Legacy of Kain: Ascendance

Don't buy this. Even on sale, don't buy this. The devs who were unlucky enough to work on this already got paid their salary. Don't reward anyone who approved this travesty of a story. It's not a good story; it's based on the recent comic that focused on a heretofore unknown and never-hinted-at character, and that, if canon, retroactively ruins the motivations of the prior protagonists. It's not a good game; it's not a metroidvania or action-adventure (as both would imply exploration), and it's not a particularly-good linear platformer, either. Combat boils down to spamming one effective move over and over and still dying because enemy damage is overtuned and enemy spawn rate is overtuned. It's not even a particularly good listen, with music that doesn't have much character beyond 'metal', and certainly no character that matches the series as a whole or this game in particular (if anything would). Do not buy this game.

A shamless retcon.

The Legacy of Kain has been turned into another Thingy Blah-Blah Number 3. In an era when Amazon is indecorously squeezing every penny out of Tolkien Estate IP, I should not have been surprised to see an unnecessary and frankly pretty crappy addition to the Legacy of Kain franchise. They should have left the series alone. The first five games had almost Shakespearean dialogue with a plot that was influenced by traditional vampire mythos, Gnosticism, philosophical argumentation about free will vs. predestination etc., etc. It was amazing. Here, the writers instead settled for a melodramatic yet somehow still banal storyline about Raziel's sister seeking to resurrect her slain lover. As for the dialogue, the writers don't even have a good enough grasp on the English language to understand that 'decapitate' specifically means to remove the head, not to sever a limb. Either the bar set by previous games in this series was far above the grasp of this particular writing team, or the will of corporate dictation forced them to conceive compromised work. I don't mind the retro side-scrolling format. But the navigation and combat mechanics of this game are completely devoid of interest. In m…

As a long-time Legacy of Kain fan, this is an absolute insult. LoK fans deserved a true masterpiece after all these years, not this pixelated piece of garbage.The combat is completely stiff and clunky, lacking any weight or fluid responsiveness. To make matters worse, the legendary dark and gothic lore of Nosgoth has been completely butchered and watered down to the point where it feels like it was written for toddlers.Avoid this disaster at all costs. We deserved better.

There are 3 levels that you get to play as Kain, and they make the entire game worth it.

DONT LET PEOPLE CONVINCE YOU THIS IS A BAD GAME