Legacy of Kain: Ascendance

You are probably looking at these reviews and thinking: no way the LoK series deserves a rating of "Mostly Negative". So I am going to sum it up in one sentence: Its a crap action game set in a popular franchise. If that is what you are looking for...well...congrats! You found it.

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.

Whilst this game is definitely not what I wanted after all these years, I also don't think it's a bad game. The gameplay itself is fairly generic-feeling platformer with somewhat bland cookie cutter level design. The combat took a few levels to get used to, but felt responsive and generally was reasonably fun, particularly in boss fights. The story is a mixed bag. It has some cool moments which tie into scenes in the mainline games, and I particularly enjoyed the "interlude" chapters where the graphics switch to a PS-esque style, but there were also scenes that felt out of place or beats that didn't seem to fit naturally in the canon. The music was a highlight, with the metal soundtrack building on the themes in the mainline games, and contributing to a good atmosphere. Overall, I'd categorise this game as mid. I wouldn't recommend it at full price, but on sale it might be fine given that it's only 3-4 hours long.

Ok, bought and just finished it, I'll try to be fair: I'm a long-standing LoK fan from the very first game and I'm more than pleased to see the story revived, even if not perfectly so on the first try after decades, so count me in for future developments. Now to the obvious: yes, adding a main character this way in a game with such a complex storyline wasn't going to be well received by all, I don't think for most the fact that it's a woman is the problem as many of the LoK fans are also Tomb Raider fans, it's the fact that there was less Raziel/Kain, which was the soul of the saga, and more stranger we don't care about who happens to manipulate easily characters that are thousands of years old into doing things just for the sake of it, not the level of complex intertwined storytelling LoK series used to have. Gameplay-wise, there are a few gotchas, many things to improve here and there for sure, flight by the winged vampires is clunky, easily solved by some camera zoom-out/panning, keyboard controls are really bad (a PC game that can't remap keys? Really?). But we get the chance to play LoK in 2026, with most of the original voice actors by the way! If anyone is complaining about …

A shamless retcon.

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