Legacy of Kain: Ascendance Review

In 1999, I had a full-on fascination with Raziel, the titular protagonist of Soul Reaver. I wore out the PS1 demo disc for the game, replaying the intro sequence numerous times while enjoying Tony Jay’s Shakespearean stylings as the Elder God and Michael Bell’s dramatic reads as Raziel.

Soul Reaver was, and still is, a strange and unique twist on traditional vampire lore: a view into an undead apocalypse brought about by a truly contemptible tyrant in Kain.

After a nearly twenty-year absence of new Legacy of Kain entries, Crystal Dynamics (under the ‘auspices’ of Embracer Group) reanimated the series with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered in 2024, followed by Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered earlier this month, both to decent reviews. Friend of the site Tamoor Hussain even went so far as to try, unsuccessfully, to get the 2024 remaster into Giant Bomb’s Game of the Year Top Ten.

Back to Nosgoth

Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a retro 2D platformer by Bit Bot Media, published by Crystal Dynamics and is the first original installment in the series since 2003 - Crystal Dynamics has even gone so far as to promise that the story is canon. I wouldn’t call myself precious about Legacy of Kain lore, but a return to Nosgoth after decades away is an exciting prospect, provided the story lands and the vibes hit their marks.

Ascendance introduces Raziel’s sister, Elaleth, whose non-game premiere came through the tie-in graphic novel Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - The Dead Shall Rise. I didn’t read it ahead of playing Ascendance or writing this review, but my brief look-around online did clue me in that die-hard fans were less than pleased with the writing and its takes on the story.

Ascendance features rotating perspectives, having the player take turns as Elaleth, Raziel, and Kain at different points in their lives. Elaleth is led through time by Ky’set’syk, another new character, as she seeks revenge against Raziel for his hand in the death of her lover, Mathias. She stalks her brother while tearing her way through the Sarafan army, of which Raziel is a high-ranking Inquisitor, in events set before his turn as Kain’s highest-ranking lieutenant.

The third playable character is Kain himself, as he journeys into the Sarafan crypts to raise his lieutenants before the events of Soul Reaver.

Ascendance jumps across different eras, taking the player on a tour through every game in the series from Soul Reaver onward - providing plenty of fan service moments, like seeing Raziel in his Soul Reaver form skulking through Janos Audron’s Aerie. While the game often shifts perspectives between chapters, Elaleth dominates the playtime for the most part. 

Flaws in the Timestream

I do have issues with Elaleth, but they have more to do with her role in the larger story of the series than with her characterization or gameplay. Crystal Dynamics is calling Ascendance canon, and it’s important to point out what that means here: it is a full retcon of the series from Soul Reaver onward, with Elaleth positioned as having set all of those events in motion herself in service of her revenge narrative against her brother.

Elaleth is now the one who encouraged Kain to raise the Sarafan inquisitors as his lieutenants, so that she could both exact revenge on Raziel and extract his knowledge of the location of a series’ MacGuffin, the Heart of Darkness. She is also made out to be the catalyst for Raziel developing his wings, and even encourages him to show off his development, promising him that Kain will be super duper impressed - knowing full well that Kain will kill him for the ‘transgression.’ 

Raziel and Kain’s stories are completely undercut by this retcon, and it does Elaleth’s character no favors with the fanbase to place her in that position. It doesn’t help that it makes no sense with her motivations and isn’t even meaningfully paid off, as the game instead spends its final moments teasing a sequel.

Too Many Ghouls in the Kitchen

While the story was a fairly distracting element during my playtime, the shifting art direction felt like I was watching an art department argue with itself. The game is primarily presented in a Super Castlevania IV-style pixel art aesthetic that I found fairly middling, though the lighting paired with it lifted the overall experience. This contrasted with less-than-stellar anime-style animated portraiture for all dialogue; I didn’t care for it much, but I did at least appreciate having characters’ expressions emoting along with the story.

My absolute favorite scenes are the ones where the game pivots to PS1 demake-style cutscenes, particularly when Kain is “robbing” the Sarafan crypts and raising Raziel as his first lieutenant. It looks fantastic, but it made me wish they had committed to that style for the full game.

It’s a baffling choice to ping-pong between these styles at such varying levels of quality, and I found it actively hampering the experience by repeatedly taking me out of the story.

Sad Flaps and Suck Mechanics

The gameplay shows flashes of being something interesting, mixing Celeste-style platforming with a health-drain-and-feeding mechanic. When playing as a vampire, you feed on enemies you’ve slain - or innocents littering the map - to heal and keep your health bar full. It’s an interesting wrinkle on the formula, but it quickly became a chore, especially once the map started getting populated by red orbs that provide blood whenever it didn’t make sense to have enemies or humans around to feed on.

There’s also a resource bar, a sort of mana/stamina gauge, that governs each character’s powers. Elaleth has an air dash, wing flaps for elevation, and a downward dash attack. Raziel, in his human form, can souls-roll, and later gains a sad little wing flap for some frustrating platforming sections, along with attacks similar to Elaleth’s. Kain leans more into a melee power fantasy, often one-hit killing enemies; he can also turn into mist and bats for traversal, which I found pretty satisfying.

I appreciated the distinct character playstyles, and generally preferred Kain’s levels, even though you play as him the least. It’s not really gameplay-related, but Kain has a special feeding animation where he does his classic blood-telekinesis suck, adorably rendered in SNES-era pixels. It’s great. And rejoice: there’s a pretty OK parry for all characters, and if you time it well, you can punish enemies for a hefty damage bonus.

Enemy variety is severely lacking. There are melee enemies that jump around with inconsistent move telegraphing, flying bat creatures that appear on nearly every map with little more than palette swaps, and archers that I found more irritating than difficult, plus a few chunky demons with flame attacks and some pretty awful voice lines.

The platforming also wears out its welcome pretty quickly, with little variety and some wing-flap puzzles that aren’t much fun and then go on for far too long. The levels playing as Raziel in his prime, winged form should have been a fan-service celebration, but instead he feels heavy and pitiful, and I often had to rely on button mashing just to gain elevation while navigating them.

I Kain’t Believe It, the Gang's (Mostly) All Here!

I do have to credit the team here for getting nearly all of the voice cast from the original games back for this one, including Michael Bell as Raziel, Simon Templeton as Kain, Richard Doyle as Moebius, and Anna Gunn - of Breaking Bad fame - back as Ariel. Tony Jay was a personal favorite of mine as the Elder God in the original Soul Reaver games, and he sadly passed away in 2006, though he does feature in a cameo at the end of the game.

If I have one mixed feeling about the voice cast, it's that Michael Bell is 87 years old as of this writing, and he sure sounds like it in the game. It’s a bit distracting if you’re familiar with Raziel from the older entries, but it’s still extraordinary that he returned to the character after 23 years away and does a decent enough job.

“I would choose oblivion over this existence!”

Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a frustrating title - a truly new game in the series has finally made its way to us after decades away, but the choice to retcon the story, coupled with the absolute whiffs in gameplay, leaves it feeling like little more than a flimsy footnote in the series overall. There’s a ton of love here for the story of Legacy of Kain, but its changes and contributions to the lore make it feel more like fan fiction than a true prequel.

I wanted this to be the triumphant return of Kain, Raziel, and the strange, dark world of Nosgoth, but what arrived instead was something draped in the series’ skin - not an evolution, but an uninspired reinvention.