Legacy of Kain: Defiance

Awesome way to end this great saga of games. Even though the port is not perfect nowadays it still a great game with good story

I first played this game on my PS2 back in the early 2000's. Playing it today, its as good as its ever been. The camera controls could be better, but the story and the combat are exceptional! This one remains one of my favorites!

A bittersweet end to an incredible story and characters, the dark tone, gothic aesthetic, world-building, and overall lore of this franchise are truly something especial. Easy gameplay even with the bad camera angles, at some point repetitive but the good story and desire to know all the mystery can overcome that issues.

Review after 3hr 44 minutes. Played using keyboard Combat: pretty good but not special. Has standard hack and slash features like launchers, combos, and bars that fill up to give you special moves. So far it lacks anything that makes it stand out. Platforming: Terrible. irredeemably bad. Didn't feel good for one moment. The moving camera makes it feel awful. Graphics: Pretty good. I will say that the skybox is a little obvious at points but overall good. Puzzles: For babies.

When thinking about the series, I am sort of baffled by the fact that all of those games (barring maybe BO1) had some... pretty annoying flaws. Mostly having to do with the camera and controls, but sometimes also the overabundance of combat. But you know what? The beautiful thing is that the story and the characters were good enough and engaging enough that I wanted to play more of those games anyway. The combat was... eeeeh. Kinda enjoyable at first – nice, flashy animations, a lot of jumping around and stabbery. But it quickly got rather tiresome – and to be honest, that’s my criticism about EVERY SINGLE GAME IN THE SERIES. I think there could be less combat. I guess I should at least give Defiance credit for giving you experience and new combos for defeating enemies, but it’s hard for me to appreciate because I absolutely sucked at executing those combos and mostly just did them by accident. xD At first, right after finishing Defiance, I felt it wasn’t really... that great as a final game. But then I got it. It’s THE EXACT POINT. This is a game about Fate and about fighting Fate – and I guess Defiance can be understood as making particular points on those subjects that are actually kinda interesting. The character creation of Kain is brilliant overall. In fact, I’d say the whole series was maybe worth playing JUST FOR HIM. I loved his haughtiness, his flowery turns of the phrase as he derided peasants or waxed poetically about torture and death. He seemed to me an almost shakespearean character, reciting his lines with a charisma and emphasis worthy of a stage play. Overall, I’d say my final ranking of the games would be: Blood Omen 1 > Soul Reaver 2 > Defiance > Soul Reaver 1 > Blood Omen 2 If you'd be interested in seeing how I tackled Defiance blind, you can see a playthrough on my youtube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL7Ci5v-RMY&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWVBj2WiWSK-4Jtg_xUCz4RG