Vae Victis

So, why am I posting today? Because I just finished playing Blood Omen and got the rest of the night free (a rare event). Therefore I decided to place here an overall vision of the Legacy of Kain Series, and then decided against it because it would take way too long.

Blood Omen is the first game in the Legacy of Kain series, however it was also the last one I played due to several reasons, one of them was that every other time I started playing it I messed up and didn’t feel like going back to the beginning.

This one is very different from all the others in the series! For one thing it is HUGE! Not because it’s the one that takes longer to finish (I’m not sure which one that would be, but I think Blood Omen 2 to be a good bet) but because there is so much to do and so much that can be done. There are lots of side areas that you can explore, as well as spells and other stuff (just so you had an idea, I got 21 out of 100 secrets and failed to learn all the spells, although I did get all the weapons and armors). The main difference from the other games however is the gameplay. While all the other’s are 3D straightforward action games, this one is a top down action game, but with and inventory and spells and (a lot more) stuff.

Unfortunately the only version I got my hands on missed the cutscenes, so I couldn’t get the game in its full potential (among other things I never actually saw Vorador except for the title screen and a picture in Avernus), but since I already knew most if not all of story due to the other games and some research that wasn’t really serious. Obviously knowing the story beforehand spoiled the game a bit, but was also what kept me going.

The gameplay is not great, but rages well in acceptable, although it can keep some people away as it may both be too repetitive and too complicated. But this is not the kind of game you play because of the gameplay (none in the series is (except perhaps Blood Omen 2)), it’s the kind of game you play for the story.

The story on itself is way too long for me to explain here (I tried, but gave up soon after), a very basic outline is: Kain got to kill guardians of the pillars who got corrupted and yadda yadda yadda, plot twist here, backstabbing there (you got to kill exploding teddy bears along the way too) and you find out that you are also one of the guardians, chosen after the death of Ariel, and must decide whether to kill yourself and restore the land and go on and rule the world (guess which one leads to the following games).

Anyway, the guardians are:

Mind: Nupraptor the Mentalist
Conflict: Malek the Sarafan (I love this guy! More detail ahead)
Nature: Bane the Druid
Dimension: Azimuth the Planer
Energy: Dejoule the Energist
States: Anacrothe the Alchemist
Time: Moebius the Timestreamer
Death: Mortanius the Necromancer
Balance: Ariel (but this one is already dead)

From the nine, there are three you don’t actually kill:
Ariel, partly because she’s already dead (but is cursed to haunt the pillar she protects) and because it is her death that cause the decay of all the others (long story here too).
Malek, you fight him, but you can’t defeat him and eventually got to run away. The reason you can’t defeat him is because *drum roll* he doesn’t have a body! Actually he does, but not a mortal one, basic plot: he failed to protect the previous guardians and as a punishment had his soul ripped from his body and fused to his own armor. He is killed by the vampire Vorador who comes to your aid, but you never find out how.
Anacrothe, Mortanius does the job for you near the end.

Please be aware I didn’t explain more than 1/10 of the story of this game!

Oh sure, I told the ending, but since that is the basic knowledge for four other games (and the reason it is called Legacy of Kain in the first place) don’t come whining to me!

Oh, and you get to find a really cool sword! (A lot of story about that sword! But that is a post for another time.)