This review contains spoilers
Blood Omen 2 may have tested my mental fortitude and made me consider quitting the series entirely, but there was no way I was going to do that, I had to play Defiance to see how the story concluded, and I am glad I did because Defiance delivers in that aspect, though, in true LoK fashion, it still comes with its own unique myriad of problems that can't be understated.
From SR1 and onwards, every subsequent game placed a greater emphasis on combat and this shift in focus away from puzzles reaches its zenith here where Defiance is basically a rather simple hack n'slasher. You can launch enemies into the air, juggle them, have them rebound off the ground to continue your string and you get a few new moves as you progress through the game all of which compliment eachother very well. The pool of moves that Kain and Raziel have is very small but you get just enough to where experimenting with just how long you can keep a combo going is still extremely fun. I had a blast with it and it is easily the most fun I've had when playing a LoK game, with that said though, it comes with a fair share of caveats. For starters, you get new moves, but you unlock all of them around the midway point, with the latter half not adding anything new to spice things up. To add to this issue, as you progress through the game , you fight more and more of these Goliath type enemies that can't be stunned or launched so the part that I had so much fun with early on gets diminished as the game goes on and completely fizzles out by the end. Also, this game doesn't do anything to actually encourage engaging with its combat. I tried squeezing as much juice out of the moves at my disposal as possible because I am already a big fan of games like DMC, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden etc, but for someone who doesn't get their kicks out of keeping enemies suspended in the air for as long as possible, there's no incentive that pushes the player to experiment. There is no counter to tell you how long your combo is and there is no rating on how well you are doing, so for people not already accustomed to this genre, at worst, this games combat can end up feeling just as monotonous as in past games. You also can't talk about Defiance for too long without bringing up the fixed-camera and it is dreadful. It rarely gives a good view of things and often hides things that are needed for progression. I think this was done because DMC had a similar camera style, but atleast that game didn't have platforming, this one does. Vorador's Mansion is agonizing at times, trying to angle your jumps properly while the camera shifts leads to so many failed attempts and it's just not something that should be in the game.
Aside from combat, this game still tries to have some puzzles but it feels really tacked on. One thing I liked about this series up until now is how cut content from one game is usually added into a later entry, like how SR1 was originally going to have elemental reavers only for that idea to be scrapped and implemented in SR2 instead. However, in Defiance's case, this stubbornness ends up hurting the game for me. SR2 was going to have 7 forges rather than 4 so to make up for this, you go through 7 forges in Defiance which is the main source of puzzles in this game, problem here is that the forges here are so uninteresting compared to SR2. They're quite short, visually they all look identical and worst of all, you go through some of them just to acquire abilities that Raziel already had by the end of SR2 and the reason for their absence isn't explained. Kain also goes through these areas and it just feels so repetitive, constantly going back to the same area just to do the same thing over and over. I wish they directed all their attention into fleshing out the combat rather than being preoccupied with the fact that SR2 only had 4 forges and feeling the need to shoe-horn an inferior version of them all into this game. So yeah, though it doesn't start out that way, the gameplay here is still pretty mid even if I'd consider it to still be my favourite out of the entire series.
As for the story, it had big shoes to fill. Prior to this game, we had 2 Soul Reaver games that had endings that could barely be described as such and Blood Omen 2's entire plot felt like it had no bearing on any of the events of the past games. So, perhaps the best thing I can say about Defiance's plot is that it succeeds in tying up majority of the loose threads from past games, making BO2s story feel purposeful in retrospect and it even works as a conclusion to the series. It's not perfect, and the way it is set out with Kain and Raziel being years apart and thus barely having them interact with eachother is disappointing. Instead, we get Raziel and Kain commenting on murals depicting their destined fight with dialogue that pales in comparison to them waxing philosophical in past games. But any issue I can have is negated by just how satisfying it is to finally get a conclusion to these events. We get an explanation of the Elder God's existence, we see what happened to Turel, we see the end of Moebius and we get a strong conclusion to Raziel's arc. It's so cathartic to have a game that resolves more events than it sets up and it can't be emphasized enough just how much of a small miracle this is considering that it wasn't even intended to be the last game in the series.
Ultimately, this is my favourite LoK game and when looking at the series as a whole, my reviews were quite negative since these games aren't very conventionally enjoyable like a lot of other stuff I play, but they are undeniably special in many ways. From Blood Omen's script to Soul Reaver's incredible atmosphere and ambition to SR2 and Defiance's incredible storytelling, every game has something they feel unrivaled in (except BO2, that game is ass) and I'd recommend it to anyone who is even remotely curious.
From SR1 and onwards, every subsequent game placed a greater emphasis on combat and this shift in focus away from puzzles reaches its zenith here where Defiance is basically a rather simple hack n'slasher. You can launch enemies into the air, juggle them, have them rebound off the ground to continue your string and you get a few new moves as you progress through the game all of which compliment eachother very well. The pool of moves that Kain and Raziel have is very small but you get just enough to where experimenting with just how long you can keep a combo going is still extremely fun. I had a blast with it and it is easily the most fun I've had when playing a LoK game, with that said though, it comes with a fair share of caveats. For starters, you get new moves, but you unlock all of them around the midway point, with the latter half not adding anything new to spice things up. To add to this issue, as you progress through the game , you fight more and more of these Goliath type enemies that can't be stunned or launched so the part that I had so much fun with early on gets diminished as the game goes on and completely fizzles out by the end. Also, this game doesn't do anything to actually encourage engaging with its combat. I tried squeezing as much juice out of the moves at my disposal as possible because I am already a big fan of games like DMC, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden etc, but for someone who doesn't get their kicks out of keeping enemies suspended in the air for as long as possible, there's no incentive that pushes the player to experiment. There is no counter to tell you how long your combo is and there is no rating on how well you are doing, so for people not already accustomed to this genre, at worst, this games combat can end up feeling just as monotonous as in past games. You also can't talk about Defiance for too long without bringing up the fixed-camera and it is dreadful. It rarely gives a good view of things and often hides things that are needed for progression. I think this was done because DMC had a similar camera style, but atleast that game didn't have platforming, this one does. Vorador's Mansion is agonizing at times, trying to angle your jumps properly while the camera shifts leads to so many failed attempts and it's just not something that should be in the game.
Aside from combat, this game still tries to have some puzzles but it feels really tacked on. One thing I liked about this series up until now is how cut content from one game is usually added into a later entry, like how SR1 was originally going to have elemental reavers only for that idea to be scrapped and implemented in SR2 instead. However, in Defiance's case, this stubbornness ends up hurting the game for me. SR2 was going to have 7 forges rather than 4 so to make up for this, you go through 7 forges in Defiance which is the main source of puzzles in this game, problem here is that the forges here are so uninteresting compared to SR2. They're quite short, visually they all look identical and worst of all, you go through some of them just to acquire abilities that Raziel already had by the end of SR2 and the reason for their absence isn't explained. Kain also goes through these areas and it just feels so repetitive, constantly going back to the same area just to do the same thing over and over. I wish they directed all their attention into fleshing out the combat rather than being preoccupied with the fact that SR2 only had 4 forges and feeling the need to shoe-horn an inferior version of them all into this game. So yeah, though it doesn't start out that way, the gameplay here is still pretty mid even if I'd consider it to still be my favourite out of the entire series.
As for the story, it had big shoes to fill. Prior to this game, we had 2 Soul Reaver games that had endings that could barely be described as such and Blood Omen 2's entire plot felt like it had no bearing on any of the events of the past games. So, perhaps the best thing I can say about Defiance's plot is that it succeeds in tying up majority of the loose threads from past games, making BO2s story feel purposeful in retrospect and it even works as a conclusion to the series. It's not perfect, and the way it is set out with Kain and Raziel being years apart and thus barely having them interact with eachother is disappointing. Instead, we get Raziel and Kain commenting on murals depicting their destined fight with dialogue that pales in comparison to them waxing philosophical in past games. But any issue I can have is negated by just how satisfying it is to finally get a conclusion to these events. We get an explanation of the Elder God's existence, we see what happened to Turel, we see the end of Moebius and we get a strong conclusion to Raziel's arc. It's so cathartic to have a game that resolves more events than it sets up and it can't be emphasized enough just how much of a small miracle this is considering that it wasn't even intended to be the last game in the series.
Ultimately, this is my favourite LoK game and when looking at the series as a whole, my reviews were quite negative since these games aren't very conventionally enjoyable like a lot of other stuff I play, but they are undeniably special in many ways. From Blood Omen's script to Soul Reaver's incredible atmosphere and ambition to SR2 and Defiance's incredible storytelling, every game has something they feel unrivaled in (except BO2, that game is ass) and I'd recommend it to anyone who is even remotely curious.