As someone who was in his mid-teens during the original Playstation era, Legacy of Kain was particularly up my alley. While Blood Omen was definitely in line with the edgy content I was looking for, the game that got its hooks in me was Soul Reaver. The more-than-25-year time gap since I last played the game has made the story fade from my memory, but I’ll never forget how cool the main character, Raziel, looked, especially on the Joe Madureira-drawn cover of PSM.
In the last few years, there’s been a surprising streak of announcements for the franchise. We’ve had remasters of Soul Reaver 1 and 2 as well as Defiance. There’s even been a tabletop RPG that ran a crowdfunding campaign. Even with all my nostalgia, the only one of these projects that actually drew my attention was the announcement of a new entry in the series, Legacy of Kain: Ascendance. I was even excited by the shift into the 2D action-platformer genre, one that usually doesn’t resonate with me. Unfortunately, the game we ended up with does not feel like the highly anticipated return to the series my 15-year-old self would have been looking for.
Legacy of Kain is known for its overwrought stories of time travel, magical swords, elder gods, and vengeance-seeking vampires, and Ascendance aims to continue that tradition, but not nearly as elegantly as I recall from others in the series. The story, which is apparently based on a recent comic called the Dead Shall Rise, introduces Raziel’s sister Elaleth, who is positioned as one of the main narrative forces in the series. Filling in the gaps between Blood Omen and Soul Reaver, Ascendance swaps between different protagonists to tell a story of time-hopping revenge and manipulation.
New characters and clashing art styles plague the return to Nosgoth
It definitely stays true to the gothic sensibilities of the series, but the level of writing doesn’t really reach its ambition. Right off the bat, there are a lot of characters to keep track of, and mixing that with time travel makes it a bit hard to onboard. Prequels are challenging to write, and it feels like so much of the story is just about moving the pieces on the board towards a natural conclusion, oftentimes in convoluted ways that bring the focus to Elaleth at the expense of the series regulars.
Aside from the new character, there are huge changes to the series in both gameplay and visual style. As I mentioned, we’ve now shifted to a 2D perspective, focusing on platforming and combat challenges. In addition, the game now features a retro pixel art style that brings the classic characters to life in a new light. This combination is one of the most successful parts of the game for me. Maybe it was just the vampire focus, but it really gave me a Castlevania vibe, specifically the more linear early Castlevania rather than the sprawling map style made popular by Symphony of the Night. If they aren’t going to do a full-scale new entry in the series, this feels like the perfect way to keep the scope in line while still delivering style in spades.
In addition to the pixel art, there are a few more styles that they mix in to provide variety. During the fully voiced cutscenes, we’re given cartoon-like character portraits that provide more detail than the pixel art, bringing life to the performances. For a couple of key sequences, it switches to a classic PS1-style low-poly look, which helps ground it in the past, even if it doesn’t gel with the rest of the game. Other cutscenes are animated using a more hand-drawn anime style, creating dynamic action that feels more in line with the main game than the low-poly elements. It’s ambitious that they tried to use so many different styles in the game, but it felt like that lack of focus made the final product feel less cohesive.
Gameplay mechanics are draining
I’m glad that Ascendance didn’t chase the Metroidvania trend and attempt to make a labyrinthine map, instead opting to do a very linear level-based approach. Unfortunately, the core gameplay just doesn’t do much to distinguish itself, doing the bare minimum for the genre without the crisp game feel that defines its strongest competitors. Without having navigation to worry about, it needs to rely on the strength of the jumping challenges and combat encounters, and neither of them finds interesting ways to feel unique. The basic jump feels stiff, and the challenges the level design provides never feel compelling. None of the three playable characters has combos, just a normal sword slash repeated over and over, preventing combat from ever getting into a satisfying flow.
That’s not to say they don’t each of them doesn’t have their own vibe and feel. You’ll play as Elaleth, Kain, and Raziel (both as a human and as a vampire), which offers a decent bit of variety. The vampires all share a gimmick of having to drink blood to heal, which gives you a power fantasy of tearing through hordes of humanoid enemy soldiers and ripping them apart to gain strength. This is also accompanied by a constantly draining health bar, adding a bit of urgency to your combat, at least in theory. For the most part, the health drain never really caught up to me, except when I was explicitly taking my time to try to track down some of the game’s secrets.
At different times throughout, some of the vampire characters will be able to fly, which takes up stamina, a resource also used by the dodge roll everyone has access to. Flying often feels a bit janky and inconsistent, with each flap of your wings propelling you upwards slightly in a manner that never quite feels like you have precise control over. Most of the time, it just allows you to get a good angle for a dive attack on enemies, but some levels use it extensively. These stages have long areas with no ground where you are guided through by orbs that will recharge your stamina. These were the areas where I died most, and it never really felt like my fault when I did. It’s a cool gimmick, and the wings surprisingly have narrative importance, but the execution never reaches their design intention.
Enemy AI gets in the way of Ascendance‘s combat
When playing as the human version of Raziel, it’s noticeably more challenging. Instead of drinking NPC’s blood, you have to do an execution that lights your vampire enemies on fire to finish them off, or they will rise again. Having parts where you feel underpowered is a great idea to change up the tone of the gameplay, but the pacing of the game never really knows how to alternate this to make it feel meaningful in some sort of overall challenge arc. Human Raziel comes off as a less fun version of the other characters, which makes those sections feel more like a bummer than a tense challenge.
Even with the full suite of combat options, the enemy AI is so baffling that it almost never feels satisfying. There were so many times throughout the four-hour runtime that I would run across a pair of enemies where one would attack me while the other stood there doing nothing. I couldn’t tell if this was a bug or if their awareness range was just set extremely short, but either way, it really hampered the combat experience. Some of the more mobile enemies would move around so much that they would jump off cliff edges, killing themselves.
This wasn’t a reward for me smartly maneuvering around them to trick them into doing it; they just did it themselves with little interaction from me. The only time the fights felt good was during some of the boss fights, particularly ones where I’m fighting player characters that I’m not currently controlling, but I think that mostly came down to the novelty of seeing an NPC use the same player kit I’ve had access to. I hear so much about how the combat in games like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous feels great within the 2D platforming genre, so it’s disappointing to see it so poorly implemented in Ascendance.
Not only is the combat not particularly compelling, but the level design doesn’t provide spaces for very good platforming. It’s not just the stiff jump I mentioned earlier; it’s an overall lack of care and creativity in the layouts of the level. There are no moments that find clever ways to challenge your dexterity, no standout sequences of jumps that stick in your memory. It’s just boilerplate maps that never find interesting ways of escalating the complexity or adding variety as they go on, either within the level or throughout the overall structure of the game’s 12 chapters. They tried to make it a little more compelling with lots of fire-based environmental hazards to stand in the way of the vampire characters, but it ends up looking weird when it doesn’t affect the NPCs.
Two levels stood out to me: one that was fully dark, presenting everything in black and white with small splashes of lighting that break it up, and another where you’re on horseback being chased. Both of these were notable for their visual variety, and I wish they were able to back that up with clever gameplay gimmicks.
Ascendance doesn’t quite live up to Kain’s legacy
Aside from all these gameplay issues, there are so many little polish issues with Ascendance that really ended up wearing me down. There’s no mid-level save, so if you have to stop in the middle of the chapter, expect to start over from the beginning. Also, the cutscenes aren’t skippable, making it a chore to wait through them again. Occasionally, there were sections of the level where you were ascending throughout, and if you fell off a cliff, you’d end up going way back toward the beginning of the level. It’s a baffling design decision not to just make falls like that a death, because the first thing I did was look for an enemy to kill me so I could respawn at a reasonable checkpoint.
Speaking of enemies, if you ever killed them while they were in the air, they would often just finish their jump normally, then die on the ground, which was laughable. If they were in the middle of a line of dialogue, they would finish that up even if their death animation completed. Even if the core gameplay was solid, this would feel like a death by a thousand cuts situation, but instead, these polish issues added even more annoyance on top of an already shaky foundation.
I wish my return to the world of Nosgoth was worth the decades-long wait, but there just isn’t a lot here. The move to 2D was great in theory, echoing the gothic vibe of Castlevania, but the execution was as lackluster as it could have been. Narratively, it’s all over the place, presented with a combination of visual styles that makes it feel incoherent, if occasionally sharp-looking.
Given the recent remasters, I’m really surprised we didn’t see a more traditional Legacy of Kain game, and I hope this game doesn’t hurt our chances of getting one. I’d love it if this series had more life in it, but Ascendance may have proved it’s already been sucked dry.
Review codes provided by publisher. Ascendance launched March 31 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
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