My initial thoughts of Blood Omen 2 were quite positive. The world is quite a far cry from the other Kain games (replacing the epic broad strokes of Nosgoth with a smaller, dark and grimy medieval city with mystical and steampunk elements), but I actually thought it was a pretty good setting. It's developed rather well, its inhabitants can often be found chatting to each other about various things, and it generally drips with atmosphere, which helps a lot to hide some of the rougher bits. I think part of it might just be that it reminds me of the Thief games' City, but hey, that's a good thing.
Speaking of Thief, the developers have stated in an interview that they were trying to allow for multiple options in gameplay, and you can see the remains of that. You have an arsenal that widens across the game, and theoretically, it should allow for various strategies in combat... unfortunately, that doesn't work. The invisibility can only be used in foggy areas (which are basically just screaming USE STEALTH HERE LOL), and every other ability is either just a big attack you need to build up energy for, or just solely dedicated to "puzzles". As much as I'd have loved to play a vampire imsim... well I guess VtM: Bloodlines is there.
Speaking of combat, it's simple stuff. A guard, a dodge, and an attack combo (and a grab that works on tired enemies for more damage). It's overly simplistic (there's an option to turn the guard into a timed parry, but I messed with it and it seemed awkward- generally the last thing I'd like for a bad combat system is for it to be harder), but it isn't awful on every level like Soul Reaver 2's combat, so it still felt like an upgrade. BO2 seemed to pace itself quite well too, so no problem there.
I was having a good time. Again, I was in love with the setting, and the story was engaging enough- I'll cherish any opportunity to play as my favorite bastard Kain, even though the writing was a bit less sharp than previous entries. I also liked how he would change outfits between chapters (although this game's character designs are... really bad), and the boss battles were alright. I'd say these thoughts persisted about... halfway through the game, roughly until I hit chapter 6.
And then the game got bad. Don't get me wrong, it's not that there was a massive drop in quality, Blood Omen 2 is just not the kind of game that can last too long without getting boring. It's a 15-hour game, and it felt like 25, despite barely having enough content for like, 6. There was a drop though. The levels got both worse, less interesting (In chapter 6, Kain leaves Meridian City, and only comes back for one chapter, in favor of much less interesting environments), far more focused on the mediocre combat against much spongier enemies, and worse of all, a lot longer. Blood Omen 2 is such a slog to get through. It's difficult to get it across just how mind-numbingly awful the experience is but I was internally begging for it to end by the final stage.
Blood Omen 2 is ugly as hell. I'm normally very partial to lower budget aesthetics from this era, but half the models are just revolting. Kain fares alright thankfully but look at this. Also, it's broken as hell. Cutscene SFX were out of sync and had no OST at all, which I only realized was a bug upon looking them up on YouTube. This may be an emulator problem, but apparently the PC version isn't great either. Which is a shame, because the soundtrack is actually quite good.
Onto the story, usually the saving and selling point of any Kain game. It's... weirdly simple? I expected some massive earth-shaking twists but it just boils down to Kain wanting revenge on the Sarafan Lord and to rule the world again, and then doing just that, with some stuff in the middle. Some details are revealed, but no big revelations happen, Kain's goal remains the exact same throughout the game, and the only thing that actually affects him as a character is a weird bad love story with Umah, the vampire lady that helps him out early on, but disregarding the inherent weirdness of giving Kain a love interest it's just bafflingly handled in every way.
The ending is just Kain, after his victory, thinking about how exactly he will rule the world, and I do appreciate how this game bridges the gap between completely self-interested, arrogant, egotistical and nearly sadistic Blood Omen Kain, and the wise, true neutral manipulator genius that Soul Reaver Kain is. I expressed confusion about that before, and I think this does quite a bit in that regard [Unintentionally, it turns out - this game was made by a different team who allegedly had little interest in the series' lore]. Still, it's a weirdly simple story and even for those planning to go through the series, it's not really worth bothering with. Don't play this game, and honestly don't even watch the cutscenes on Youtube.
Blood Omen 2 was not necessarily a disappointment cause I kinda knew it wouldn't be great, but after the promising-ish beginning its overall quality was a shame nonetheless. Defiance is next and last... man I'm going to be honest, I'm legitimately a bit worried. While I liked BO1 and SR1 well enough, I don't really know if it was worth it to dive into this series that so far has mostly just consisted of cliffhangers and unresolved potential, and Defiance is the last opportunity for that to change. Fingers crossed. EDIT: Yeah it was pretty nice
Speaking of Thief, the developers have stated in an interview that they were trying to allow for multiple options in gameplay, and you can see the remains of that. You have an arsenal that widens across the game, and theoretically, it should allow for various strategies in combat... unfortunately, that doesn't work. The invisibility can only be used in foggy areas (which are basically just screaming USE STEALTH HERE LOL), and every other ability is either just a big attack you need to build up energy for, or just solely dedicated to "puzzles". As much as I'd have loved to play a vampire imsim... well I guess VtM: Bloodlines is there.
Speaking of combat, it's simple stuff. A guard, a dodge, and an attack combo (and a grab that works on tired enemies for more damage). It's overly simplistic (there's an option to turn the guard into a timed parry, but I messed with it and it seemed awkward- generally the last thing I'd like for a bad combat system is for it to be harder), but it isn't awful on every level like Soul Reaver 2's combat, so it still felt like an upgrade. BO2 seemed to pace itself quite well too, so no problem there.
I was having a good time. Again, I was in love with the setting, and the story was engaging enough- I'll cherish any opportunity to play as my favorite bastard Kain, even though the writing was a bit less sharp than previous entries. I also liked how he would change outfits between chapters (although this game's character designs are... really bad), and the boss battles were alright. I'd say these thoughts persisted about... halfway through the game, roughly until I hit chapter 6.
And then the game got bad. Don't get me wrong, it's not that there was a massive drop in quality, Blood Omen 2 is just not the kind of game that can last too long without getting boring. It's a 15-hour game, and it felt like 25, despite barely having enough content for like, 6. There was a drop though. The levels got both worse, less interesting (In chapter 6, Kain leaves Meridian City, and only comes back for one chapter, in favor of much less interesting environments), far more focused on the mediocre combat against much spongier enemies, and worse of all, a lot longer. Blood Omen 2 is such a slog to get through. It's difficult to get it across just how mind-numbingly awful the experience is but I was internally begging for it to end by the final stage.
Blood Omen 2 is ugly as hell. I'm normally very partial to lower budget aesthetics from this era, but half the models are just revolting. Kain fares alright thankfully but look at this. Also, it's broken as hell. Cutscene SFX were out of sync and had no OST at all, which I only realized was a bug upon looking them up on YouTube. This may be an emulator problem, but apparently the PC version isn't great either. Which is a shame, because the soundtrack is actually quite good.
Onto the story, usually the saving and selling point of any Kain game. It's... weirdly simple? I expected some massive earth-shaking twists but it just boils down to Kain wanting revenge on the Sarafan Lord and to rule the world again, and then doing just that, with some stuff in the middle. Some details are revealed, but no big revelations happen, Kain's goal remains the exact same throughout the game, and the only thing that actually affects him as a character is a weird bad love story with Umah, the vampire lady that helps him out early on, but disregarding the inherent weirdness of giving Kain a love interest it's just bafflingly handled in every way.
The ending is just Kain, after his victory, thinking about how exactly he will rule the world, and I do appreciate how this game bridges the gap between completely self-interested, arrogant, egotistical and nearly sadistic Blood Omen Kain, and the wise, true neutral manipulator genius that Soul Reaver Kain is. I expressed confusion about that before, and I think this does quite a bit in that regard [Unintentionally, it turns out - this game was made by a different team who allegedly had little interest in the series' lore]. Still, it's a weirdly simple story and even for those planning to go through the series, it's not really worth bothering with. Don't play this game, and honestly don't even watch the cutscenes on Youtube.
Blood Omen 2 was not necessarily a disappointment cause I kinda knew it wouldn't be great, but after the promising-ish beginning its overall quality was a shame nonetheless. Defiance is next and last... man I'm going to be honest, I'm legitimately a bit worried. While I liked BO1 and SR1 well enough, I don't really know if it was worth it to dive into this series that so far has mostly just consisted of cliffhangers and unresolved potential, and Defiance is the last opportunity for that to change. Fingers crossed. EDIT: Yeah it was pretty nice