I only have the one version, so I cannot judge if the other versions of the game are better or worse. This is my personal impression of the game after playing this version, and of course it is my own opinion.
I hate this game. I really hate this game. I’ve never played such a broken pile of garbage before I played this game, it is that horrible. To me, it is basically the video game equivalent of Sepultura’s Roots, and if you’ve read my review of that album, you know how much I hate that.
A little bit of history before I start ripping into this horrible game: Blood Omen 2 is the fourth game in the Legacy of Kain franchise. It was released in 2002 for every video game console out at the time, was developed by Crystal Dynamics, and published by Eidos Interactive.
The Legacy of Kain series, while it has its flaws in all of the games, is a very underrated series of video games. The story of the series is very Shakespearean in its delivery, and is one of the few “Mature” rated games that doesn’t insult the intelligence of its audience. If anything, the story can be quite confusing at times, especially since it deals with the notion of time-travel and how it can affect the world in catastrophic ways. For example, in the first Blood Omen, Kain, the vampiric protagonist, travels back in time to kill a tyrannical king before he becomes mad with power. In doing so, however, he has unintentionally started a witchhunt against all vampires, as the slain king is now declared a martyr. While the story is a little hard to follow in future games, it is still quite good and I recommend playing these games if you can find them…except for this one. Since the story of Blood Omen 2 is a sort of side-story to the rest of the games, it isn’t required to play to know the rest of the story, which is a good thing because it is a horrible game.
Blood Omen 2 stars Kain once again, as after Blood Omen 1, he took a backseat to the other protagonist Raziel for the Soul Reaver games. It takes place in an alternate timeline, and unlike previous installments of the series, Blood Omen 2 has a very weak story. Basically, Kain has been in a coma-like state for a couple hundred years after losing a vicious battle, and when he wakes up, the person who beat Kain in battle now rules the land of Nosgoth, the world where the series takes place.
Unlike previous games, where the story had twists and turns, and allies could turn into enemies quickly, this game has none of that. The story is so straightforward, you know how it’s going to end hours before you finally get to the final boss, which, surprise, surprise, is the very being you’ve been meaning to kill since the beginning.
The story also feels very, very rushed. People and Mcguffin plot elements are placed and dropped almost immediately, and the names are very unimaginative. For example, the main bad guy is called “The Sarafan Lord”, and he is searching for a device that would kill all the vampires in Nosgoth. What is this device called? “The Device”. There is a creature that controls “The Device” as well. What’s it called? “The Mass”. How original. There is also a seer that Kain must seek out in order to gain a more powerful telekinetic ability to enter “The Device”. What is she called? “The Seer”. Also, as soon as she appears, she dies. This game sucks as much at storytelling as it does at coming up with original names (for the record, the names of the vampire hating group the Sarafan, as well as the world of Nosgoth were things named in older games, so those don’t count).
The graphics are subpar even for 2002 standards. Everything looks so flat and lifeless, and I know the game takes place in a dying world, but come on. Soul Reaver 2, a game that was released a year before this one, was a beautiful game that really took advantage of the Playstation 2’s power at the time. This game doesn’t even come close to it.
As for the gameplay itself, it is a very rigid game. The controls are set up like the would be on a PC game (down arrow = move backward, up arrow = move forward, etc.), which doesn’t work that well on a console. The two Soul Reaver games before this, while they had a terrible camera, at least had it set up so that you could turn around by pulling the joystick back. In this game, you have to turn left or right with the joystick before moving the opposite direction. It is very hard to get used to especially after playing the Soul Reaver games beforehand.
However, none of these problems I have mentioned have nothing on what I consider the biggest flaw in the whole game. I can put up with the other things a little bit, but this is the part that pisses me off the most. Ready for it?
This is the glitchiest game I have ever played!
This game was obviously designed by a team that had until then only developed PC games (another team at Crystal Dynamics was responsible for this trainwreck, not the team that developed the other Legacy of Kain games). The PC version had some patches for it that, supposedly, fixed the problems the game had, but the console versions are screwed in that regard. There are points where the game will lock up, the game will lag while passing a checkpoint, and other such glitches that ruin the gameplay experience. The worst one, however, happens near the end of the game.
When you finally reach “The Device” (I really hate these names), there is a segment of the level that is so glitchy, the game will get screwed up if you don’t do things a certain way. You have to activate two switches using telekinesis, but the first one must be activated at a certain spot and must be activated first. If it’s not, then once the door’s open, the game locks up and you have to start over where you last saved.
There is a checkpoint right before this section, but if you save after crossing that checkpoint, the game will lock up while it’s saving, and if you try to restart the game or turn it off at this point, your save file will get corrupted and you have to start the whole game all over again. I had that happen when I was on my second playthrough for this review, and it pissed me off so badly, I damn near through the disk through the window. What a miserable game. I’m so glad I didn’t pay full price for this piece of junk (when it came out in 2002, it cost about $45 dollars, the average price for a new game at the time)
In short, if you see this game, avoid it. If you are a fan of the Legacy of Kain games, avoid it. If you want to get interested in the Legacy of Kain series, for the love of the Balance Guardians, avoid this awful game. If it weren’t so glitchy, it would just be a very mediocre game. As it stands, thanks to game-breaking bugs, it is a stain on an otherwise very good game series, and is not recommended to enjoy the other games. So, get the other games instead and leave this one to be forgotten. Oh, and to anyone who has a copy of this game already, join me in burying it in the same landfill as the ET cartridges. They need some company after almost thirty years.
