Legacy of Kain: Ascendance

Mediocre 2D platformer with a disrespectful fan fic of the brilliant Legacy Of Kain franchise bolted on to it.

There are only 2 things I like in this game, Wraith Raziels running animation and the Classic Sound of the Reaver blade soaring when you swing it.. If we are going to talk about everything I Do not like about this game it would take a few hours. This new character diminishes already established lore and puts her self at the center of certain events which tones down the meaningful events that Kain or Raziel experiences down to "it was my idea, i made it happen". Instead of adding into the established lore. it has the audacity to re-write it to make herself important.. In the soul reaver games we spent 2 games discovering and learning secrets about the lore.. Elaleth or what ever she calls herself.. gets handed these secrets in a 5 min cutscene... lazy writing.. Game play wise.. pretty average for a metroidvania game. Nothing new to offer.. but LoK was never about how amazing the game play is... its about the story and lore which fans were adamant to protect. History Abhors a paradox.. LoK Fans abhors Ascendance..

This is not Legacy of Kain. The forced retcon to fit the new character is an offence to the series.

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.

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.

Tl;dr - Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a clunky, mediocre homage to the SNES (or even NES) days of video games at best, and a subpar game overall. Sadly, it does not live up to the series’ legacy in many ways. Nor do I think Embracer ever gave a damn whether Legacy of Kain would be revived as a series or not. So, I can understand why a lot of folks are giving their impassioned review. While I did not take the final product personally and wish to give a more levelheaded opinion, that does not mean Ascendance is without its failures. With its primary failure being that Bit Bot Media did not deliver a game that is fun to play instead of a frustrating slog. And LoK: Ascendance is primarily a slog because it plays like a sluggish SNES title that would’ve been found mediocre and forgotten at best during that era. The combat is a simple yet repetitive, uninspired system (not that anyone playing a game in this series is a stranger to repetitive button combat) that immediately becomes tedious after Chapter 1. The level design, while also simple, is a frustrating series of environmental hazards and enemy placements that leave you wanting to rush past them as fast as possible, if able. And the bosses are either far too simple or a trial and error obstacle to pad out the playtime. Overall, it feels like a short game that still manages to overstay its welcome. I’m assuming Embracer allowed a minimal budget with a fast development time, not actually caring what the end result would be. Now… in regards to the other elements of the game. The music is simply fine when it works, and it is grating to the ears otherwise. The voice acting is actually quite good overall, though I hate to say that Michael Bell is not at his best and makes Raziel sound exhausted. I don’t know if they had too little time to work with the voice actors, or if it’s a case of Michael being sick while recording. I can only speculate. The art design is quite good overall, if a bit all over the place in a disjointed attempt at being cinematic. And the story… There are some elements of the story that fail to reach their potential, and there are others that do come off as fan fiction at best. I actually do like the inclusion of the new characters and how they *could have* influenced things in spite of falling flat at every given opportunity. No, I do not believe they were shoehorned in with what I know of the BTS material. I truly believe somewhere in Ascendance is a narrative involving Elaleth and Raziel that could’ve explored how their family is the final pawn in the various time spanning schemes at play in the series. Unfortunately, the writers did not (afaik regarding The Dead Shall Rise) do anything to refine the story to a level that is worthy of the series’ legacy. If I had to give this video game a numbered rating, it would be a 2/10 for simply being a frustrating slog of a subpar SNES-like. I hate that I have to leave a negative review honestly, especially when it is part of series that I hold close to my heart. But I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this video game to anyone. Even if the price were slashed by 90% or more.

Terrible story aside the game is still terrible. The worst first level Ive played in years Enemy AI that reminds me of movie tie in videogames from the mid 90s Unskippable cutscenes which completely render this game useless to a speedrunners Your attack stops you dead in your tracks Horrible hit detection on everything A parry that I didnt even realize was in the game until I looked at end game stats and realized I didnt parry once Incredibly easy and way too short Boring bosses The game was obviously outsourced to some programming/animating mill that churned out one of the worst games ive finished in recent memory. Imagine what couldve been(story aside) if they just allowed DOTEMU to develop it.