Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Having just finished it, I feel like I should give it a thumbs up on here. At first I wasn't so keen on replaying it, as it seemed... off. Low fps and potato quality resolution. But after installing Verok's community patch everything turned out real nice with 60 fps and 1080p resolution, along with a bunch of other enhancements, making this a very enjoyable experience throughout. It still has its fair share of janky combat, but honestly it is just so much fun to progress in the story and go from a struggling vagabond to a godlike vampire with so many options to kill everything around you it becomes almost effortless by the end. Still worth the ~14 hours it took me.

Fortunately I did not get a black screen or freezing while playing. I reached bat and wolf form as of writing this review. The story and the theatrical voice acting are great. The graphics are a product of their times so without the nostalgia factor I suppose they are not great. It is actually funny that GOG used the original " 25 minutes of stunning full-motion-video footage" blurb. The gameplay is about finding the correct distance/position/timing mostly. Distance to not touch a spike. Position to not get hit but hit back. Timing for dodging traps. So the difficulty is not that high if you are patient and if you grind a bit to heal/refill magic energy. For 1 euro it was definitely worth it, considering I am a fan of the series and have played through all of the games back in the day. Despite recommending it for this affordable price I have to deduct 1 star for the lack of goodies/extras. Even the manual is in a chm file. If you search on the internet you'll find a beautiful printed map which accompanied the PC release. I was expecting at least some digital version of the map and a nice pdf manual, considering how long this game was unavailable for purchase. Another star is deducted for the framerate. I thought it was just me at first, but, after confirming from internet guides, the framerate is apparently set to 40fps. There is a patch available online which fixes this and even adds subtitles. The difference between the patched version and the original gog release makes the game actually fun to play.

Good game, expect a few era-related frustrations, but definitely fun!

Classic

The mood, the feel, the story and the dialogue is all top notch. If only the controls were a bit better, and you could save anywhere.