Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2

Anything above 4g will crash the game at launch and prevent it from running. "Workaround" is to remove system memory down to 4g in order to run it, as well as getting 3rd party software to set core affinity. Not exactly what I would call "compatable" with windows 7. Be warned before you drop your cash on this title. Luckily I have an old-bones Vista machine I can play this on or there would be trouble ><

Blood Omen 2 is where the series tries something new. While the other Legacy of Kain games have been focusing more on complex puzzles, this one tunes it down and decides to go for more action. The puzzles are simple, yet plentiful. Combat is not perfect but entertaining enough for you to want to master it. Instead of fighting with just your fists, you have the option to pickup your opponent's weapon and use it, although after enough use or blocking with it, expect to see the weapon shatter. The graphics are a little higher than Soul Reaver 2 and the sounds and music haven't changed much either...yet both do a good job providing you an atmosphere for the game. The story is a hit or miss, mostly depending on the player. The hardcore fans that expect a deep story like in the previous games with a lot of exposition and ties to the previous games might be disappointing since here this is also tuned down. The only ties are with Blood Omen 1, and many of the events in this game will never be mentioned or referred to again in the later game (Legacy of Kain Defiance). Is it worth it however? Yes, while it has it's flaws, the game still offers a good experience worth wasting some hours on.

The community patch revives this experience! It's highly playable with it.

I'm going to be something of one as i expect a lot of dislikes on this worst part of Legacy of Kain series. That's right - I'm not going to argue about the fact, that it IS the worst game in the Legacy of Kain series. It definitely is, for a number of reasons. However, Legacy of Kain is a series you expect to be next to perfect. And as such, being worse in one of the best franchises of video game history doesn't necesserily make the game bad. It just makes it "rather good". Blood Omen 2 is an alternate reality becoming true reality. It's the events becoming real, because of the stuff that happens in Soul Reaver 2. Problem is - it pushes this concept quite hard and as such feels more like a complete spin-off "gaiden" game, then the part of the series. Part of the reason for that is because it was developed by a seperate team within Crystal Dynamics, and the lead designer was completely different. Other part of the reason was the fact, that it was apparently first designed as a mostly stealth game and later reworked into something that prefers stealth, but has a lot of head-on action too. With these reasons, game feels different, has a much worse storyline than the one you'd expect from Legacy of Kain and the gameplay feels a bit rushed and unrefined. This is one of the reasons a lot of people tend to dislike it. The other reason is the fact, that the game has a lot in common with a relatively obscure (but rather good, i might say) game Chakan, or more specifically, it's unproduced sequel. And also with some old mod for Quake 2. The reason behind it is the lead designer who was working on both the mod and the Chakan game. You can read more about this here: http://www.thelostworlds.net/BO2/Chakan_and_Sirens.html But the thing is - even though it feels and plays different, even thought it might just have been a different game turned into Blood Omen 2 (not like the unrelated Shifter project wasn't turned into Soul Reaver in the first place)... Even with the fact, that there are storyline things which were never explained, even though they were planned to be in Defiance. Even with all that, it's still a rather good game. Not the game you'd expect to have Legacy of Kain or Blood Omen in it's name. But not a bad game at all.