Legacy of Kain: Defiance

aka: LoK: Defiance
Moby ID: 11488
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Following the events of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2, Raziel and Kain were trapped in the Serafan fortress. Separated by sudden events, Raziel was forced to retreat into the spectral realm, leaving Kain to escape from the Serafan on his own. Both must escape the predicament they find themselves in and fight back against those who would seek to use them as manipulations in a grander plot. From both heroes cry out shouts of defiance, and a thirst to find the revelations that have been buried in the world of Nosgoth.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance is a third-person action game with light puzzle-solving elements, combining concepts seen in both Blood Omen 2 and Soul Reaver 2. The story unfolds through chapters, focusing alternately on Kain and Raziel as they pursue their separate, though intertwined quests. Control of each character alternates between levels, however both are controlled from a behind-the-shoulder perspective. While both heroes are different, they are similar in movement, ability to attack, defend, jump and access special abilities.

Kain and Raziel no longer pick up weapons, instead both using a form of the Soul Reaver weapon (Kain uses the physical sword form, Raziel uses an energy blade). Each Soul Reaver can now be "charged" to unleash a special ability, determined by the current alignment of Soul Reaver at the time. Both Kain and Raziel lose energy at a constant rate and must feed to replenish life energy (Kain feeds on the blood of living creatures, Raziel feeds on the souls of living and non-living creatures). And both Kain and Raziel feature telekinetic abilities to manipulate objects at a distance.

The two are, however, different characters that play differently, each requiring use of his talents, to bypass obstacles (sometimes the same obstacle). Kain focuses on strong combat and destructive abilities. He is able to power up the Soul Reaver weapon using properties of the Pillars of Nosgoth. Raziel is more subtle, able to use stealth and the phasing between material and spectral worlds in order to discover new paths. As in Soul Reaver, Raziel can phase into the spectral world at any time but must find a special location in order to phase back. Raziel powers up the Soul Reaver using elemental powers.

Spellings

  • Наследие Каина. Defiance - Russian spelling
  • 凯恩的遗产:挑战 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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190 People (155 developers, 35 thanks) · View all

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Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 58 ratings with 5 reviews)

The saga that redefined "plot twist" comes back with a fancy combat system and a few controversial features.

The Good
Given the choice; whether to rule a corrupt and failing Empire, or to challenge the fates for another throw, a better throw against one's destiny --what was a king to do?

Kain, the Vampire emperor, saw the beginning and the end of his story, and found the tale to be crude and ill-conceived.
He saw the strings of the puppetmasters that drove the land of Nosgoth to its demise.
He saw his lieutenant Raziel, predestined to be the messiah of the Vampire race, killing him, only to be later imprisoned inside the Reaver Blade, a legendary Vampiric sword.
***
Kain then decided to gamble everything in an attempt to rewrite history.

Kain eventually convinced Raziel to spare his life, and in the ultimate moment, saved him from being absorbed into the Reaver blade.
The plan worked...
Or did it?
Did Kain actually defy fate, or was his own plan also orchestrated by the mysterious puppetmasters?
***
Weakened to an unbearable level, Raziel shifted to the land of the dead --the Spectral Realm-- where an angry Elder God was waiting to punish him for his transgressions.
Kain was left alone in the castle of the Vampire-hunting order of warrior-priests known as the Sarafan, with the Reaver Blade in his hands, and suspicions of having been used as a pawn --again.

Thus, the fifth chapter in the legendary LEGACY OF KAIN series begins.
DEFIANCE is a 3rd person perspective game with platforming, puzzles, and a strong emphasis in close-hand combat.
This time around, there are two major treats with which the developers have been teasing us for months:
1) a completely revamped combat interface and
2) the possibility to play with both heroes of the saga --the soul-devouring ghoul Raziel, and the almighty Vampire emperor Kain.

THE GRAPHICS: Dressed to kill
The first thing that shocks you when you fire up DEFIANCE is the quality of its graphics. The character models are at least as good as in any modern-day game, with the faces deserving a special note both for the expressive animation and the realistic shading; and most of the backgrounds are mind-bendingly huge, with magnificent architecture and detailed decorations. By the way, fans of the first BLOOD OMEN rejoice because you're gonna be re-visiting two key places of that game, in full 3D-glory.
Remember Avernus Cathedral? And Vorador's Mansion? Well...

DEFIANCE carries lots of new-generation special effects: fancy volumetric shading, blinding lighting, cubic-mapped reflections, water ripples... it's all there.
However, the real treat comes when we shift into the Spectral Realm. The Spectral Realm is basically a dark parody of the Material Realm: walls, columns, statues, trees --everything gets badly twisted, all colors turn to shady tones of blue, and soul-devouring vermin crawl out of the shadows.
In DEFIANCE, the Spectral Realm is decorated with eerie lighting, motion blur on EVERYTHING, and a disturbing soundscape of grim music and the tormented screaming of the dead. For the first time in the series, the Spectral Realm becomes an actually SCARY place.

Finally, congratulations Crystal Dynamics for the work in the program polishing dept:
First, like always, the game barely loads, ever. DEFIANCE does have some loading between levels, but it's barely long enough as to even read what the loading screen says.
Second, all this impressive package comes, once again, at almost no performance cost. Of course the game requires a T&L capable video card, but provided you have even the cheapest available one, you can raise all the details to the top and you will hardly perceive a slight stutter in the most crowded fights.

Finally, this game is the first one on the series (in fact the first one in a good while in PC gaming) which didn't require me to go look for a patch to fix some nasty bug before even getting to play it. In fact, I don't know if there IS a patch available, as I never needed one at all.
Of course, this is how all games SHOULD be, but...

GAMEPLAY: Step back, we have a winner!
Until now, I had the game ONI as the undisputed bearer of the title the smoothest third-person combat interface --well, here's one game that might reclaim that crown has its own.
The combat interface is tremendously intuitive, you get to do a lot of stuff in no time, specially when it comes to fighting:
Two different kinds of normal attacks, five special upgradeable attacks, telekinetic blasts, telekinetic push & pull; and the combination of all of the above in any way you can imagine.
For example, you can lift an enemy in the air, jump after him, perform a three-hit mid-air combo, hold him floating with telekinesis, and then throw him on a lit torch, making him catch on fire and run around the room screaming in pain.
Or let's say you come out in the open, and three archers are shooting at you from a distance, on a higher floor. You can lift one of them with telekinesis, and then choose to throw him over his own comrades, push him down some abyss, or pull him down towards you: "I didn't hear you up there, dude. You were saying...?"

As you progress in the game, your character will learn new moves, and even though there are not as many attacks to learn as there were in ONI, there are a handful, and they do make the fights really enjoyable and assure you won't get easily bored.

The lock-on-one-enemy-at-a-time thing has been removed, switched to a much more useful automatic system. Also, as well as enemies can gang up against you, you can attack several of them at the same time. Even if two of them come from opposite sides, you can get to do some elegant swings to give each of them some soup.

The seldom useful block function has been removed as well, and the dodge movement has been improved: it's a treat to use and to watch in action, specially Kain's dodge move, in which he turns to mist and literally passes through his enemies.

The game is divided in chapters, and each of them gives us the control of either Raziel or Kain, each following their own quests, until they ultimately meet. They basically share the same combat moves, but each one is best at a different thing, which nicely enhances the gameplay variety.

All that said, one thing you need to keep in mind is that, while it is technically possible to play the game with keyboard+mouse, not only I wouldn't recommended to do so: I'd say the use of a PS2-like dual-analog gamepad is simply mandatory. I know, PC games should be playable with the keyboard, gamepads are a console thing, blah blah blah --But let's face it: Most games out there are console ports nowadays, and gamepads for the PC can be found all over the place, and not only they're dirt-cheap, given the proper game, they're a pleasure to play with; so don't be such a wuss and go get one already.

I left for the ending of this section the camera --the most controversial feature of the game.
This is the fact: the camera doesn't follow the player over the shoulder in the classic 3rd person perspective, nor you can control it as in the last games of the series. Instead, it moves on a rail, zooming in and out, and changing perspectives every now and then. Crystal Dynamics called this a cinematic camera, and the visual effect looks pretty cinematic alright.
I for one love the feeling, specially while fighting. I gotta admit, however, the system is not without some problems --we'll get back to this in a minute.

SOUND AND MUSIC: Still going up
In the sound dept, there's just one thing to say: DEFIANCE keeps with the astounding level of the series.

The voice acting, like I say all the time, is the best in any game I've known so far. Our favourite voice actors are all back, and once again they all do a magnificent job. As it happened in SOUL REAVER 2, the detailed facial animation paired with the voice acting makes each cutscene a true pleasure to go through.

The music doesn't deserve any special mention, except that as a fan of the series I found quite nice to hear many tunes from some of the previous games again.

THE STORY: Twisting by the pillars
After all the answers we got in the last chapter of the series, I wasn't hoping to be any more surprised now. I thought I had every possible plot fact DEFIANCE could bring figured out beforehand... I should have known better.
Moebius explained it clearly near the very beginning of the game: "you know nothing."

For one thing, we finally get to watch a scene we've been waiting for a really long time: Raziel versus Kain.
We know Raziel has been chasing Kain for as long as two full games already, and while his rage slowly cooled down with a number of intriguing facts he learned, he's far from calling his former master a friend.
We don't really know what Kain has in his mind, other than he constantly repeats that all his actions were orchestrated in order to help Raziel reclaiming his genuine destiny.
We also know that the primary objective of the game is to get both heroes to meet.
So WHAT happens once they meet?
Well of course I'm not answering that right here, but I will say this: the encounter alone makes the whole experience worth it --and I talk about all the 5 games.

Aside from this much-postponed memento, the game uncovers a truckload of events, enough to surprise even the sharpest-minded fan of the series.
How much does Moebius actually know? Did Kain ever met the Elder God? What were those demons stalking Raziel? What IS the source of Nosgoth's corruption? Who forged the Reaver? If Raziel actually is the Vampire messiah, does it mean there's some sort of Hylden messiah? How did the Ancient Vampires die? Who was the unspoken that brought the destruction of the Circle of Nine?
All these questions, and some more, are going to be answered in this game. And believe me, you can't possibly guess one third of the answers.

Looking objectively, what Amy Hennig has been doing this far was taking some points of the first BLOOD OMEN and extending them in order to justify the events in her own saga. In DEFIANCE, this device is even more noticeable.
Far from being this a negative criticism, I say she deserves to be applauded for the incredibly elegant way in which she ties up the loose ends. Looking at the full picture, it looks like a huge storyline which was carefully crafted eons ago. Each new chapter just makes it look even bigger.

Finally, we get to see a re-enactment of a couple of scenes from the first game, but shown from an alternative perspective that gives the whole situation a new level. In english: if you enjoyed the Malek cameo in SOUL REAVER 2, get ready --you haven't seen ANYTHING yet.

FREEBIES: Like a DVD
We usually accept the fact that porting a console game to the PC means losing all kinds of freebies to the lame small space of the CD-ROM --well no more!... Or kinda.
Our good friends at Crystal Dynamics noticed the game itself left a little room in the second CD, so they filled it up with as many freebies as they could. Of course, you won't be seeing the funny voice acting outtakes, but still you'll see some cool art concept and photographs of the DEFIANCE team.

The Dark Diary, a replay of the most important events in the game so far, is back and better than ever: this time you get to replay EVERY SINGLE cutscene seen. A great way of refreshing the events so far, or simply reviewing the best moments, which many developers out there should take notice of.

**The Bad**
STORYTELLING: For all those yellow mindless masses...
DEFIANCE is meant to attract both hardcore fans of the series and clueless newcomers, including those who are in for the fast-paced combat, the blood-splattering, and little more. To this end the storytelling was made as easy to follow as it could.
Unfortunately, this means that the dialogues have been tuned down from smart double-senses and long rantings full of metaphors, to more concise and easy-going phrases. Hence, the cutscenes have lost half the class they used to have.
Kain saying stuff like "I could promise you a quick and painless death... but it would be a lie" makes him look like the uninspired villain of crappy cartoon, under the shadow of his infamous "Drop a stone into a rushing river..." metaphor in the previous game.
A boss character saying "No more questions. No more worship. Time to run. Time to scream. Time... TO DIE!" could be fine in a class-B horror flick, but it's just too cheap for this series.

I said the story is as brilliant as one could have expected, and it is; but there are a number of inconsistencies with previously known facts, like Raziel being able to climb walls in the Spectral Realm, or some deadly mist which has in Raziel the same effect that water has on common vampires.
These details are not as noticeable as to make a big deal of them, but LOK fans tend to be picky people, and at times, this game doesn't feel like LOKFan-proof.

GAMEPLAY: The flying beholder
Like I said, I DID like the cinematic camera, but I gotta agree that it becomes annoying in some parts. I don't care much about a swapping camera that suddenly makes left become right, or bumping against a wall because the camera was facing the character instead of the road —but I DO care about the camera changing perspectives in the middle of a jumping puzzle. Some jumping sections can turn into an incredible pain in the neck because of these swappings, and I remember at least one moment in which the perspective was so unfortunate that I couldn't calculate the distances properly, which meant having to make a leap of faith towards a tiny thin piece of rock standing in the middle of a deadly pool of mist.

The difficulty level in the fights has been raised noticeably from previous games, but the combat interface makes up a good balance... except in one particular spot: the final boss fight.
It's not only the hardest fight in the game —it's downright annoying. The whole experience will take you about 30 minutes at a fairly fast pace, in a constant running and jumping to avoid attacks, while desperately trying to pass one or two hits every now and then.
I remember how in SOUL REAVER, defeating a boss meant to outsmart him, to somehow lure him into some kind of trap, and I sure prefer that challenge to the mind over this consolistic session of button-bashing.

Finally, the most worrying thing gameplay-wise has to be the puzzles. I already complained about the utterly silly puzzles in the misleading and almost forgettable BLOOD OMEN 2; but the ones in DEFIANCE might be EVEN MORE SILLY. Not one single puzzle in this game will require more than 2 seconds of thinking to the most stupid moron with a severe head injury in his early recovery stages.
Most of the puzzles don't even feel like puzzles. They're so easy it's embarrassing to solve them.
When thinking about the innovative block puzzles in SOUL REAVER or the sheer size of the puzzle-temples of SOUL REAVER 2, I can't help a bitter sense of having been framed.

LOCATIONS: Deja vu!
Even though the environments are beautifully designed and show a lot of class, I seem to feel SOUL REAVER 2's backgrounds were somewhat better. They were more dynamic, with small creatures roaming around (fish, birds, insects) and they had more details we could care about (like the paintings in the Sarafan Stronghold).
The backgrounds in DEFIANCE ARE very detailed, but not the "hey, Rahab has some seahorses carved in his armor!" kind of detailed.

Furthermore, at several points the game gets annoyingly repetitive.
In previous games we already had to do a lot of back-tracking into aleady visited places, but it wasn't necessarily bad, as the places would change dramatically with the time warping. However, this time you'll be returning up to three times to the EXACT same place.
Even worse, the Reaver Forges that Raziel has to visit in order to enhance his Wraith Blade are practically identical to one another. This means that 7 out of 15 chapters of the game are about navigating virtually the same place, in which you won't be doing much more than an eventual boss fight.
If that wasn't enough, 8 out of 11 boss characters in the game look EXACTLY THE SAME.
Also, note that when I mention Forges, you probably think of those enormous and magnificent temples we found in SOUL REAVER 2 —well don't.
These are the low-budget version of the Forges: modest circle-shaped two-tier buildings with 4 or 5 small chambers to visit. You'll be done navigating the whole place in less than 20 seconds.

SOUND ISSUES: A minute of silence
I don't know if this happens only to me, but some specific scenes of the game (including a few cutscenes) don't have any music. This is odd to say the least, since they are the kind of scene in which not only one would expect to hear music, but an enormous, ominous music as well.

The distinctive footsteps noise that so nicely would correspond every different kind of floor Raziel walked on in SOUL REAVER 2, is gone for good. No matter on which kind of floor you are walking, they all sound the same. Why would they remove a perfectly good set of sounds like this, escapes me.

CLIPPING: The bad cut
Last but not least, I need to mention the clipping issues. This series tend to be pretty buggy in the clipping section, but in this game I found some really nasty issues.

I have a few screenshots in which, for example, the cape of a given character comes forward and covers his legs in an impossible way, I saw Kain's hair pass through his own chest, I saw corpses dissappearing inside a wall, I saw enemies getting trapped behind decorative bars...
While most of these bugs are not deadly-serious, this is definitely an area to improve.

**The Bottom Line**
Even though the cinematic camera is a source of discussion, the smooth combat interface alone undoubtedly makes DEFIANCE one of the best third-person action games ever made.
Gameplay-wise, the only SERIOUS drawback I find is the simplicity of the puzzles.
With more challenging puzzles, this game would have been just perfect.

To meet the demands of a mainstream market, the dialogues have been somewhat simplified, which is pretty sad to hear for us lovers of Kain's inspired rantings; but the story of DEFIANCE still sports everything you could ask for: charismatic characters, shocking answers, enigmatic questions, delicious cameos, and some massive plot branching & twisting.

DEFIANCE brings a beautiful conclusion to this legendary saga, and it's also a great way to be introduced to the series: even if you dislike the story, you WILL enjoy the gameplay anyway.
From any angle you look at it, DEFIANCE is a must have.

Windows · by Slug Camargo (583) · 2007

How to ruin a game in two steps…

The Good
Note: This review is based in only a three-hour game experience (since overall I dislike the game I am not willing to continue playing).

1) The game appear to have a good story, at least at the start and everyone slightly or deeply liking vampires themes will find enough good points and will be not disappointed.

2) The cinematic, music, speech, graphics and so-on are all well worked and stand on today gaming industry standards.

The Bad
Here we go with those two-steps...

1) The worst gameplay experience that I have seen for a couple of years in a 3D game. As many players already wrote in other reviews... Introducing a static-point camera playing system for games like Alone in the Dark that are slow-paced games is ok but not for this one. Even in this case the cameras are so bad implemented that many times you have absolutely no idea about where you are going through or from where you are taking hits. That is annoying.

2) No quicksaves and no custom save points, therefore you will pay your mistakes by replaying the game from the last autosave that in my short experience it means a couple of times replaying about 5 mins each. Too much for modern games, annoying again.

The Bottom Line
Twice annoying means unplayable if I do my math but maybe you want to try it. Good luck.

Windows · by Cabeza2000 (689) · 2004

I wonder if you can SUE a developer for creating a game that gave you migraines?

The Good
Here's another GREAT case of creating a well-known love-able series into a pile of decomposing garbage. I think each game in the series had no doubt got worse. Legacy of Kain: Defiance has to my personal opinion, struck the final killing blow.

This this game didn't kill the series, if you've played the game and the series from the first Legacy of Kain, you might probably agree, it should of.

FYI, I couldn't finish the game because of major migraine problems.

The Bad
Well, the first thing you notice about the game is that they didn't bother to give you a walkthrough on the controls the first time you start playing. Next thing you know, you've got some guards attacking you and you've just figured out how to move but not how to attack.

I really don't think this game was meant for Windows. The playstation version might have been better suited for this game as this is a standard no-brain-er action game where most of the time all you do is run, jump, run, jump.

Have you every watched the movie Bourne Supremacy? That spy film starring Matt Damon. If you do, you'll probably remember how devastating the movie was to your eyes because the stupid director had this urge to tell the cameraman to move the camera in every direction possible instead of the actual part you want to see. The same problem exists in Defiance. When you move, the camera view point gets totally in the way. You can't see what's in front of you most of the time and in crucial areas which require you to act fast with jumping (or die), the camera also moves in the worst time possible...so often when you "thought" you were moving forward, the camera moves and your forward becomes side-ways. This is extremely frustrating when your about to jump from a ledge. Instead of jumping away from that oversided canyon, the camera view tends to make you jump INTO that dang canyon.

First the developers, should be shot. Then the game testers should be shot. Hell, everyone in the dang game should be shot. Except the voice-overs.

I don't know about you, but all that moving around with the camera going in every direction except where you want it to go, eventually developed to some some serious forms of migraines and vomiting tendencies. Each time the camera twirled, my head started spinning with it. I eventually gave up because my health couldn't keep up with my gaming stubbornness.

The Bottom Line
Even if your a fan of Kain series, I must warn you beforehand not try this game. It seriously isn't worth it...but if you insist, don't say I didn't warn you. My migraines haven't gone away...

Windows · by Indra was here (20756) · 2006

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

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A new title?!?!?!?!?! Donatello (466) Aug 23, 2012

Trivia

References

  • There is a cheat code that replaces Kain's weapon with a cardboard tube, with Kain uttering "Fear the Tube". This is a reference to the popular web comic Penny Arcade and its "Cardboard Tube Samurai" character.
  • In one of the larger rooms in Vorador's Mansion, you can see a large painting. It is a portrait of a woman's face. However, the interesting thing is that she may be a reference to Umah, the female vampire from Blood Omen. If you look closely at her forehead and the sides of her face, you can make out tattoos similar to Umah's. In fact, one event that was removed from the game was the appearance of a pre-vampiric Umah.

Turel

The boss monster Turel, who Raziel encounters later in the game, was cut from the very first Soul Reaver. Although Turel was mentioned in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver as one of Kain's vampire clan leaders and his disciples could be found in the game, he himself was missing without any plot-related explanation. Furthermore, a strategy exploiting Turel's weakness is needed to defeat him in Defiance, similar to the bosses in Soul Reaver.

Information also contributed by Mark Ennis and Terok Nor

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Slug Camargo.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, Shoddyan, Qlberts, Kit Simmons, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 30, 2003. Last modified March 17, 2024.