Lost Classics: Legacy of Kain – Blood Omen (PC, PS1)

When it was first released, Blood Omen was like no other game before it. You didn’t play as your typical pretty boy good guy, you played as a vampire hell bent on seeking revenge. You don’t care about saving the world, you only want to cure yourself of this fate, and you use any means necessary to extract this revenge. You sucked blood from villagers to restore your health, changed form to destroy your enemies, and spread terror across the land. It was such a shame that subsequent entries in the series didn’t do much justice to Silicon Knights’ classic, otherwise the Legacy of Kain series could have stood alongside franchises such as Zelda and Castlevania. As it is, this PS1 title stands alone in the series as one of the system’s classic titles.

You play as Kain (duh), a stuck-up nobleman who knows little of the outside world. After being denied a room at the inn, you are attacked by a group of thugs and killed. However, that’s not the end of things. You are resurrected as a vampire, and immediately, you begin your quest to seek out revenge and a cure. However, things aren’t nearly as simple as they seem, and soon you become involved in a quest to restore balance to the world. But weather or not balance will be restored will be up to Kain. Throughout your quest, you gain new powers and abilities to help you in your quest. You can even transform into new forms, such as mist, wolves, or even a human being (for infiltration). Since you are a vampire, you even fall prey to things that would hurt vampires, such as sunlight, rain, and water. The story, locales, and characters make the game’s atmosphere dark and moody. The plot and the characters, as you know were deep enough to splinter the series off into several sequels and spinoffs.

The Legacy of Kain series could have been the PS1 generation’s answer to Castlevania or Metroid if Blood Omen’s sequels had been half as good as the original. Not to say that they were bad games, but compared to the original Blood Omen, they were just your average third-person action games. TO my knowledge, Silicon Knights (who has since went on to create the awesome Eternal Darkness on Gamecube and the not-so-awesome Too Human on Xbox 360) was embroiled in a lawsuit with Crystal Dynamics over the rights to the series, so there is little chance of this showing up on the Playstation Network store anytime soon. That’s a shame, Legacy of Kain ranks right up there with Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 2, and Final Fantasy VIII as one of the PS1’s best games ever made.