"A treat for any fan of the series. The story is finally cleared up, and the combat has undergone a great overhaul."
The Legacy of Kain story, as everyone knows, is very complicated. It involves time travel, strange prophesies, the defiance of one's destiny and a whole lot of philosophy. All in all, it's just confusing. Untill now, every sequel only made it even more confusing, but in Defiance, you'll finally get to know just what the hell is going on. Wich is, for the fans, actually plenty of reason to get this game.
The games so far, though, have mostly functioned as a vessel for the story. Combat was for the most part pretty unsatisfying and rather boring. And so were the key-lock-block puzzles. Here comes Defiance to save the day!
Well, except for the puzzles. The're still of the key-lock-block type, but they're definitely an improvement over Soul Reaver 2 or Blood Omen 2.
Combat in Defiance is actually fun. Combat is now focussed on mostly fighting off multiple adverseries in gruesome and very over-the-top-ways. Even though the fighting system is pretty out of character with the series, it sure is fun to toss you oppontents into the air, jump after them and hurl them into a wall or into the ground with mid-air assault.
Another welcome addition to the game is the Telekinetic powers that both Raziel and Kain posess. Raziel can still only fire his simple Telekinetic bolt like he could in Soul Reaver 2, but Kain's powers are downright frightening. Kain can constrain his oppontents in the air then then choose to fling them in any given direction (Think Jedi Knight's Force Grip power). This can be used for some extremely saddistic fun.
As you might have noticed, I've compared Raziel and Kain a good bit. This is because they both control extremely similarly. There are some minor diffrences though. Raziel can swim in water, in wich Kain burns. Raziel swallows the soul of his close-to-death oppontents, while Kain drinks their blood Telekinetically or, for the first time ever, by chomping them in the neck like a real vampire. Over the game, both characters also learn various moves, but these only differ in name and look. For example, Raziel learns a move called Perforate Carcass, where he rolls and swiftly stabs his oppontent 5 or so times. At thesame level, Kain leanrs a move called Cadaverous Laceration, where he steps forward and swings his sword swiftly about 5 or so times.
Although there are some minor timing diffrences, and Kain's sequences are more focussed on fighting where Raziel does more puzzling, Raziel and Kain don't differ much.
The graphics of this game are very nice. The areas are nicely detailed with crisp and colorful textures, all the characters are very nicely animated and the particle effects (of wich the games tosses plenty at you) all look great. I was particularly rejoiced that the game chose Soul Reaver's colorful and cartoonish art style over Blood Omen's dark and over-serious style. Particularly the fact that Kain looks the way he does in Soul Reaver 2; with his rimpled and distorted face, red cape and downright evil looking eyes. the Kain in Blood Omen 2 never really impressed me much, he looked just like a standard pale-faced archetype vampire.
The camera in this game is kind of buggy though, with it's newfound cinematic-ness. Occasionally it will confuse you or take an awkward viewpoint during combat. This won't happen as much as one might think though, and it's doesn't significantly hurt the game.
Sound. What is there to be said? It has Micheal Bell and Simon Templeman as good old Raziel and Kain respectively. It has the same great voice actors for Moebius, The Elder God, Vorador and Janos as you heard in the previous games. It has some new music and some old music. It's great. 'Nuff said, right?
When all is said and done, Defiance is a great game. It's really a treat for any fan of the series. The story is finally cleard up, and the combat has undergone a great overhaul. The boring old puzzles you so despised are back, and so are the awesome characters, the colourful enviroments and the philosophical chit-chat when the aforementioned awesome characters meet. If you liked the Legacy of Kain games, and felt that the combat could use some adjustment, you're going to have fun with this one.