Legacy of Kain: Ascendance

sucks

Only reason I bought this game was to support the franchise and hope that they actually eventually give us, the fans, what we want. The few positive reviews you will see are written by tourists who never liked the series for what it was and do not care about the story and characters. I've never had such an easy time picking out tourists in a fandom. They are literally outing themselves in the comments and reviews. If you are a fan of the series and appreciate the lore, DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS GAME. Purchase it simply to support the franchise but let everyone know how horrendous it is and how much of a slap in the face it is to the franchise, it's original creators and the fans. If you want the fandom to grow and prosper, let new people purchase and play the remasters. Those are actually great products.

I tried. I really tried .... I was so happy to see a new Legacy of Kain game. I ignored my gut feeling when I seen the trailer. I ignored the negative comments. I ignored the first few weird minutes of the game, hoping it would get better - It didn't. At this point I'd rather play "Nosgoth" again, even though I hate PvP games.

I got it before watching a streamer play it and decided to play it to completion just to see how it was. I see why he was frustrated playing it, some mechanics and levels in the game are just downright annoying or obtuse, and some 'chapters' are cutscenes or walking sims. From my gathering this is after the last Legacy of Kain game and before Soul Reaver, but I was still vastly confused trying to figure out what in the heck was going on. Not worth the price point it is currently. If it's on heavy sale maybe, but be prepared for a slog.

I got as far as one of the NPCs yelling "They fly now?!" and I just can't. Legacy of Kain has some of the best writing ever, now reduced to quoting the bad Star Wars movies. To everyone who worked on this - you failed.

Este juego existe pero por que? Literalmente es un fanfic donde este oc llamada Elaleth es la supuesta "hermana" de raziel y donde ella es una mary sue por favor háganse el favor de sacar juegos serios o de ultima saquen los remasters de Blood Omen por el amor de dios

This game tries to be like Silksong so bad, it failed miserably for being such a Legacy of Kain game.

I've played the game through twice now...once, when it first came out, and then just now after playing through all the LoK games. It did not improve the game. A lot of pixels have been lit up discussing the Mary Sue-ness of Elaleth, and man, they ain't wrong. She's able to convince Kain to do stuff, convince Raziel to do stuff, be such a pain that apparently Moebius cursed her. Kind of boring in this milieuwithout more info The introduction of Ky'set'sek (or however you mix in the apostrophes there) was a much cooler thing that could have been focused on. Aside from the main character, there were some good, bad, and unfortunate things. Good: A new LoK game. I mean, c'mon. One that wasn't MMORPG. The music was pretty rockin' The pixel art was pretty decent. Simon Templeton's scenery chewing. Bad: Where do I start? How about wall climbing? I've been wall climbing since the NES Ninja Gaiden. This game did not do it well. Didn't even do it passably. It was such a strugglebus to even try to jump from wall to wall without using the dash, because the dash almost always (like 90%) would result in a wall latch. There were so many wall jump sections in the game that it really was a trial. The hit detection was bad. Like literally ridiculously bad. It wasn't a big deal with most enemies because they hopped around like jumping beans into your sword swings a lot of the time, but the stupid flying bugs were obnoxious with the hit detection...and it changed for each character you played as, unfortunately. The level design. It was more bad than good...the save points were sprinkled like commas in a fourth grade essay...they were numerous but they made no sense. Sometimes it was a save point after a few enemies, and other times it was a save point half the level away through stupid wall climbing parts. And other times, on one of the few levels you got to play as Kain, there was a save point off in the middle of nowhere that if you fell into would then take precedence over the one above it which was farther on in the level. Ridiculous. Combat: if you want some advice, just get used to using dash in almost all your fights. It will make them stupidly easy, that and the jump/Y attack. There is a boss battle you fight where that is literally the only attack. It's sad. I didn't use the block much at all. Maybe I should have. Dialogue controls: the a button on the controller was really programmed poorly...half the time it skipped the dialogue, the other half the time it would just zoom to the end. Also, the dialogue just stopped after a character was done talking, which necessitated an input. Rough conversation flow. Really rough after replaying the previous games where the dialogue flowed like dialogue. The End Paradox made no sense. It really didn't. The unfortunate: The age of Michael Bell clearly came through in the dialogue. I kind of wish they had reused the dialogue from the previous games for those sections instead of having him re-record them now. It was rough. The choice of style. There were a couple sections where they put the game in PSX era 3-D, and it was really not clear why they did so. It seemed to make no difference, It was fine, I guess? But unfortunate that it wasn't clear. I REALLY want to recommend this game, and I would completely if the control was decent whatsoever throughout. If it was an ok pixel platformer, totally would recommend. But man, the amount of swearing that I let loose on this game outweighed the sum entirety of tens of playthroughs of the Silent Cathedral in LoK Soul Reaver 1.

No one wanted to like this game more than me. I love the Legacy of Kain games (Even Nosgoth). I love metroidvanias. I have said for years that if I could make games I would reboot Soul Reaver 1 as a metriodvania. I didnt HATE the comic, and I did actually kinda like Elalth as a character.... even if I thought they shoe horned her in to far too much. Gameplay is boring, repetitive, the enemies move randomly, the levels don't make any real sort of sense, especially when you have a flying character. Dialogue is not the Shakespearian prose Legacy of Kain is known for. Generated text lore pickups- a complete insult. I played for four levels, about an hour. I put it down, and I haven't come back. You have the money to do better, Crystal Dynamics.

If you approach an archer, what do you expect them to do? A. Take aim & shoot at you B. Jump around C. Blindly run off ledges D. Both B and C If you answered A before playing this game, you are in for a surprise! Second question, how would you feel if we got a new Star Wars game where you play as Luke and Leia's older sister ... Laura. Laura is a jedi and was behind the scenes, even meets Luke and Leia in the game, despite the movies or books never mentioning Laura. That's how it feels here. Was able to give it 30 minutes after having a pretty good idea what to expect. I promised myself I'd at least finish the first level and attempt the 2nd level before deciding to recommend or not. It ... just feels like the series deserves better. The 2D action adventure was an interesting choice. The controls feel floaty and unpredictable. I think they really needed to tighten this game up before releasing it, gameplay alone. The enemies feel like they have the same behavior of NES contra games where they just mindlessly run and jump around completely unaware of their surroundings. If that was intentional, I disagree with the design choice. To be fair, Blood Omens: Legacy of Kain has pretty stupid enemies too. But that was 30 years ago and I doubt there's a lot of poeple wishing enemies behaved like that, especially in such a story-rich series that's supposed to pull you in. I would encourage the studio to not give up. I can feel some enthusiasm in the game. Have this gut feeling that the developers working on it were inexperienced and nobody was there to ensure quality meets an acceptable threshold. There's just something about the physics and controls that need tightening up, as well as more tuning.