Impossible boss battles and a few minor glitches mar an otherwise well-done game.

User Rating: 5.4 | Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 XBOX
The Legacy of Kain series is a respectable series of games with many strong points. The big one being gameplay, which BO2 lives up to for the most part. The camera angles work very well, and the combat gameplay is great (with the exception of some boss battles, which i'll mention shortly). Another positive mark for BO2 is the graphics. Although not quite as good as LoK Defiance, which came after, the graphics on BO2 are very good. The characters and storyline are excellent also. If merely defeating your enemies isn't enough, and you want to literally suck the life out of them, then BO2 is for you. All the LoK games are, for that matter.

Those are some pretty good strong points. But they were shadowed for me by a few things. The main one being boss battles. They weren't too bad until I reached about the 3rd boss, roughly half way through the game. What a pain. You literally have to hit the enemy and knock him in a certain direction, several times. I could barely get a hit off, let alone knock him in a certain direction. I tried several times, and couldn't even get his life more than a quarter of the way down before I died. Eventually I did what I hate to do, and I just gave up. I'd love to see how this game plays out and ends, but there's not much I hate more than repetition repetition repitition until I get lucky.

Another downer is sound. It's usually pretty good, except for dialogue. You can barely hear what is being said, all you hear is whatever is going on in the background, e.g. water flowing. I tried adjusting the settings, with no luck. Another irritation is that you can't skip cut scenes. So if you've already seen it, and you have to go through it again because you died, or for some other reason, you have to wait it out. A minor complaint, but it still gets annoying.

Overall, if you're a big LoK fan, then pick it up. If you want to give any XBox LoK game a try, go for 'Defiance' instead.