Ryan’s Thoughts
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance takes a bold but polarizing swing by centering its narrative on Elaleth, the previously unknown sister of Raziel, in a prequel story set before the events of Soul Reaver. For fans who love gothic storytelling, returning to the world of Nosgoth is a treat on the surface, offering hits of nostalgia and the series’ trademark dialogue. However, the execution often feels like a hollow, confusing mess that actively sabotages decades of carefully crafted lore.
The Legacy of Kain series is known for its story telling, amazing writing, and superb acting. What Legacy of Kain Ascendance does is attempt to capitalize on this by shoehorning in a “long-lost sister” trope that feels ripped from a mediocre fan fiction forum. Instead of giving us a long lost sister who seems to come from nowhere, we should have gotten a continuation of the story that continues on from the events of Legacy of Kain Defiance. While the game attempts to bridge timeline gaps, instead it manages to create massive plot holes that strip away the mystery of the original series.
The story you will find in Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is complete nonsense and has seemingly come out of nowhere. The only saving grace in the story is the voice acting, which is very nicely done…for the most part. Aside from the story shift, Legacy of Kain: Ascendance manages to again shift the series away from the 3D platforming and puzzle solving to a linear 2D action-platformer perspective.
On the surface, this seemed like an interesting direction to take, but when it comes to execution, it completely missed the mark. Ascendance attempts a three-character swap mechanic between Kain, Raziel, and Elaleth. While this offers some initial variation in playstyles, it frequently feels like a shallow gimmick that fails to master even the basic fundamentals of the genre.
The gameplay loop quickly devolves into a repetitive, soul-crushing grind where movement is inexcusably stiff, making every jump feel like a gamble. Compounding this issue is the game’s erratic enemy AI, which oscillates between standing completely brain-dead and unpredictably teleporting around. Lacking the verticality and clever puzzle designs that made the franchise famous, the game’s level design relies on flat, uninspired hallways and sudden difficulty spikes.
Legacy of Kain Ascendance doesn’t really seem to know its identity. It seems like it’s a Metroidvania, but without a map, and much in the way of exploration. Instead it’s a precision platformer that is gimmicky and extremely unfair. The game doesn’t give you a direction, it just kind of leaves you to guess where to go next. This would be fine if there would be some indication that you’re jumping down to a platform instead of down into a pit; only to then be put back to a checkpoint.
Visually, the game again suffers from a nauseating identity crisis; throwing three wildly clashing artistic styles into a blender. It constantly goes from core gameplay pixel art, to hand-drawn anime-inspired cut-scenes, and low-poly 3D sequences meant to evoke the original PlayStation era. Rather than feeling like a varied tribute, it creates a total lack of visual cohesion that constantly breaks immersion and feels like a lazy presentation. On the bright side, the raw power of the Xbox Series X ensures that this bizarre cocktail of low-fidelity assets runs flawlessly at a butter-smooth 60 fps in 4K with nonexistent loading times.
While I appreciate the attempt to be different and change things up, the game should have given us just the 2D anime style cut-scenes and left the 3D visuals out. Rather than a tribute to Soul Reaver on the Playstation One and Dreamcast, it feels more like an insult. If you can manage to look past the back and forth graphical presentation and concentrate on the 2D pixel graphics, the game looks really nice and animates well.
The audio department is one area I thought would be the games redemption, well I was once again left rather stunned and severely disappointed. The minor miracle of reuniting the legendary voice cast which includes Michael Bell as Raziel and Simon Templeman as Kain is rather amazing. I mean these guys are iconic and it was great to have them reprising their roles. Sadly, this awesome reunion isn’t the triumphant return I was hoping for, due to the games writing. The writing in Legacy of Kain Ascendance is rather lackluster and often makes the dialogue sound like a parody of itself. I know that we all can’t be Ann Henning, but this seems like a slap in the face to the series. So the writing is bad and the voice acting is great, but how’s the music?
Well the music is a hard metallic orchestra of heavy metal sound. The music is nice, but it focuses more on the action and less on the mystery that makes this iconic series so grand and memorable. This can be especially bothersome when you have characters having a conversation and you have the music nearly drowning out the voice actors. To add insult to injury here, there is a slight hiss and muffled sound to the character dialog. Almost making it seem like the speakers of whatever the sound is coming out of have blown. But no, this is just the result of poor audio quality.
Ultimately, Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a deeply polarizing, highly flawed attempt to revive a long dormant franchise after more than two decades. It falls drastically short of being the grand, big budget revival that fans have spent years dreaming about; that I have been dreaming about ever since finishing Defiance. The game’s execution on both a creative and technical level is frequently frustrating and rather disappointing; as a die hard fan of the series.
I was expecting a game that would compliment the series by taking it in a new direction and give us a new way to experience the story with a grand Metroidvania style experience. What we got instead was a game with repetitive combat, lore breaking story decisions, and jarring visuals that prevented it from being a competent product.
I have played other games from this developer in the past with the Angry Video Game Nerd series. Those were great titles, amazing titles in fact. It appears to me that the developer took what they did with the AVGN series, cranked it up to Ninja Gaiden on NES levels of difficulty, and placed the game in the Legacy of Kain universe. Legacy of Kain Ascendance is an insult to the series. If you were to take the LOK franchise away from this game, it’s an ok game. It’s very rough around the edges, but is a great first attempt at this type of game from the developer.
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance serves as a grim reminder of how difficult it is to recapture lightning in a bottle, which really is every game in this series, except this one. If you’re a die hard fan of the Legacy of Kain series, steer clear of this game. If you’re curious about a Metroidvania style platformer from this developer, then I would say give this game a shot. While I appreciate the attempt at what was done, as a die hard fan of the series, I can not recommend playing this game.
Jon’s thoughts:
I need to be upfront about something and that is that I am on friendly terms with the developers at FreakZone Games and have spoken with the lead developer personally about the game prior to release. As such, just know that what I say, I say with honesty and not malicious intent.
This….ain’t it chief.
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, the newest game in the Legacy of Kain series, feels less like a triumphant return and more like a strange detour into bizarro land. I have been a fan of Legacy of Kain since the PlayStation 1 era and its brilliant storytelling and fun gameplay always hooked me and left me wanting more. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance falls short in both of these areas and I am just frustrated with the end result.
FreakZone Games has made incredible titles before, such as the AVGN games, Manos the Hands of Fate and The Rocky Horror Show Video Game, but the developer’s style just does not seem to fit with Legacy of Kain. But then again Crystal Dynamics is probably also to blame for the direction Legacy of Kain: Ascendance went in.Typically a game from FreakZone has tight controls and precise combat, but Legacy of Kain: Ascendance has so many issues with hit detection and the platforming aspects feel far more unfair.
I have no clue why there were multiple visual styles, like 2D pixel art and PS1 era 3D visuals, but they keep clashing and do not mesh well together at all. And this is key to the problem with Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, it feels like a game that mashes together ideas without making sure they work. I will also note the game is a slight retelling of the recent Legacy of Kain comic book, and the comic book did not have the best reception, though some details are changed here.
The different characters do not provide enough variety in terms of playstyle and everything ends up feeling the same way. There was a lot of potential and I just do not feel it was reached, and like Ryan said, it feels like a Metroidvania that misses the point of being a Metroidvania. I have to wonder how much executive meddling there was, because this feels like several different games crammed into one.
Ryan touched on the story, but I will note that while it was great to have as many of the original voice actors back as possible, something was off here storywise. Kain and Raziel both felt very out of character, and while the new character Elaleth has proven controversial among some, my issue is more that there are retcons that get in the way of the story fans have come to love.
I wanted so much to like Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, but this is not what fans wanted from a return for the series. There is none of the compelling gameplay, and the story is too off-putting. If anything, this is perhaps best left as a non-canon what if? style game, because if this is the new direction the series will go in, I just am not sure the fans will come along for the ride.
Disclaimer: Review keys were provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.