Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

by ACTIVISION

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00004XQ6V
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,044 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Dark Fiction Saga, August 25, 2000

By 

Roy L. Daman "ColdHaven" (Kings Mountain, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (CD-ROM)

The story of Kain is not so simple as many stories in games. Kain is risen after his brutal murder at the hands of unknown enemies. He then is given the chance of resurrection by a necromancer. From the depths of hell, Kain is offered a kind of life in Nosgoth as a vampire, which he greedily agrees to so that he might revenge himslef upon his murderers.

This is an excellent story that is given through the first person, by Kain himself, as the story unfolds. You are attempting to regain balance in Nosgoth by reviving the pillars. You are playing a bad guy, so to speak, he is not really on the side of mankind, and only lusts after revenge. However, the way it is presented is far beyond excellent!!!

This is an action adventure story that once you start playing, you won't want to stop! There is a deep story behind all of the action, and will keep you interested all the way through. However, this is a very morbid story and is not recommended for those who are young. Although, those who love dark stories and gothically morbid tales will hang on to the very end of this game and beg for more. If you loved Soul Reaver, then you will adore this excellent prequel to that game!

An excellent and very pleasurable game to play. Lots of story and background mixed with action, mystery and puzzles galore! A must get as far as games go!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance., April 11, 2001

By 

Joshua Graves (Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (CD-ROM)

The first game in the Soul Reaver story. I couldn't really grasp the genius of the game at first, but after playing Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain I went back to this game and could understand the effort that was put into this game. This game made the path for its predecessors with its dark, gothic enviroment and puzzles. You are Kain and the hatred that boils for the people that killed you is unfathomable. You have been brought to life through black sorcery to take vengeance on those who betrayed you. This is a great story line and the carnage that is incorporated into the game only adds on to suspense and fun. Like a vampire you need blood for sustenance and obtaining it is always fun. The puzzles are good and so is the game. So if you are into the dark games like me get this game.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good port of an early Playstation classic, June 16, 2004

By 

KnyteOwl (Noneyaville, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (CD-ROM)

In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain you play the role of Kain, killed by unknown ememies, and seeking revenge after being resurrected by a necromancer as a vampire. Set in the gothic, medievil fantasy land of Nosgoth, the story is deep, atmospheric, engrossing, and unfolds via in game cutscenes, and a first person narrative by Kain (played by Simon Templeman) as the game progresses. High production values are obvious as the game has pretty sharp 2D graphics (considering when it was made--this is a port of a first generation PSX game after all), good sound, foreboding, atmospheric music, and superb voice acting. While visibly dated to the modern eye, at the time, 2D graphics didn't get much sharper, or more detailed than what's presented here. For the most part, this is a hybrid action/adventure game accentuated by combat, puzzle solving, and basic RPG elements. This was another innovative step for the time. While it's become fairly common to see other RPGs successfully combine these elements and genres, games like Blood Omen and Diablo were among the first to do so with any notable success. You can use magic, change forms, suck blood to sustain yourself (and blue ghost blood to replenish your mana), and you have a modest selection of medievil weapons. For the time it was made, this was a very ambitious, and innovative game indeed. It's difficult to not be impressed with the sheer size of the game world, or the variety of enemies, environments, and combat. The game is considerably longer than your typical console based RPG, and you can expect to invest a good 60-80 hours in completing it (considerably more without cheats, or a strategy guide--both of which I highly recommend as this is a very challenging game). As with most older console games, the game has a tendancy to rely on a frustration factor to keep you playing at times, and the gameplay can become a bit repetitive, but that's fairly typical for games of this period (1997), and it doesn't over-rely on it, so it's hard to smack it around too much for that. On the whole, the dark story, and addictive gameplay spurs you on. The game also contains developers cheats to help get you past the toughest parts if need be, and several secret areas chock full of bonus power ups.

Forewarned is forearmed, and prospective buyers should know that PC Blood Omen is a rare breed of console port which requires a bit of tweaking to get running under Win2K and WinXP operating systems. Mercifully enough however, installing and running it in Win98/ME compatiblility mode with an unofficial patch (just do an internet search and it pops right up on a fan website) seems to cure this problem. The patch is not written specifically for Win XP (it's technically written for Win2000), or supported by Crystal Dynamics, or Activision, but seems to work fine (on my machine at least). This comes as a relief as it is good to know that there is often compatibility fixes available that get these stubborn old classics running. Also, the game is not a system hog, and seems stable and well behaved, rarely if ever crashing to desktop, exhibiting graphical anomalies, or framerate problems.

PC players will appreciate the higher resolution, good sound, analog control(assuming you have a dual analog gamepad and surround sound speakers) and shorter load times that the PSX original could not offer. The shorter load times almost single-handedly make the PC version of this game worth pursuing for fans as they alleviate a good deal of the game's frustration factor, and this becomes a significant consideration in a game where you will spend a good amount of time navigating in and out of your inventory, and going in and out of houses--both of which generally causes about a 3-5 second load time on the PSX/PS2. The game is a straight port of the original offering no bonus or expanded content for PC players, which is a bit disappointing, but the aforementioned enhancements offer PC players the opportunity to experience the definitive enhanced version of the game if you're set up to play it that way, which makes it more than worth pursuing. Console players who caught the sequels (which I didn't like as well as this one but are still decent games) get the chance to re-visit the franchise's roots, and nostalgic PC players get an old favorite which inherits several major free enhancements (graphics, analog control, surround sound, shorter load times) just for being a PC port. All in all, this is a brilliantly innovative title, and a stunning achievement considering the ambitiousness of the game, and the limitations of the technology of the time. Legacy of Kain is truly a classic game, and has more than enough gaming meat on your RPG bone to be well worth your money.

UPDATED EDIT: Blood Omen is Win Vista/Win 7 compatible with mild tweaking, but may also require a slowdown program on dual core, or 2.0GHz or faster machines.