After having watched the video from YourFavoriteSon on Legacy of Kain, I am extremely pleased to see yet another video about this franchise from someone with a good voice! Thank you sir
Blood Omen 2 will always be special to me despite how bad it is. When I was a kid I had a kidney disease and was going through chemo and all kinds of nasty shit. During an especially rough time I had to miss school for about a month and my class raised money to buy me a video game since I was stuck at home in between stays at the hospital. To this day I have no idea how my teacher landed on an M-Rated sequel to a game she had no clue if I had ever played or not but I was happy with it. I was actually a big fan of Soul Reaver 1 and 2 and had played through most of Blood Omen, but it’s still baffling to me why my catholic school teacher decided to get me Blood Omen 2.
Awesome retrospective of a highly underappreciated series, and really high quality. Not sure how you have less than 300 subs my dude but have one more.
Blood Omen 2 has a special place in heart, it gave me everything I wanted as kid, to be able to play as vampire, with great main character, environmental storytelling everything, and then legacy of Kain Defiance which was excellent, but u kept having to rent it as I couldn’t find it anywhere to buy, only my local games store which rented it out. Legacy of Kain defiance I’ve just found on Steam on sale for 83p, so at one point I’m going to play that and actually complete the game. Nostalgia trip there. Why I love PC LOL
I’m pretty certain none of this series was planned out. There was originally a prequel to Blood Omen planned, but that was before Soul Reaver became part of the series. Amy Hennig probably just knew to tap into some ideas that may have been used in a prequel, by making time travel be a big focus on having characters go back to times before when Blood Omen was set. I beat William using the fire sword too. You definitely don’t need to use the reaver. If it were planned, it probably would have been mandatory that you use it. The Soul Reaver was barely part of the plot in Blood Omen. Kain wasn’t even shown using it in the cutscenes. Soul Reaver and all subsequent games just did a great job in making it very relevant to the overall story. Regarding what you said at the end, the reaver just needs to end up back in Avernus Cathedral, for all the events of the timeline to happen. I’m not sure hatbwoukd happen if Raziel’s purified soul struck his body again, though. The series was supposed to have concluded in the Soul Reaver 1 era, with the Elder God showing up later in that timeline for the final battle. I would have liked to see the Hylden explored more too. There was a lot more to them than the Sarafan Lord, who was a very generic bad guy. I reckon in order for them to be as big a threat as Kain makes out, they’d need to show up later in the timeline, even after the Sarafan Lord was defeated.
Cain's legacy was just being the first murderer, Kain's legacy is being a time hopping lord of all vampires with a sword that reaves souls...much more compelling.
Sweet Jesus, no. LOK always leaned much farther towards power fantasy, which Souls-like games are not. I hate Souls-likes because I'm primarily interested in story, music, and voice acting, with gameplay of tertiary concern. I know a lot of LOK fans are the same.
The voice acting in Soul Reaver is still some of the best ive heard of the Ps1 era games. It definitely outweighs the look of it now. And I still play some of these games again every once in awhile. I recommend Soul Reaver to any gamer.
"There is a magical operation of maximum importance: the initiation of the new Aeon. When it becomes necessary to utter a word, the whole planet must be bathed in blood." Ripped verbatim from Magick in Theory and Practice. A Thelema book (Crowley). Ain't that some shit.
One thing ive always enjoyed about soul reaver 1 was learning enemy location in areas and then insta staking them from mileage away , never gets old, oh and just how perfect the controls have aged , playing the remaster i aint lost my touch or they were always just the most perfect controls ever not sure which
Game Developer studios would use book writers for these types of stories and Legacy of Kain’s favorite phrase ‘Vae Victis’ came from Marvel comic’s Namor phrase 'Imperius Rex'.
About the very beginning of Blood Omen, if you know how the game works, you can kill every assassin. When you go down the road, more will come, but you can kill them. Iirc, you can break the game, because you might kill them all, being unable to progress further, but I won't stay by it. I've tried doing that a very long time ago and what I can remember for sure is that you surely can kill those, that meet you right as you leave the tavern.
The studio that did the animated Castlevania series on Netflix handling the series and giving it a proper conclusion wouldn't be the worst thing in the world 😅😅
"Morbius foretold mine eons ago" in Soul Reaver 2 47:08 . If I'm not mistaken, he uses the same line in Soul Reaver 1, but says "...a millenia ago". Did saying a millenia mess up their timeline or at least limit storytelling flexibility?
I had to go back and check, you're right! I think they mis spoke when they say "millenia" in the first game, as nearly 2000 years have passed since kain was raised at this point. Unless its an indication that this is a younger kain, but we tend to always see kain at his furthest point in the timeline
It's my greatest gaming lament that Kain never got a final chapter for his own Legacy, Raziel's story was resolved, just needed one more game to finish it for Kain. Best case scenario now is a reboot.
@@virgogaming6488 His speech at the end of Blood Omen 2 sounds to rather closely follow the events that lead into the original Soul Reaver, rebuilding the cities (which would become the vampire territories), slaughtering the Seraphim, and Nosgoth falling under his rule. Doesn't sound like breaking the cycle. But that still leaves all of Kain prime's efforts since the first Soul Reaver unfulfilled. Defiance (which exists in the 4th timeline) ends with Kain defeating the Elder God and learning more about the machinations driving fate, standing back at the corruption of the pillars.
Sadly this series disappeared before i was old enough to get into it, but i remember playing soul reaver on my uncles dreamcast or ps1 idk which and being too scared to go past the first area with all the water 😂
Fun fact that soul reaver 1 and 2 were supposed to be 1 game but the story was so big it had to be split into 2 games. Thats why the 2 d soul reaver was shorter than the first.
I never had any problem with controlling Kain in Blood Omen 2, and I didn't have any trouble with the lock-on system. Really, I always thought Soul Reaver 1 was far more of a chore to play. Also, the game started development after Soul Reaver 1. So it was stuck in development Hell with a smaller team and a tighter budget, where they had to scrap everything and start over at least once.
"Soul reaver isn't a Souls-like game, Souls games are... I will come up with a good pun [later]" Souls games are Soul Reave-ting games. You're welcome.
Oddly I think blood omen has aged the best out all the games in the series. It’s basically a gothic Zelda. The other games, the camera is a pain. I love this story and actually like how it’s been left. Looking at the planned sequels they looked rubbish. The bits I had seen had crude language and not the same level of voice acting. It looked more like legacy of kain meets GTA.
I can agree with this, blood omen is more timeless and the style of game and art is still popular today. Although with the bloodborne demake out, maybe we'll start seeing polygon based games more often again! And yes the dead sun sequel/soft reboot looked terrible!
@@dandoessteam793 I think it’s more blood omen did the over the top, down view, which had been around for a couple of decades, but the other games where made in that period (especially Soul Reaver) where we were still getting used to 3D platformers. Defiance would stand up today if it didn’t have that fixed camera. All of the games have some form of flaw in the game play, but it’s a testament to how great the story is that I don’t really dwell on these and only really remember the good. I remember my friend buying Blood Omen, I could watch him play, start to finish. Personally this is my favourite of all the fictions to have Vampires as the main characters.
@@virgogaming6488 combat is clunky, but the camera is not the enemy in this game. Plus if memory serves me well, he only shouts when he uses the sword. All the 3D games have some sort of issue with the combat, usually it’s the camera. Blood Omen’s main issue is the loading times, which was normal for the that period, as was clunky combat. You could put this on as a mobile game and you would only have to fix a couple of bugs, the other games would need a lot more of an overhaul.
I think truthfully (and it’s nice to re see the series after so long…) blood omen 2, 100% the weakest game in the series and is definitively a downgrade* made by a different team at the same time soul reaver 2 was being made. However* Blood omen 2s ending is actually on UA-cam alongside an early version of the ending. Which is almost identical in terms of voice overs* However, it’s re-arranged. Blood omen 2 suffers from the lack of satisfaction. If they did what they were aiming for. Which inherently would make ‘gamers’ not happy. Those who care about the story and only the story wouldn’t mind a ‘moot’ ending as it adds perspective. The original ending implied Kane was having doubts about what he wanted because of Umah. Implying* that he would raise the sarafan lieutenants as they were the perfect warriors to exterminate any and all Holden survivors. It recontextualised how Kain was presented by soul reaver. But would someone who’s first LOK game know that? Would it be a good starting point? Would the 15 hours of play time be worth the investment? ‘Nope’ with blood omen 2, you have to take some creative liberties with both character designs and what the plot is. I’m fairly certain the end of this story as it is, the whole final boss section. Relisten to what the hylden lord is saying. Because you won’t pick up on it initially. He’s TALKING to Kain. Commending him on being more surprising than he thought, because DEFIANCE happened before blood omen 2. This is Kain, in a younger state, taking on this big evil that has invaded the world and won. An Evil that Kain himself fears they could tamper with the flow of time and change events in some way. The idea being Raziel actually sets the Hylden returning in motion. With Kain making his fatal decision. The hylden Lord, never realised until the final battle this is Kain. If they lent a little bit more into the idea of how dangerous blood omen 2s threat is, how damaged the timeline now is that would make it better IMHO. But those are the best scenes in the entire game. The ending boss fight scenes. Albeit kind of poorly done by comparison to soul reaver 2.
I'd argue Blood Omen 2 is the best game in the series from a gameplay and combat point. It's fair if fans don't like the game from a story point but it's not like the other games play great enough to make them worth playing in today's time.
The pronounciation is fixed from the second soul reaver video onwards. Which time stamps are missing so I can fix? I did leave the conclusion out on purpose since I figured very few people want to skip to that part of the video!
@@davidbanan. the chapters? Maybe. I think that because I skipped lines between the games, but I think it makes it easier to navigate in the description! Oh well can't win em all haha
I've been on a LoK retrospective binge these are so awesome.
After having watched the video from YourFavoriteSon on Legacy of Kain, I am extremely pleased to see yet another video about this franchise from someone with a good voice! Thank you sir
Thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Unbelievably relevant in 2022. And I might add, will be in perpetuity. I love this series so much.
Thank you, you’re a legend.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed!
Blood Omen 2 will always be special to me despite how bad it is. When I was a kid I had a kidney disease and was going through chemo and all kinds of nasty shit. During an especially rough time I had to miss school for about a month and my class raised money to buy me a video game since I was stuck at home in between stays at the hospital. To this day I have no idea how my teacher landed on an M-Rated sequel to a game she had no clue if I had ever played or not but I was happy with it. I was actually a big fan of Soul Reaver 1 and 2 and had played through most of Blood Omen, but it’s still baffling to me why my catholic school teacher decided to get me Blood Omen 2.
That does sound like a lovely memory!
They must have asked someone who knew
Here’s to more LoK content in 2022 :D
I know right, for the longest time it was nothing but cutscenes compilations. Now look how far lok UA-cam has come.
This is the kind of content that'd i expect from a youtuber with 10k and up, not 170
Amazing
Thanks so much dude! Stay tuned for more there's another video coming soon, its gonna the biggest one yet!
Finally, matthewmatosis makes that legacy of kain retrospective we all wanted.
Haha I actually make that same joke in my newest dark souls video!
@@dandoessteam793 you gotta a dark souls video, I gotta watch that next
@@grutsthefoodman3645 I hope you enjoy it!
I actually really like Blood Omen 2. To be fair a lot of fans love all of the series in all.
Blood Omen 2 is the most fun game in the series. The Gamecube version is the definitive way to play it.
So many irish people doing UA-cam in the last 10 years, refreshing to see
Just found this video, sad to see you haven't got enough recognition. Great video, keep it up 👍
ANOTHER RETROSPECTIVE VIDEO OF MY FAVORITE SERIES TO EVER ENTER MY LIFE?!?!? MY GOOD SIR YOU HAVE MY SUBSCRIPTION!!!!
Thank you good sir, welcome to the steam pilgrimage!
Awesome retrospective of a highly underappreciated series, and really high quality. Not sure how you have less than 300 subs my dude but have one more.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the video and I hope you like the rest of my work too!
Blood Omen 2 has a special place in heart, it gave me everything I wanted as kid, to be able to play as vampire, with great main character, environmental storytelling everything, and then legacy of Kain Defiance which was excellent, but u kept having to rent it as I couldn’t find it anywhere to buy, only my local games store which rented it out.
Legacy of Kain defiance I’ve just found on Steam on sale for 83p, so at one point I’m going to play that and actually complete the game. Nostalgia trip there. Why I love PC LOL
Я человек простой, я вижу двухчасовой видос про легаси оф кайн - смотрю и ставлю лайк, даже если я его уже видел по частям.
Thank you Dan, very cool!
I'm glad you like it!
Outstanding video thanks dude!😎👍👍
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@@dandoessteam793 🙂👍
I’m pretty certain none of this series was planned out. There was originally a prequel to Blood Omen planned, but that was before Soul Reaver became part of the series. Amy Hennig probably just knew to tap into some ideas that may have been used in a prequel, by making time travel be a big focus on having characters go back to times before when Blood Omen was set. I beat William using the fire sword too. You definitely don’t need to use the reaver. If it were planned, it probably would have been mandatory that you use it. The Soul Reaver was barely part of the plot in Blood Omen. Kain wasn’t even shown using it in the cutscenes. Soul Reaver and all subsequent games just did a great job in making it very relevant to the overall story. Regarding what you said at the end, the reaver just needs to end up back in Avernus Cathedral, for all the events of the timeline to happen. I’m not sure hatbwoukd happen if Raziel’s purified soul struck his body again, though. The series was supposed to have concluded in the Soul Reaver 1 era, with the Elder God showing up later in that timeline for the final battle. I would have liked to see the Hylden explored more too. There was a lot more to them than the Sarafan Lord, who was a very generic bad guy. I reckon in order for them to be as big a threat as Kain makes out, they’d need to show up later in the timeline, even after the Sarafan Lord was defeated.
I'm ready to binge some Legacy of Cain
*Kain
Cain's legacy was just being the first murderer, Kain's legacy is being a time hopping lord of all vampires with a sword that reaves souls...much more compelling.
I can’t believe this franchise hasn’t tried to cash in on the immense popularity of Souls-like games. I feel like it would fit perfectly.
Sweet Jesus, no. LOK always leaned much farther towards power fantasy, which Souls-like games are not. I hate Souls-likes because I'm primarily interested in story, music, and voice acting, with gameplay of tertiary concern. I know a lot of LOK fans are the same.
"Taverns closing, best be on your way stranger
There are things to come with the night that sane man should welcome"
51:50: Soul Reaver 1 had the Fire infusion for the Reaver.
True, it did as an optional secret iirc!
The voice acting in Soul Reaver is still some of the best ive heard of the Ps1 era games. It definitely outweighs the look of it now. And I still play some of these games again every once in awhile. I recommend Soul Reaver to any gamer.
Great work on a great game
"There is a magical operation of maximum importance: the initiation of the new Aeon.
When it becomes necessary to utter a word, the whole planet must be bathed in blood."
Ripped verbatim from Magick in Theory and Practice. A Thelema book (Crowley). Ain't that some shit.
Amazing video!!
2 hour LoK video auto gets thumbs up
Another man of culture I see!
One thing ive always enjoyed about soul reaver 1 was learning enemy location in areas and then insta staking them from mileage away , never gets old, oh and just how perfect the controls have aged , playing the remaster i aint lost my touch or they were always just the most perfect controls ever not sure which
Here 2 years later, UE5 Lok please god.
Why did it take 2 months for this to be fed, algorithm? Why?
Its always the way!
20:57
Love the old Templar Knight reference 😂
Game Developer studios would use book writers for these types of stories and Legacy of Kain’s favorite phrase ‘Vae Victis’ came from Marvel comic’s Namor phrase 'Imperius Rex'.
About the very beginning of Blood Omen, if you know how the game works, you can kill every assassin. When you go down the road, more will come, but you can kill them. Iirc, you can break the game, because you might kill them all, being unable to progress further, but I won't stay by it. I've tried doing that a very long time ago and what I can remember for sure is that you surely can kill those, that meet you right as you leave the tavern.
The studio that did the animated Castlevania series on Netflix handling the series and giving it a proper conclusion wouldn't be the worst thing in the world 😅😅
Absolutely Love this Series!!
"Morbius foretold mine eons ago" in Soul Reaver 2 47:08 .
If I'm not mistaken, he uses the same line in Soul Reaver 1, but says "...a millenia ago".
Did saying a millenia mess up their timeline or at least limit storytelling flexibility?
I had to go back and check, you're right!
I think they mis spoke when they say "millenia" in the first game, as nearly 2000 years have passed since kain was raised at this point. Unless its an indication that this is a younger kain, but we tend to always see kain at his furthest point in the timeline
It's my greatest gaming lament that Kain never got a final chapter for his own Legacy, Raziel's story was resolved, just needed one more game to finish it for Kain. Best case scenario now is a reboot.
Blood Omen 2 is technically his swan song, the ending is ambiguous what his rule will be like since it's an altered timeline. The 4th timeline.
@@virgogaming6488 His speech at the end of Blood Omen 2 sounds to rather closely follow the events that lead into the original Soul Reaver, rebuilding the cities (which would become the vampire territories), slaughtering the Seraphim, and Nosgoth falling under his rule. Doesn't sound like breaking the cycle.
But that still leaves all of Kain prime's efforts since the first Soul Reaver unfulfilled. Defiance (which exists in the 4th timeline) ends with Kain defeating the Elder God and learning more about the machinations driving fate, standing back at the corruption of the pillars.
Sadly this series disappeared before i was old enough to get into it, but i remember playing soul reaver on my uncles dreamcast or ps1 idk which and being too scared to go past the first area with all the water 😂
Fun fact that soul reaver 1 and 2 were supposed to be 1 game but the story was so big it had to be split into 2 games. Thats why the 2 d soul reaver was shorter than the first.
The series never became bigger because of gameplay.
New legacy of kain game same graphics and camera angles as blood omen one, just have it all pretty, lovely style game. Bangin soundtrack.
Legacy of kain series was supposed to be a total of 8 games but we only got 5😢
46:28 and now there’s a soul reaver 1+2 remaster coming 😂
I was hoping for a full remake of the series, but I'll take it!
I yearn for a legacy of kain game so bad that I have to use other games fill that gap. Eldan ring gets to be blood omen 3 for now.
good video
1:14:43 that bleep almost turned me deaf. Please be more careful for the sake of headphone users. Great job otherwise, thumbs up.
I never had any problem with controlling Kain in Blood Omen 2, and I didn't have any trouble with the lock-on system. Really, I always thought Soul Reaver 1 was far more of a chore to play.
Also, the game started development after Soul Reaver 1. So it was stuck in development Hell with a smaller team and a tighter budget, where they had to scrap everything and start over at least once.
How da fuq you leave out that Ariel is Anna Gunn, aka Mrs. Walter White.
You have both asked and answered your own question, Skyler was the WORST!
Seriously though I actually had no idea, thanks for the info!
your title card says "restrospective" lol
"Soul reaver isn't a Souls-like game, Souls games are... I will come up with a good pun [later]"
Souls games are Soul Reave-ting games. You're welcome.
Oddly I think blood omen has aged the best out all the games in the series. It’s basically a gothic Zelda. The other games, the camera is a pain. I love this story and actually like how it’s been left. Looking at the planned sequels they looked rubbish. The bits I had seen had crude language and not the same level of voice acting. It looked more like legacy of kain meets GTA.
I can agree with this, blood omen is more timeless and the style of game and art is still popular today. Although with the bloodborne demake out, maybe we'll start seeing polygon based games more often again!
And yes the dead sun sequel/soft reboot looked terrible!
@@dandoessteam793 I think it’s more blood omen did the over the top, down view, which had been around for a couple of decades, but the other games where made in that period (especially Soul Reaver) where we were still getting used to 3D platformers. Defiance would stand up today if it didn’t have that fixed camera. All of the games have some form of flaw in the game play, but it’s a testament to how great the story is that I don’t really dwell on these and only really remember the good. I remember my friend buying Blood Omen, I could watch him play, start to finish. Personally this is my favourite of all the fictions to have Vampires as the main characters.
I disagree, Kain's sprite moves slow and combat is super clunky. And hearing him shout Vae Victus so much gets very annoying.
@@virgogaming6488 combat is clunky, but the camera is not the enemy in this game. Plus if memory serves me well, he only shouts when he uses the sword. All the 3D games have some sort of issue with the combat, usually it’s the camera. Blood Omen’s main issue is the loading times, which was normal for the that period, as was clunky combat. You could put this on as a mobile game and you would only have to fix a couple of bugs, the other games would need a lot more of an overhaul.
I think truthfully (and it’s nice to re see the series after so long…) blood omen 2, 100% the weakest game in the series and is definitively a downgrade* made by a different team at the same time soul reaver 2 was being made. However*
Blood omen 2s ending is actually on UA-cam alongside an early version of the ending. Which is almost identical in terms of voice overs* However, it’s re-arranged.
Blood omen 2 suffers from the lack of satisfaction. If they did what they were aiming for. Which inherently would make ‘gamers’ not happy. Those who care about the story and only the story wouldn’t mind a ‘moot’ ending as it adds perspective.
The original ending implied Kane was having doubts about what he wanted because of Umah. Implying* that he would raise the sarafan lieutenants as they were the perfect warriors to exterminate any and all Holden survivors. It recontextualised how Kain was presented by soul reaver.
But would someone who’s first LOK game know that? Would it be a good starting point? Would the 15 hours of play time be worth the investment?
‘Nope’ with blood omen 2, you have to take some creative liberties with both character designs and what the plot is.
I’m fairly certain the end of this story as it is, the whole final boss section. Relisten to what the hylden lord is saying. Because you won’t pick up on it initially.
He’s TALKING to Kain. Commending him on being more surprising than he thought, because DEFIANCE happened before blood omen 2. This is Kain, in a younger state, taking on this big evil that has invaded the world and won.
An Evil that Kain himself fears they could tamper with the flow of time and change events in some way. The idea being Raziel actually sets the Hylden returning in motion. With Kain making his fatal decision.
The hylden Lord, never realised until the final battle this is Kain. If they lent a little bit more into the idea of how dangerous blood omen 2s threat is, how damaged the timeline now is that would make it better IMHO.
But those are the best scenes in the entire game. The ending boss fight scenes. Albeit kind of poorly done by comparison to soul reaver 2.
I'd argue Blood Omen 2 is the best game in the series from a gameplay and combat point. It's fair if fans don't like the game from a story point but it's not like the other games play great enough to make them worth playing in today's time.
Cheatcodes were everything
If I ever won the lottery I would buy this IP and remaster it
Agreed! If you win dm me and we'll write a plan!
Tragic.
It's really stupid when people compare graphics from 20+years ago.
Dislike because of missing timestamps and Dan misspronouncing 'RazAiel'
The pronounciation is fixed from the second soul reaver video onwards. Which time stamps are missing so I can fix? I did leave the conclusion out on purpose since I figured very few people want to skip to that part of the video!
@@dandoessteam793 I think hes talking about time stamps on the "playbar"...? Is that what its called?
@@davidbanan. the chapters? Maybe. I think that because I skipped lines between the games, but I think it makes it easier to navigate in the description! Oh well can't win em all haha
this is wonderful