Legacy of Kain: Ascendance Reviews

I've played the game through twice now...once, when it first came out, and then just now after playing through all the LoK games. It did not improve the game. A lot of pixels have been lit up discussing the Mary Sue-ness of Elaleth, and man, they ain't wrong. She's able to convince Kain to do stuff, convince Raziel to do stuff, be such a pain that apparently Moebius cursed her. Kind of boring in this milieuwithout more info The introduction of Ky'set'sek (or however you mix in the apostrophes there) was a much cooler thing that could have been focused on. Aside from the main character, there were some good, bad, and unfortunate things. Good: A new LoK game. I mean, c'mon. One that wasn't MMORPG. The music was pretty rockin' The pixel art was pretty decent. Simon Templeton's scenery chewing. Bad: Where do I start? How about wall climbing? I've been wall climbing since the NES Ninja Gaiden. This game did not do it well. Didn't even do it passably. It was such a strugglebus to even try to jump from wall to wall without using the dash, because the dash almost always (like 90%) would result in a wall latch. There were so many wall jump sections in the game that it really was a trial. The hit detection was bad. Like literally ridiculously bad. It wasn't a big deal with most enemies because they hopped around like jumping beans into your sword swings a lot of the time, but the stupid flying bugs were obnoxious with the hit detection...and it changed for each character you played as, unfortunately. The level design. It was more bad than good...the save points were sprinkled like commas in a fourth grade essay...they were numerous but they made no sense. Sometimes it was a save point after a few enemies, and other times it was a save point half the level away through stupid wall climbing parts. And other times, on one of the few levels you got to play as Kain, there was a save point off in the middle of nowhere that if you fell into would then take precedence over the one above it which was farther on in the level. Ridiculous. Combat: if you want some advice, just get used to using dash in almost all your fights. It will make them stupidly easy, that and the jump/Y attack. There is a boss battle you fight where that is literally the only attack. It's sad. I didn't use the block much at all. Maybe I should have. Dialogue controls: the a button on the controller was really programmed poorly...half the time it skipped the dialogue, the other half the time it would just zoom to the end. Also, the dialogue just stopped after a character was done talking, which necessitated an input. Rough conversation flow. Really rough after replaying the previous games where the dialogue flowed like dialogue. The End Paradox made no sense. It really didn't. The unfortunate: The age of Michael Bell clearly came through in the dialogue. I kind of wish they had reused the dialogue from the previous games for those sections instead of having him re-record them now. It was rough. The choice of style. There were a couple sections where they put the game in PSX era 3-D, and it was really not clear why they did so. It seemed to make no difference, It was fine, I guess? But unfortunate that it wasn't clear. I REALLY want to recommend this game, and I would completely if the control was decent whatsoever throughout. If it was an ok pixel platformer, totally would recommend. But man, the amount of swearing that I let loose on this game outweighed the sum entirety of tens of playthroughs of the Silent Cathedral in LoK Soul Reaver 1.

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.

Generative AI is the death of creativity. You have slaughtered a masterpiece.