sequel however the tumultuous development of blood Omen had soured silicon Knight's relationship with Crystal Dynamics diac mentioned in an interview around the time that he had an idea for a prequel game that would focus on the vampire vorador but also said that silicon Knights probably wouldn't work with Crystal Dynamics on any version of a blood Omen follow-up unfortunately for diac and silicon Knights Crystal Dynamics chose to move away from video game publishing and focus on development and they took it upon themselves to announce their own sequel to blood Omen Legacy of Kane Soul Reaver rightfully so silicon Knights filed a lawsuit to try to stop Crystal Dynamics from using the legacy of Kane moniker this all played out in a messy court case the public records from that case were published on game forum neogaf in 2012 and involved silicon Knights claims that Crystal Dynamics had gone behind their back seeking out Activision to publish Legacy of Kane sequels as well as hiding their intentions to turn from game publishing to game development and while it was true that silicon Knights had handed over the rights to blood Omen to Crystal Dynamics they claimed it was under Financial duress silicon Knights also claimed that Crystal Dynamics had made disparaging remarks to Activision about silicon nights when it came time to pitch a blood Omen sequel alleging that Crystal Dynamics had done this to ensure that they would be the developer of any sequels in the legacy of Kane's series now I want to say that good prevailed in this case but much like the story of blood Omen itself well evil one Crystal Dynamics kept the rights to Legacy of Kane and went on to develop their own sequel Soul Reaver a game that is equal if not better than blood Omen but that game also had a lot of dirt in its development history I won't get too deep into it since this is a blood Omen video but Amy Hennig the design manager from Crystal dynamics that was assigned to assist in blood Roman's development took over as director lead writer and lead designer of Soul Reaver however its concept originally was part of an unrelated project created by Henning and another designer Seth Charis called shifter which featured a character with tattered wings that could hover and had various other powers and whatnot but was inspired by biblical mythology as opposed to the nazgoth lore shifter was reworked into a Soul Reaver which explains the total shift in focus of the narrative not to mention the gameplay and reportedly Henning and Charis weren't too happy about having to shoehorn their shifter idea into the legacy of Kane series but were forced to do so by Crystal Dynamics upper management but that's a story for another time oh yeah and Activision dropped out as publisher and Soul Reaver ended up being published by idos [ __ ] Activision right because of all these legal entanglements blood Omen couldn't be re-released on digital platforms but finally an agreement was reached in 2021 and the game was released on Gog well there's your history lesson boys and girls and the takeaway from this story is nothing ever changes when it comes to AAA game development but yeah anyway I think it's about time to start talking about blood Omen the actual game how about it [Music] foreign is a 2d game and the art is incredible nosgoth is a bleak yet beautiful place with a handful of different biomes deep forests craggy mountainsides boggy swamps and snowy Fields the outdoor colors are very earthy and a bit muted but never so much that it makes anything look ugly except for maybe these swamp textures what the hell is that luckily this is a short area overall though it's a palette that fits the Grim tone of the game there's also a day night cycle which has effects on gameplay as well as a weather system like I mentioned earlier vampires aren't fond of rain or snow but wandering around at night in the rain or through snowy Fields makes for a real mood nazgoth is grim but it can be damn cozy at times too Interiors of homes or taverns are wooden construction and if I weren't a vampire bent on killing innocence it'd be great to just hang around and vibe in these places luckily you can turn into a human peasant to disguise yourself and later on just use an illusion that makes people think you're a noble the more hostile indoor areas are usually done engines or Castle structures stone walls and floors with various traps and enemies and such but the game makes great use of colored lighting and shadows in some of these areas especially forests it's easy to see some of the technical seams like repeating tree tiles and things like that but it never really pulled me out of the experience for more than a second I'd just be wandering around sometimes and think hey look at that mess of tiles but then I just shrug and get over it and get back to exploring and fighting there are also towns Villages and nomadic tent communities that you'll run across these are good at breaking up the Wilderness but there's not much that differentiates them from each other I really couldn't tell you the difference between knocked home and ushtenheim you're always going to see the same style houses and Tents though a couple of the locales make up for it by being almost dungeons unto themselves specifically corehagen and Willendorf where you'll be forced down specific roads and through houses and Sewer tunnels that connect to other parts of the town to make your way forward it's neat there's a pretty good variety of enemies throughout some pallet swaps here and there there but a lot of them are unique to each dungeon and area each of them only have a few attacks or defense animations but everything is buttery smooth Kane also has really flowing animations for his weapon swings and movement even if walking can be a bit on the slow side and the actual combat can be a bit janky but I'll discuss that more in the gameplay section the point is everything looks smooth I mean you know mostly the 3D cutscenes are also just so awesome yeah they've got the floaty awkward animations of early 3D and Kane himself looks like Fraser crane out of season one but that just makes it all the better in my opinion the voice acting is absolutely spot on everybody on the cast is just chewing the scenery and it fits so well into the Shakespearean tone of the writing the standouts are vorador the high level vampire that takes Kane under his wing voiced by the late Paul lucather who also did the voice of President James Johnson in mgs2 along with a ton of cartoon voices and television roles stretching all the way back to the 50s meddling with the Affairs of man do us no good seraphen witch hunts are much too tedious to concern ourselves with am I understood Kane mortenius The Necromancer is voiced by the late Tony J who also has a lot of other game credits he plays the elder god in the Soul Reaver games as well as the Transcendent one in planescape torment nay I will embrace it but my death will leave one more to take princely finish me Ariel the ghostly figure who haunts the pillars is voiced by Anna Gunn who most people probably know as Skyler white from Breaking Bad now these pillars have been corrupted by a fatal my murder at the hands of this Beast drove my love in a prepped on mad some of these actors also voice other characters in the game but then of course there's our main man Kane voiced by Simon templeman who's done so much video game work it's hard to list it all and he's just reputed to have been ripped from the chest of the greatest vampire to have ever existed Janos audren the Heart of Darkness restores vampiric unlife life is precious Janos discovered as it was torn throbbing and bleeding from his own body uh yeah so as I was saying Kane is the wind carried screams from the West I couldn't help but smile someone else in this world was suffering more than I anything else to add there Kane right so you're probably thinking hunger and weakness are no bar to vengeance is call I would find my Slayers and send them back whence I came okay are we good Kane's talking isn't just limited to dialogue or combat when you open up your menu you can press a button to have Kane give you the name of whatever weapon or spell you currently have highlighted another button will have him spout off a bit of lore about it usually what was said when you first picked it up in fact there's very little text in blood Omen outside of the main menu and the signposts that tell you the names of towns and Villages everything is spoken this was once the most academic of cities housing some of the most prestigious universities in all of nosgoth while I would not weep over lost tomes I detested the sight of scars left upon the world at the hands of the Nemesis which is impressive but there were times where I just wanted to know the name of an item or what it did and had to wait for Kane to explain it to me but still can't complain what with the excellent performance but yeah sound effects and other incidental bits of dialogue can start to become repetitive as the game goes on sure it never gets old hearing the satisfying click of a switch or hidden contraption and the sound that plays when you pick up items is always good to hear but almost every enemy makes the same sound when getting hit some have different dying sounds but there isn't too much variety my favorite have to be these skeletons that sound like dinosaurs you'll also get tired of hearing the Innocents who are chained up in dungeons crying for help with the same two or three lines of dialogue however I will say it can be relieving to hear them calling out in the midst of a dungeon track when your health is doing good come on please I couched this criticism about the sound design between the excellent voice acting and the absolutely incredible soundtrack seriously I don't know why blood omen's music isn't up there on lists of greatest video game soundtracks of all time more often tracks range from bombastic driving orchestral pieces dark somber tracks that feature a woman's Whispering as well as more ambient songs [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] my favorite though is the theme to the doll maker elsevier's mansion [Music] unfortunately I have to throw out one big negative concerning the music and this isn't aimed at the music itself but the way it's implemented in the game the tracks don't Loop properly so whenever the track ends you're left with this awkward silence for a few seconds as it starts up again foreign be really jarring and it's such an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise incredible OST despite some criticisms here and there the overall presentation of blood Omen is excellent and it just makes the whole game a treat to experience so next I'll look at it [Music] you know what the best thing about the opening cut scene of blood Omen is and no it's not the lady getting her skin blown off though that is still awesome it's the fact that everything vorador does here is stuff that you'll actually be able to do in the game you can extract people's Souls from their bodies you can blast people's skin clean off their bones you can turn into mist you can slurp blood from range you can even Bonk people on the head to knock them out it's actually a great introduction to gameplay even if you don't realize it yet when you first start out you're a human cane but you won't be staying that way for long you can stick around and try to fight as many of these Bandits as you want but the game won't progress until you die after that you'll be resurrected in your vampire form and find yourself inside Kane's Mausoleum this place is a tutorial for most of the gameplay Basics glottoman actually tutorializes throughout the game as you pick up new spells and powers and I'll get more into that as we go through all the things Kane can do but just know that it's the good kind of tutorializing where the developers actually took the time to cleverly construct truck challenges that you'll need to overcome with your new abilities rather than a prompt on screen that says use wolf form here or something stupid like that anyway in this opening section we learned how combat Works how prisoners act as health pickups basically and that you can stop and drain blood from them to restore your health you also learn that different enemies bleed different colors of blood red blood from living enemies replenishes Health blue blood from ghostly enemies restores magic green blood from mutants and other types poisons you and black blood damages your health now is a good time to mention this big but nicely designed UI that takes up about a quarter of your screen maybe I should have talked about it in the presentation section but it's more tied to gameplay it's really easy to figure out at a glance which just goes to show its intuitive design but for the sake of completeness the vial on the left is your health while the runes on the right are your magic these can be increased by finding more vials or these triangular Rune Stones you can get each of them all the way to the top of the screen if you search diligently for these extra pickups though you won't really need either of the bars that high to complete the game there's a square that indicates what spell or item you currently have selected as well as a sun or moon icon to tell you what time of day it is and a sundial clock for the time the moon also has different cycles and that becomes important when unlocking secret Areas there are actually certain doors and gates in the game that won't open unless it's a full moon luckily these are side areas and the main game never has you waiting around for anything above in the middle is this stone relief of Kane that actually changes depending on what weapon and armor you have equipped which is a nice touch then there are these skulls on either side whose eyes turn red sometimes when you're attacking enemies any blood you suck from enemies will also drain from the left side skull's mouth to fill your health vial too and if you're already full it will overflow and pour down the sides of the vial neat you'll end up with a variety of different weapons you start with a sword but then you'll pick up a mace that's weaker but can stun enemies more easily leaving them open for the suck it also smashes stone pillars and other small structures that may block your your path there's a pair of axes that prevent you from using magic but are stupid powerful especially when you activate their combo attack which has you helicoptering around you can also cut down trees that might be in your way next is a flame sword that sets enemies on fire but prevents you from extracting blood from them on account of them being turned into piles of Ash and finally the Soul Reaver a magical sword that uses up your magic resource but can take down high level enemies and bosses with only a couple of swings you also have different armor types you start with iron armor but will find bone armor which makes low level Undead and Spirits ignore you chaos armor which reflects damage back at enemies flesh armor which drains blood from enemies that cane attacks but can be dangerous when fighting poison enemies and finally wraith armor which divides damage between your health and Magic Bar combat itself is fine you've got a two swing attack that's pretty reliable and if you time your button press right after your second swing you can usually manage up to a four hit combo but man it feels really janky the hitboxes also just have a mind of their own sometimes you gain the benefit and can wail on enemies from outside their range other times you'll think you're in a blind SWAT and just get walloped it's really uneven also the combos don't feel very responsive there are no invincibility frames and there are a few spots where you can just get stun locked by enemies or there are environmental traps like spikes which knock you back and you can end up getting pinballed back and forth which is an annoyance but it's also really funny sometimes physical combat feels slow and clunky there's also nothing to change it up no light or heavy attacks no defense it's just button mashing and repositioning it can be repetitive especially in the first couple of hours but the thing that keeps it from bogging down the entire game is the progression of weapons and also the magic and artifacts so let's jump into that first the Spells magic in blood Omen is op there's no two ways about it and the game dulls out so many spells not all of them are practical or useful but most of them are pretty cool stuff like sanctuary and light are basically useless shortly after that though you'll pick up the first spell that's worth a damn energy bolt where you hurl a little bolt of lightning at enemies most will explode after only a couple hits you can also use it to hit hard to reach switches then there's Inspire hate which turns enemies against each other stun which will leave enemies open to blood drinking incapacitate which freezes them in place and blood gout where you can throw your own blood as projectiles there are a couple of utility spells that you'll need to complete a few late dungeons like control Mind and Spirit rack the first lets you take over human enemies and the latter lets you control most low-level enemies and there are some puzzles involving flipping switches that are out of Kane's reach these are all fun to mess around with but if you're looking for the good stuff that pure uncut magical goodness why not try out Spirit death which rips enemy Souls straight from their bodies blood shower which drains the blood from any enemies in the vicinity even those that are close enough but still off screen but the one that takes the cake is repel which you get fairly early on in the playthrough with this spell Kane makes a dome around himself which reflects projectiles back at enemies sometimes killing them if they or other enemies are hit by it and it also makes Kane immune to pretty much all physical attacks tired of fighting just throw on repel and stroll through enemy territory there's also a secret spell called lightning that can only be used outdoors and calls down bolts of lightning from the sky this one is locked behind one of those full moon Gates that I mentioned earlier the majority of these spells can't be used on bosses but repel is fine you can get through most boss fights by just putting up Propel and standing right in their face wailing on them it lasts pretty long too I think like a minute and you can just re-up when it wears off we're not done yet though oh no Kane also gets different forms to mess around with bat form is your fast travel which allows you to move between any checkpoints you've activated or major dungeons you've visited wolf allows you to move faster attack with your claws and jump there are a lot of places Outdoors where jumping comes in handy I also use the wolf form to basically run through one of the early dungeons without fighting anything too it was fun disguise form I sort of mentioned earlier turns you into a human peasant so you can walk around towns and settlements without being hassled Mist form lets you turn to mist and walk over water and other damaging surfaces and beguile makes everyone think you're a noble when you're in your peasant or Noble form you can talk to NPCs and some human enemies as a noble they'll usually give up more information but overall it's mostly for flavor beware stranger there was another vampire attack last night there's also a guy early on who talks to Kanan is vampire form and informs him that there are people who aren't afraid of vampires and are interested in helping them but ultimately chatting with NPCs feels like a really underutilized mechanic which is a shame finally you have consumable items called artifacts there are some that heal you or cure you a poison then there are offensive ones that make enemies explode or implode plus utility ones that slow time or give you infinite magic for a short time the one that heals you the Heart of Darkness also acts as your continue if you die you'll use one and be resurrected on the spot honestly with all the ways to heal yourself and keep your magic up I never actually saw the game over screen the game showers you with artifacts I don't even know how many hearts of Darkness I had by the end of the game I use them quite a bit to heal up mid game when I didn't have access to the overpowered blood shower spell but after that yeah I was just hoarding them and I think only activated one for my health being depleted like twice throughout the entire playthrough blood Omen is a very easy game but it's all about the power fantasy which fits remarkably well with who Kane would go on to become for the rest rest of the series but it's neat to see the origins of that here in the first game and you know sometimes it's just nice to be a walking death machine in a video game and Kane just relishes it so much laughing to himself when dispatching enemies in Ridiculous Ways and shouting they victus all the time it's great while the physical combat is clunky it's the sheer amount of options you have at your disposal that keeps things interesting so don't be afraid to spend those consumables or get creative with your spell use it's worth it so that's everything to do with combat but a good chunk of the game is also made up of exploration we finally loop back around to the Zelda comparison that I made in the beginning of the video the Overworld is pretty linear but there are several paths and areas that will be blocked off in the beginning and you'll need additional gear or powers to be able to progress much like in the Zelda games you find new items and powers and ruins and dungeons use those powers to solve simple exploration puzzles within the places you found them and then backtrack to or run across places on the Overworld where you can use the new powers to unlock new areas or Secret locations you've got an Overworld map but also a local map that can be pulled up at any time with the Press of a button both indoors and out the ruins and Dungeons and other locations are all tightly designed and don't take too long to get through there are a lot of them though my only gripe is you'll be introduced to most of the mechanics within the first one or two places you visit and then everything after that is just a remix of those things like finding switches using your powers to avoid traps and navigating different paths to open up a way forward the dungeons themselves are uniquely designed though there are some standouts too like when you go to heaven and need to navigate using teleporters you'll also go to hell within the same big dungeon and wander through a huge descending chamber then there's the doll Mansion which is a really cool location with the best music but it's also the shortest area in the entire game the treks to these places are also a lot of fun the Overworld is varied with a good deal of its own exploration puzzles as well so exploring is fun and there are a ton of secrets to find 100 of them according to the status screen in the game but gameplay overall is really slow paced you need to constantly stop to open menus to change items or change spells or change weapons not to mention the clumsiness of the combat and the trudging pace of Kane's walk speed you can mitigate that by using your wolf form but that drains your magic and you might need your magic for other things yes thankfully Kane's Magic Bar does regenerate over time but this is also painfully slow and I never really got used to which buttons opened which hot bar for changing spells or forms or artifacts I feel like a quick select would have been a lot better or some way to cycle through your different powers and while the menu for swapping equipment and what spells or items you have on your hot bar is nicely designed and very minimalistic it's also really confusing when you're first starting up the game technically the game runs smooth if you're playing on PC wear loading screens if they show up at all are incredibly brief less than a second in pretty much every area I encountered one the PS1 version is a different story and makes a game that already feels kind of slow paced by its movement and UI design even slower the load screens are so long and so prevalent I get it if this was the version you played first or grew up with and you have a nostalgic attachment to it but nowadays anyone interested in playing this game for the first time should only go for the Gog version it has both keyboard and controller support and both are great apparently it had some issues when it first launched but I bought this game when it was first released and didn't notice anything but I also didn't do a full playthrough at that time in any case all of that has been cleaned up and it runs perfectly now so while blood element does have its fair share of flaws as you can tell by the length of this gameplay section there's a lot you can do in blood Omen and it really encourages thinking outside the box if you pick up this game and get turned off by the clunky combat you're really missing out on the wealth of options the game puts at your disposal and the Carnage you'll be able to cause if you stick with it not to mention the excellent exploration and wonderfully Gothic atmosphere so now let's talk about what's actually going on in this game what is Kane's Quest all about despite it actually not having that many cut scenes blood Oman story is pretty complex so I'll do my best to untangle it if you'd rather skip the spoilers go to this time or use the chapter select thing on the video to go to the spoilers end part but if you're looking at this game and thinking eh I'd rather not play it but I like listening to this guy talk about it then well uh hey thanks just keep on watching then [Music] foreign puts Kane on the path to purify the pillars of nazgoth and to do that he'll need to kill each of the nine Guardians and return their token to each pillar to cleanse it the first place Ariel tells Kane to head is nupraptor's Retreat he's the one whose grief over his lover Ariel's death caused him to turn on the circle of nine and turn all the other Guardians crazy with his kooky mind Powers he's the guardian of the pillar of the mind and lives in a big skull on a Mountainside with a waterfall coming out of its mouth yep that's the guy you want guarding your pillar of the mind all right during Kane's visit he stops to take a look through the eyes of the skull Fortress through one of them he sees a vision of nazgoth from the past flourishing and welcoming in the other a hellish vision of what nazgoth might become in the future if the pillars aren't restored Kane confronts an upraptor who is accompanied by Malik the walking Alphonse himself but nupraptor sends Malik away and accepts his fate I do not need your protection um McCain Come Share my pain Kane defeats him and takes his head as a token so next on the list of Guardians to take out is Malik guardian of the pillar of conflict his Bastion sits on a snowy Mountainside inside are a bunch of traps like spinning blades and axes swinging out of walls and Kane has to shut down a few generators which are creating seraphan Warriors he also runs across a throne with a corpse that Malek says is his own but I am far less interested in my own corpse than I am in yours prepare yourself vampire unfortunately Kane isn't powerful enough to defeat Malik yet so after knocking his ass out a few times he beats a hasty Retreat and heads back to Ariel who advises him to go find the Oracle of noscov the Oracle is hiding out deep within some caves and this place is a maze and is kind of a pain to get through eventually Kane finds his way to a museum inside the caves and finds the Oracle this is where Kane first hears about King atmar as well as the legions of the Nemesis enough philosophy I seek answers answers indeed I have them all if you have the questions and what are the questions for these answers the only hope to defeat the legions of the nemesis [Music] King Atma paralyzed by his princess's malays King artma the useless pray God sir what are the questions a box upon your tricks and babble old man answer me this who is Malik and how can I defeat him ultimately the Oracle tells Kane to go find the vampire vorador in the termogent forest swamp the swap sucks it has a bunch of damaging tiles but luckily Kane gets his Mist form and you can just avoid all the enemies and whatnot but don't skimp on checking out the other dungeons here you'll need to visit the control mine dungeon and you'll definitely want to stop by the flame sword one there's also a blood gout spell in the other which is nice to have too vordor's Mansion lies deep within a swamp and it's a goddamn Harem inside here with all these vampire Brides running around damn borador what do you get up to in this swamp their charms were almost visible through the gauze of their clothing yet beauty such as theirs delivered only death for these were vorador's pets nothing more than beasts Slave To His will and the easy prey he provided vampires all of them held in thrall by one stronger still Kane meets vorador in his dining room and vorador is very welcoming a great host in every way really but he tells Kane not to meddle in the Affairs of humans before giving him a ring that can summon him at any time and Kane gives it a good sniff not knowing where it's been I mean you saw all this [ __ ] going on in this place who could blame him after this Kane heads off to a corrupted land called Dark Eden and makes his way through a hellish landscape filled with mutated creatures to a tower that's definitely bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and no I'm not going there so don't even there's another Guardian inside Anna kroth but upon seeing Kane he calls up Malik and hightails it out of there well Kane's got a friend too so he brings in vordor and the two have at it while Kane goes to take care of Bane and dejoule two more Guardians so we get a three for the price of one deal here vorador manages to defeat Malik and is gone by the time Kane returns so Kane heads back to the pillars with three tokens to place Kane's making pretty good progress in his quest but the next area is the biggest one yet to defeat the dimension Guardian as Smith cane Journeys through both Heaven and Hell all within the same giant Cathedral of avernus while in Hell Kane also runs across an altar with a bloody Tome that speaks of a being called trembled bring me your firstborn and shed their blood upon the altar of the world so that I may take nourishment from them do this without question or suffer my wrath for eternity and its will was done this all seems insignificant when you first encounter it and honestly doesn't fully make sense until the last game in the legacy of Kane series Defiance but yeah for now Hotshot geek say that five times fast after claiming the Soul Reaver from heaven and The Wraith armor from Hell Kane confronts Azimuth and takes out her teleporting ass Kane also finds a Time streaming device that Azimuth had stolen from Mobius the time streamer another Guardian so we're about to have time travel introduced into this place and oh man I'm just getting a little light-headed here yeah the game's story is good though a lot more detail than I thought it would be from just looking at the gameplay there really is just so much lore and background info to all these locations and characters and events I really need to shout out the legacy of Kane fandom Wiki I think without it I wouldn't have been able to follow some of these cutscenes or would have had to watch them a bunch of times to catch all the Nuance I mean I probably still missed a bunch of things so any Kane Scholars out there can correct me in the comments but yeah thanks to all those fans who curate that thing it's really impressive on the part of silicon nights though to create such a deep Game World okay intermission's over back to it finally it's time to deal with this human problem that's been brewing in nazgoth the legions of the Nemesis are descending from the north and King Ottmar of the kingdom of Willendorf isn't keen on lifting a finger because his daughter's Soul has been kidnapped by a doll maker named elzavir who's hiding out in a mansion on the lake of lost souls so Kane heads out there kills elsevier and Returns the princess's Soul King Ottmar then pulls his head out of his ass and sends his troops to fight the advancing forces of the Nemesis but it's nowhere near enough and his forces suffer a crushing defeat no thanks to Kane who just throws on his repel spell and skips through the battlefield things get a bit fuzzy here but I think what happens is the time streaming device activates on its own after this and sends Kane into the past there he defeats the Nemesis who had taken over the body of William the just an earlier ruler of Willendorf afterwards Kane returns to the present but all that time [ __ ] has sent him into a new timeline where he finds Mobius the time streamer who had been in Disguise as the Oracle of nazgoth that Kane met earlier Mobius took it upon himself to renew the vampire purges and Kane arrives just in time to witness the execution of vorador we are free of this Unholy Scourge not yet my friend would you be free of the plague if only one [ __ ] he was cleansed oh yeah yeah would you spare one wolf in the pack that has devastated your hurt no and let us destroy them all he is the last destroy him it was at this moment that he knew he [ __ ] up Kane fights Mobius who's a little [ __ ] casting low-level spells and being an all-around pain in the dick the whole fight but finally came beheads him and returns to the pillars to place the token when he gets there Kane finds martinius his once benefactor and Anna Croft the guardian who fled when confronted by Kane back at dark Eden turns out martanius had been possessed by the dark entity and had murdered Ariel under its influence mortanius still had some control over his faculties and planned the assassination of Kane in order to use him to cleanse the pillars but why Kane Well turns out when Ariel was killed Kane was to become the next guardian of balance simultaneous lied saying that cleansing the pillars would also cure Kane of his vampiric curse and while all of this is being discussed Kane's just slinking around behind the pillars peeking out and like looking around it's amazing martanius kills Anna Croft and Kane finally jumps out of his hiding spot martanius transforms into the dark entity and the final boss fight begins you have served me well again I serve no one indeed such narrow Vision don't you see my silencio bear hero and it's come it's calcutions is what the First Act in my theater of Crown's job oh not the tragic hero lay on the little vampire say hey [Music] victors hey he said the thing in a cut scene and damn this dude's so powerful the screen is breaking every time he attacks when Kane defeats the dark entity he's given a choice restore the pillars and bring balance back to nazgoth lame or destroy everything and take over if you've played Soul Reaver you know the Canon ending here once I embraced my powers I realized that vorador was correct we are Gods dark gods and it is our duty thin The Herd [Laughter] blood omen's story is pretty dense and filled with some neat little twists and turns and it's fun how such a complex story fits into these short cut scenes it can be hard to follow because the cutscenes are broken up by stretches of gameplay not a bad thing at all but it balances out combat exploration and story fairly well throughout a 12 or 13 hour playthrough but yeah it's sometimes difficult to keep track of all the characters and locations especially with the unfamiliar names I mean I had to use the wiki to make sense of some of this stuff or just make sure that I had the details right and again I'm still not entirely sure if I got everything correct but hey that's what YouTube comments are for just uh you know be cool about it I've only ever played this game and Soul Reaver so I don't have my PhD in nosgoth lore yet [Music] I really enjoyed blood Omen while the moment-to-moment gameplay feels a bit slow overall the design and pacing are tight you're always moving forward towards your objectives and whenever you wander off the beaten path you're rewarded with secret Areas caches of items or extra spells it's a great beginning and an impressive game for 1996 and while we got an excellent sequel with Soul Reaver it's still a bit disappointing that we didn't get to see where silicon Knights were planning to take the series in future installments in a forum post on IGN Dennis diac posted the following many people ask us if we like the direction Crystal Dynamics have gone in but it's so alien to what we created it's pointless to answer now we understand that some people love the Soul Reaver series and we think that's great however it's not what we would ever have done he would also call the legacy of Kane series diluted and dysfunctional in a one-up interview still it continued for four more games but I'd say blood Omen still stands tall it's a fantastic action game and if you can get over a few of its flaws you'll find fun Gothic power fantasy to get sucked into foreign for this video thanks for sticking around until the end if you liked it consider clicking that little thumbs up and if you got anything to say about blood Omen let me know in the comments there's a bunch of stuff in this game that I didn't mention like the secret pirate ship area that players just recently discovered how to get to within like the last couple years that could be a whole video on its own right there I put links to all their research stuff like the neogaf post about blood Omens development and the legacy of Kane Wiki in the description there's also a link to my patreon as well if anyone's interested in supporting me there and there's a link to my Twitter and that's all for me thanks for watching blood Omen check it out dungeon chill out was his gift a curse I would seek the pillars for an answer [Music]

Channel: Dungeon Chill

Views: 89,250

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Id: TncyYBV8Ysk

Length: 48min 21sec (2901 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023