It’s been 23 years since the lid had been lifted off the casket of Kain. Following the successful remasters of Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2, there has been a graphic novel and now a brand new game in the form of Legacy of Kain: Ascendance. Has the wait been worth it, or is it just a grizzled, shambling ghoul that should have stayed dormant until the end of time?
Rise From Your Grave!
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance takes from the story told in the graphic novel Legacy of Kain: The Dead Shall Rise, which was touted as an official prequel to the Soul Reaver series. It stars a brand-new character and promises some surprising revelations for long-term fans. Hype was initially high among fans, and for those of you who missed it, you now have the chance to play this story and find out what you missed.
If you have read The Dead Shall Rise, you know what is coming. For everyone else, meet Raziel’s sister, Elaleth. She has such a burning hatred of her brother for killing her beloved when he was human, that she takes a deal from a mysterious man called Ky’set’syk. Using this newfound lease on afterlife, she travels around time thanks to a spell from Moebius and influences several key events in Legacy of Kain lore, changing the storyline and creating a new canon.
The story is borderline offensive to what came before it. Elaleth is able to stand toe to toe with Kain and Raziel with ease. She changes several established events to make her one of the most important characters in a narrative that she didn’t even exist in, and a lot of it feels clumsy and hamfisted. Ky’set’syk especially seems thrown in there with the intention of being a much bigger antagonist for Kain than those that came before, but comes with little information about him. Even when the credits roll, you’re left with a painful cliffhanger.
If you’re new to the franchise, you won’t get much out of the many callbacks the story presents. If you are familiar with it, you’ll be left with a sore head trying to figure out what they were thinking when they pitched this story as a prequel for Raziel and completely changed some very key aspects of the character and the story around him and Kain. The best thing I can say is that parts of the story were presented well in a rather unique manner to the franchise. But there isn’t anything in the story that I think anyone wanted, least of all an awkwardly inserted, inexplicably powerful, story-warping sibling character.
2D Vampires
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a 2D side-scrolling platformer throwback, aiming to capture the style of retro titles like Ghost and Ghouls and Castlevania while giving it the Legacy of Kain lick of paint. It does try to throw in a few newer aspects, but it seems the focus, at least initially, was to emulate the classic horror-based platformer games for better or worse.
Despite looking like a “Metroidvania” on screenshots, the game is strictly linear and done in stages. They all involve you running to the right of the screen, fighting enemies, and occasionally finding hidden items and lore. The game does occasionally try to mix it up with a horse riding section or by switching to a different playable character, but the variety is more barren than the fields of Nosgoth in the heyday of Kain’s control.
The level variety is fairly lacking. A bulk of the game just seems to be set in the woods with the same backgrounds, only darker or lighter. You do hit some famous locations from the series, such as Janos’s lair, the Seraphin Tomb, and Raziel’s keep, but they are quickly passed by for another jaunt in a forest or hilltop.
The level design matches the rest of the experience of the game: it’s poorly done, a chore to explore, and seemingly half-baked. Some parts you can just go on your merry way to the right with nothing stopping you, then BAM, the screen stops scrolling, and you’re locked into a random section where you have to kill every enemy on screen. The design just feels really ancient and basic. In the modern era of throwback games, even procedurally generated games like 30XX manage to create more engaging and gimmick-based levels basically at random, whereas this title seems to be content with putting out stages that don’t even have the complexity of Castlevania 1 on the NES.
A Tale As Old As Time
Your playable character will switch between chapters. Elaleth is a winged vampire, so she has aerial movement and needs to feed on blood almost all the time, otherwise she will die. Pre-wraith Raziel plays exactly the same as Elaleth. Kain is slightly different in that he is a bit tankier and has a different air attack. Finally, Human Raziel, whom I was most excited to play as, has no air mobility and has a fire attack to purge Vampires from coming back to life.
Combat is about as simple as can be. You have one attack on the ground, and most characters have a second attack in the air. There is a parry move to open up foes for attack, but outside of a few sections, it is utterly pointless, and the standard three-hit combo can take them down. Boss fights boil down to just hitting the enemies as quickly as possible, outside of the Stone Guardian, where you just wait for it to attack and respond with your air attack ad nauseam.
The Legacy of Kain series does have a spotty history with combat; it’s always a little bit rough or undercooked, but Ascendance just brings out the whole meal raw. By the end of the game, I found myself just killing the bare minimum amount of enemies to feed on, just so I didn’t have to pointlessly wail on the enemies and waste my time. Even among titles with this mechanic, there are titles out there like Bloodstained or the Hollow Knight games that do it so much better.
It’s such a shame because I love a good classic platformer, but Legacy of Kain: Ascendance just doesn’t offer anything in the gameplay department that I could consider good. The best I can say is that it never crashed on me, but what it did offer me was a boring, poorly designed Castlevania clone with especially poor combat. The whole thing felt more like a chore than a game while I plodded through it in the vain hope that they would make changes from the story in the graphic novel.
Wack Throwback
Visually, the bulk of the game is as varied as the levels: not very. The character models seemingly animate and look like they were copied from one of the inspirations of the game. I will say that when it hits some of the more iconic locales, there is a certain charm to seeing them designed in a “demake” style.
There are a few different cutscenes presented in different styles. There is a fully animated one, which was quite good, and a 3D CGI model style akin to the PSX era, which did ooze charm. Credit where it’s due, the idea of showing the cutscenes in several different styles was a good move.
The soundtrack is literally the best aspect of the game, outside of one of the Kain levels. Each stage has fantastic music, really encapsulating the franchise and European Gothic vibes of the world of Nosgoth, slightly fused with a bit of heavy metal because vampires are metal as it gets.
The voice acting is top-notch. It features the same actors who brought Kain and Raziel to life, cementing them as iconic gaming figures. Unfortunately, Michael Bell seems to have been hit by the cruel mistress of time; he doesn’t quite have the same grip on Raziel as he once did. Simon Templeman, however, still delivers Kain in his purest form. I couldn’t be happier to hear him again.
Verdict
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a game that frankly doesn’t just tarnish the franchise but outright hurts it. It feels like a cheap cash-in based on a polarizing graphic novel with no love and care for the series it’s representing. Waiting twenty-three years for this to be released feels like a massive slap in the face for fans.
There’s only a boring and trite time to be had with this title, where the only good aspects are the soundtrack and the voice acting. The only other accolade I can gift Ascendance is that it has managed to dethrone Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 as the most dislikable title in the franchise. Hopefully, the fanbase can just emulate Raziel and forget this ever happened.
LEGACY OF KAIN: ASCENDANCE IS NOT RECOMMENDED
If you would like to see more Adventure games, you may be interested in our review of Damon and Baby.
Many thanks go to Crystal Dynamics for a Nintendo Switch review code for Legacy of Kain: Ascendance.
Pride of utopia & greatest thing ever, I found the One Piece, Collected the Dragon Balls & won the Mortal Kombat Tournament in one night, it was quiet for me that night! Follow me on Twitter @powahdunk
