User Rating: 8.8 | Legacy of Kain: Defiance PS2
Legacy of Kain: Defiance Synopsis: Both Kain and Raziel are back and this time they kick more ass then they have ever in their whole centuries of existence. Defiance boasts a fantastic story, excellent gameplay, beautiful graphics and environments, superb voice acting, excellent dialogue, and much more. What makes Defiance such an excellent game? Read to find out. Gameplay: First the bad parts about the game: Lok: Defiance uses the fixed camera, that Devil May Cry uses. Fixed cameras don’t tend to be very good, and haven’t been good in many games that have tried to use them. Defiance is no exception, the camera is just downright awful. You are going to find it getting caught behind torches and statues, it is just very annoying. Also, the camera will be so bad that you won’t be able to find the door that takes you to where you are supposed to go when it is right next to you due to the fact that you think that door is a wall! It will be very hard to tell how far you have to jump in order to the next platform and so on. The camera is just plain terrible! Another minor flaw is that sometimes you would lock on to a foe that is in another room, this rarely happens but when you are in the heat of battle it tends to become a nuisance. The scenarios are also pretty repetitive, with Raziel at least. Can’t find a way to get into the door, transport to Vampire palace find the reaver that fits the door and go through, beat the chapter. It is Legacy of Kain fans’ dream to be able to play as both Vampiric legends. The player assumes the role of both Kain and Raziel in this game. Both characters have both the same moves and different moves. The combat in Defiance is highly inspired by Capcom’s “Devil May Cry”, the most conspicuous move is the ability to juggle enemies in the air non-stop, even after they die. Not all of Defiance’s moves are rip offs though, in fact 95% of the moves and abilities you are able to do are very fresh and may even inspire the way future action games will use their combat system. One of these fresh ideas is the ability of TK (telekinesis). With Tk the player is able to knock enemies at each other, make them bounce off your chest, throw them off bridges, impale them onto spikes, or if you just want to mess around hit them on trees and watch their blood splatter against the wood, and not to mention throw them in the fire and watch as your enemies run around in torture. Towards the beginning of the game Raziel will not be able to do many of the things mentioned above that Kain is able to do, but as you progress Raziel will learn everything TK wise kain is able to do. Both Kain and Raziel are able to hit enemies up in the air and float up with them for a few seconds to decide what to do with them. There are many options what to do with them while you are floating in the air; both characters are able to use your TK, slash them a couple of times and then come back down, or just let them be and not do much damage to them. As if you couldn’t do enough in the air, each character has his own set of combo’s that you are able to do in the air. Example: Kain is able to hit them up in the air and slash them to the ground so hard making the foe bounce back to him, and have a little more fun with him. As for the ground combat it is up to you to make it for or generic. If you just tap square square square it will be boring. If you use the combos you are given while using the air combos it will be hordes of fun. There is also a very cool feature in where if you feed the reaver and hold down square and let go, depending of the reaver your character will do attack. With Raziel it is mostly bursts of attacks where energy surrounds the player. Sure it’s boring with Raziel but with Kain you are able to use a cloud of dust that manipulates the enemy and start making them hit each other, or do a speed dash that is quicker than the speed of sight that hits every enemy around you in the back. There will be a lot of backtracking in the game for reasons mentioned above, looking for the key to other doors and such. Every Legacy of Kain game has had puzzles, with Defiance it is no exception at all. For the most part the puzzles are quite challenging and will enforce using your new powers and old powers. Raziel is going to often use his Reaver to light torches and burn them out, and use it for other functions. You will be finding cracks in walls to break down and switches you are going to have to use your TK with. Raziel is going to have to often go to the “spectral realm”(a realm where material does not exist” to bypass gates and such. As mentioned above, sometimes the camera will make challenges a whole lot more challenging than they should be. If you haven’t realized it by reading the review yet, it isn’t nearly playing with Raziel. This is all changes towards the end, I assure you that. Gameplay: Defiance’s Combat is off the chain to say the least, this combat is a powerhouse with badass written all over it. Unfortunately the gameplay suffers from awful camera and being sort of repetitive. If you haven’t realized it by reading the review yet, it isn’t nearly playing with Raziel. This is all changes towards the end, I assure you that. Graphics: Saying Defiance is beautiful is an understatement. The level design is simply spectacular. You will be journeying through Sarafan (humans) castles to Vampiric Ruins. Hell, you even go into a “certain vampires” castle to find “and old friend”. The detail is amazing, from the fireplace to the murals on the wall. The characters also look very nice although being no change its still ok, its not like characters have the chance to change their cloths when they are fighting for their lives. The game runs at a pretty smooth frame rate as well. I encountered slowdown once in the game. However, the level design may get a little repetitive not to the extreme like Castlevannia: LOI but the Vampiric ruins look the same. And very little change is implied towards them. Also, I have encountered quite a few bugs all throughout the game, such as going through walls and plunging to my death. It is all ok though, doesn’t take much away from the game. The animation is beautiful, you will never get tired of Kain splattering peoples blood against the walls. Or Raziel smashing someone against the ground and taking their soul out of their body. Beautiful, just beautiful! However, there are some annoying graphical glitches, like puddles of blood disappearing during a cut scene. However, that doesn’t really take away from the game, but it would be nice to see Crystal Dynamics address this problem later on. Graphics: Beautiful Level design, great in game models, unfortunately the level design is repetitive. Story: Alright, just to make this clear, if anyone..... anyone even if that means your sister or brother or dad or mom, whoever thinks the story for and LoK game is bad will be murdered by a vampire. My friend Kain will make sure. The story takes place right after Soul Reaver II. Raziel just killed his past self, making Kain turn him into a Vampire thousands of years later to serve as him. The central theme of the game as one could tell from the title is “Defiance”. Kain’s first chapter starts out with him sneaking into the Sarafan castle to confront one of the antagonists Mobious the Time Streamer. In Raziel’s first chapter the player finds him stuck in the spectral realm trying to escape his master, the elder god. Both the stories pick up very fast and compel the player to finish. You are really absorbed into the world of Nosgoth. As mentioned above, a lot of the story is about Raziel trying to exercise his free will. I will not go in too far, because I would be giving away way too much, but I will tell you this, people die in this one. As in Die I mean the dieing when people don’t get resurrected and come back, I mean dead for good. You will encounter old friends and meet new people. If you are new to the story I recommend you play Soul Reaver one and Two and Blood Omen 2 (Although not very good) because a newbie would be very lost when it comes to the story. Hell, even I was sort of confused when it came to the story and I am a huge fan that played all the games. The story is not right in front of you. The game also ties up a lot of loose ends that you have had since the first game. It actually takes a lot of thought to fully understand it. It will not explain many things, but instead rely on the player to find out what’s going on. Story: Filled with Twists and Turns is dark and ominous and I just love it. Sound: Again, I shall start with the negatives. The soundtrack for a lot of the part. A lot of it in fact is not a soundtrack. Such as when you are in the spectral realm you will be hearing a man yelling “RAZZZZIEAALLLLL” and a woman moaning non-stop. Sure it is creepy for the first few moments but then it gets sooooo irratating. Unless you are in combat there is not much music going on. That is my only complaint about the audio. Now for the good part: It is a fact that the Legacy of Kain games have probably have the best voice acting in a game ever. I also could not stop drooling over the dialogue. The characters have some of the greatest lines in history of entertainment. They even catch on to me. Just frequently I beat my buddy in a video game and said “Vo(spelling?) to the victor” I just love it. Michael Bell who is known for his many roles such as Uncle Stew in Rugrats, and Gatsu in the Sword of the Berserk game, Medivh the prophet from Warcract III, and a whole lot more reprises his role as the infamous Raziel. Also, Kain’s Simon Templeman reprises his role as Kain. (Duh!) Everyone else from the other games return as well. These people apparently have a purpose in life to do the voice acting in these games, because they do it so well, you forget you are listening to a video game talk. Whenever they speak a word I never forgot I was listening to to a vampire. Points up for that. Audio: If they can tweak up the sound track the audio would be flawless. Overall: Defiance is the best game in the series. It has a story better than any RPG that has been put out for the last five years even more. It is every vampire lovers wet dream, and makes you look at Ann Rice’s inspiring creatures in a whole new way. Unfortunately huge flaws make Defiance stay far away from being the perfect game. Hopefully the sequel will address these problems.
