Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

aka: Kain the Vampire, The Pillars of Nosgoth
Moby ID: 2207
PlayStation Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/17 11:01 PM )

Description official descriptions

The nobleman Kain has been slain by a group of bandits and in his death, he is revived by the necromancer Mortanius for his own ends. Kain is returned in the form of a vampire and yearns to exact vengeance on those who killed him. Stronger and faster than a human being, coupled with a thirst for blood that must be satisfied regularly, he is able to dispatch his killers quickly. However, Mortanius and other forces seek to use him as a tool in a greater plot. Mortanius is of the Circle of Nine, the guardians of the Pillars of Nosgoth. These pillars, connected to the world and balancing the forces, have become corrupted and the Circle members been driven mad. At the Pillars, Kain meets Ariel - a former guardian of the Pillar of Balance, now a spirit after being murdered by an unseen assailant. She informs Kain of his relation to the Pillars and that the only way for him to restore the balance is to seek out each guardian and kill them. The fate of Nosgoth may hang on Kain decisions.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is an action game where the player controls the vampiric Kain. As a vampire, Kain is able to withstand sunlight, but is harmed by water. However, he is able to obtain several cursed abilities and spells such as being able to transform into a bat, wolf, and even a cloud mist respectively, as well as learning the ability to disguise himself from creatures of weaker mind. Kain is also fixated on murder and is a master of several ways to kill and destroy his opponents. As the enemies are slain in front of him, Kain may drink their blood to restore his health, which is always trickling away, representative of his insatiable craving. To aid in the slaughter of his enemies, Kain may equip different weapons and armor, each with its own unique properties.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (PlayStation version)

122 People (115 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 31 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 98 ratings with 5 reviews)

Be the Vampire!

The Good
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, is an action RPG, from marvelous Canuck developer Silicon Knights. It has been compared to many other action RPG’s, this is unfair as Blood Omen is so unique such comparisons do it little justice.

In Blood Omen you are Kain an insignificant noble whom is attacked and slain by some brigands. Kain is sent to Nosgoth’s(The world in which the game takes place.) version of hell, where he makes a deal to come back as a vampire to exact his vengeance. This however is just the beginning of Kain’s quest. Along the way Kain will slay his enemies, drink their blood, solve puzzles, improve his abilities, find spells weapons and armor, and right century old wrongs. Eventually Kain will have to decide to save Nosgoth or enslave it. The plot is well written and gradually unfolds as you finish dungeons. It is one of the game’s strongest parts.

The Graphics in Blood Omen are 2D-Top down. Similar to many other action RPG’s. Unlike the majority of these, the graphics are realistic not cartoony. They were good at the time of the games initial release and still stand out as one of the Playstation’s better looking 2D games. As Kain finds and equips different types of armor and weapons it shows on his sprite. (PC gamers are used to this, most Console gamers are probably not.) The spells all look good without being over the top. Feeding on hapless humans is always fun to watch. Using your flamesword to incinerate foes is a 2D treat.

In the sound department Kain, also excels. The voice actors all do an amazing job. Particularly, the voice of Kain, which is fortunate as you will hear him a lot. The sound effects from the screams of your enemies, to the clanging of swords on swords all sound like they should, which is to say good. Music in Blood Omen is scarce, which is a shame considering how good it is. Then again I don’t expect a game like this to be full of music.

The Gameplay in Kain, has you traveling through Nosgoth, exploring the it’s towns, dungeons, and wilderness. Finding secrets is a major part of the game, as many of the secret items will be an incredible help on your adventure. And it all helps you get a better rank when you finish the game. Kain has lots of tricks at his disposal. He can fight with weapons, and spells. He can transform into a bat, wolf, and even a human. And on full moons he can gain access to Moon Caves, which contain special items. The bread and butter of the gameplay is of course the dungeons.

The Bad
The bad of Kain comes from the Playstation load times. Everything needs to load. Bringing up menus, is particularly bad. You need to access it often, the quick menu’s help somewhat but not enough, and there is no quick menu for weapons. The game is also very difficult at the beginning. As you progress it does get easier. This is hardly the most difficult game ever as some may try to claim, but it does pack it’s challenges.

The Bottom Line
This is a totally unique RPG experience. RPG and horror fans should check this one out. As well as new Silicon Knights fans, this game is quite the compliment to Eternal Darkness. And it comes in two flavors PC and Playstation.

PlayStation · by MasterMegid (723) · 2006

Begins one of the hughest storylines ever. If ever a game DESERVED a re-make, this is the one.

The Good
THE STORY of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain takes place in Nosgoth, a land where all life depends on the existence of an ancient edifice known as The Nine Pillars. Each Pillar represents a power of the land, and it's protected by a Guardian. These Guardians are called the Circle of Nine, Protectors Of Hope.
It all starts in a time when vampires were being hunted down and exterminated by an order of warrior-priests created by the Circle, called The Sarafan.
In revenge for these "vampire purges", an ancient vampire called Vorador would slaughter six members of the Circle.
Malek, Guardian of the Pillar of Conflict and palladin of the Circle, failed to save them, and thus was damned to live as a ghost inside a hollow armour, bound to protect the Circle for eternity.

He wouldn't do much of a good job, since some centuries later Ariel, Guardian of the Pillar of Balance, would be murdered by an unseen assassin. Nupraptor, Guardian of the Pillar of Mind and lover of Ariel, would find her corpse and descend into madness. He would retire to his mountain retreat and sew his eyes and mouth to shut the world outside.
His madness would infect the other members of the Circle, turning them into tyrants, dedicated to desecrate the land they were sworn to protect. The once white and pristine Pillars would crack and turn to a dirty black as the whole land enters a downward spiral of decay.
In this very moment, in the town of Coorhagen, of noble crib; Kain is born to human life.

Thirty years later the now proud nobleman Kain is looking for adventures far from home, when he is ambushed and murdered in the road by brigands. Blinded with rage and yearning for revenge even after death, Kain accepts the offer of Mortanius, Guardian of the Pillar of Death, who offers to bring him back to make his justice.
"You will have the blood you hunger for" grins Mortanius, and Kain indeed returns... as a vampire.

From this moment on, we take control of Kain, who will soon find out that his revenge is a much bigger task than he first thought, and it involves solving the mystery of Ariel's murder and returning the Pillars to their former purity, via the only possible method: to kill the corrupted Guardians.
Throughout his quest, Kain will learn that in this time of doubt and decay, nothing is what it seems, and mysterious forces are bent on using him as a pawn for their dark ends. Who is Kain's real ally? Maybe no one is.

The storyline revolves in an enormous spiderweb of deception, half-truths and betrayals, all of the while the land of Nosgoth descends slowly into what seems to be its demise. Kain's only interest is to find a cure for his vampirism, which he's promised will come once Nosgoth is restored; but we will soon learn that this may be yet another deception... maybe he will just have to deal with the fact that there is no cure. Maybe Nosgoth is beyond redemption, and the only difference will be WHOSE corrupted hands will get the remaining crumbs.

The storyline is what I found the strongest point of the game, and the very thing that got me hooked into play throughout the whole fully-2D totally-outdated thing, in this times of accelerated-3D glory (October 2003).
The storyline itself is cleverly conceived, and storytelling is done with great talent, as to keep you interested at all times.

Connected to this, there's something intangible but equally amazing, which I call THE POTENTIAL of the game.
Due to its technical limitations (remember it's been released in 1997), the game leans in a number of pre-rendered FMV sequences and a LOT of spoken description of places and events. These descriptions are so well done, that at times I felt like reading an epic novel, and I pictured several key moments in my head, as they might look if made with today's technology. The dark and eerie swamps of Termogent Forest, the fastuous mansion of the vampire Vorador, the epic Battle of the Last Stand —when Kain joins the biggest army of Nosgoth in order to face a megalomaniac invasor known as the Nemesis and his hordes of destruction... All those moments are just eager for someone to take them and turn them into a fully 3D DirectX 9-powered experience.

THE SOUND in my humble opinion, simply shines with its own light. The game is FULLY spoken, which is pretty great considering how old it is. Not only descriptions are as glorious as to read a good novel, but voice acting in general is just amazing. Voice acting of the LEGACY OF KAIN series is already known to be among the best ever.
The music does a very good job creating the atmosphere, it's nothing revolutionary in any way, but it's totally enjoyable and it even has some brilliant moments. I LOVED the grim and twisted tune played in the mansion of Ezelvir the Dollmaker.

GAMEPLAY-WISE, the game is one of those games that fool you in the beginning with some RPG'ish elements, but soon prove themselves to be nothing more than a hack&slash game with a lot of goodies (spells, armor, weapons) to choose between, much like DIABLO II. This is not exactly good, neither it is exactly bad... all the contrary :P
The game offers quite a bit of variety for an action game, and it has a large number of secrets —there's even a ranking you get at the end, adding up the way you played, stuff collected, secrets uncovered, et cetera— which gives the game a fair deal of replayability.

Finally, there's a very cool feature called the Dark Diary, which is an option in the main menu from where you can replay the FMV's you've seen so far. Since the main points of the story are told through these FMV's, after you finish the game you get to play the whole storyline in about 20 minutes worth of pre-rendered video.

The Bad
I can't help but feeling I'm being unfair when I think of "the bad" of this game. The thing is, I played it in mid-2003, after playing the awesome LEGACY OF KAIN: SOUL REAVER 2, and most of the flaws that I can point out are related to technical issues, which might just as well answer to the limitations of 1997.

THE GRAPHICS look poorly, but then again, you can tell that there is a lot of work put into them: several different scenarios, lots of details, different weather conditions, day and night...
Same goes for the FMV sequences. They look even worse than many in-game sequences do nowadays, but these might just be reflecting the limitations back then...

However, one flaw that I'm very certain IS a flaw now and WAS a flaw back then, involves GAMEPLAY. If it wasn't for the storyline, I don't think I would have given this game more than one hour of life. The thing is, the whole game is pretty much the same: you travel through open fields, enter a town, investigate a few houses, and sooner or later you get into your target building/cave/mansion, which is a maze you need to traverse until you find the boss character. You defeat him, and then the whole thing starts over. On and on again, until you defeat all the bosses. The visual settings change more or less, but the things you have to do are always the same.
On top of this, the combat interface sucks. You only get to slash with your sword, not having any key to avoid or cover from attacks, so you need to walk away from the attacker, face him again, slash, walk away...
The use of spells at times makes the whole fighting a bit easier and more enjoyable (specially watching the different effects the spells have on your enemies) and even adds some interest into the otherwise lame and simplistic "puzzles" (like when you use the "Control Mind" spell to gain control over an enemy and make him pull the lever which opens the door that grants you access), but in time it all gets repetitive pretty soon.

The Bottom Line
As of today, I'm a HUGE fan of the LEGACY OF KAIN games. I met this franchise almost by accident, and I ended up falling in love with its imaginative, enormous and well-detailed story. This series of games are among my top 5 favourite games ever, and that's quite amazing since at a first glance they are nothing more than the combination of the two most cliched and un-interesting topics ever: vampires and middle-age fantasy.

Once I played the 3 most actual games of the series, and readed a lot of plot analysis and diverse material about the legendary and elder first game, I finally decided to suck it up, and go face it myself. The game looks way outdated (I believe it would have actually looked outdated even at its own time, back in 1997), its gameplay is pretty much crap, and you need to do some tweaking to get it to even work under WindowsXP... and yet, I don't regret my decision. The experience was worth it.

So, do I recommend this game?
Tough question.
See, first of all, except for the story, don't expect ANYTHING to surprise you... probably even considering the game's age.
This is the kind of game that can only be appreciated by the kind of people who agrees with me that "the more a game resembles of a book, the better it is."
For people like me, this is an amazing story, and a game full of potential.
I truly hope that someone takes over the thing and makes a full-power 3D version to show the rest of the world what they've missing...
Otherwise, is their loss.

Windows · by Slug Camargo (583) · 2003

A dark and moody adventure game with a more mature feel for bloodthirsty fans of the Zelda series

The Good
For anyone who's played the Zelda games, this one will be a treat especially since action/adventures of this sort are rare on the PC. The storyline is intricate and detailed and the ambience of Nosgoth (the gameworld) is suitably dark (I especially liked the way the colored lighting enhanced the moodiness). The voice overs for your character (Kain) also add to the atmosphere. As in the Zelda games your magical and shapechanging abilities and weaponry are steadily expanded as you progress. If you're a fan of vampires then this game will surely appeal to you.

The Bad
Despite the acquisition of new weapons and offensive spells the combat quickly gets repetitive, and since combat is the central focus of the game this could put off a lot of people. Personally, I found the storyline to be the most important factor in keeping me playing till the end. The graphics are also very pixelated and blocky by today's glorious hi-res, true-color standards. Traversing back and forth through the world of Nosgoth can also get tedious (although this is helped somewhat by the teleportation system introduced early in the game). I would have liked the inclusion of more interaction and conversation with the NPCs. Also, you can only save at designated save game points which I found to be annoying since it sometimes meant trudging through already-covered territory upon reloading.

The Bottom Line
Heavy on action and light on dialogue. This is definitely an action-adventure and not an RPG. It is far removed from the generally cutesy atmosphere of the Zelda games. If you can appreciate the twists and turns of the storyline you will definitely want to play through the game. Playing as an anti-hero character is a refreshing change. Anne Rice and Dracula fans, this one's for you.

Windows · by Aamir Alavi (5) · 2001

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cancelled Saturn release

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was to also be on the Sega Saturn.

Character names

Some of the Characters underwent name changes before the game was finished. Ariel was first called Adonathiel and Moebius was named Bridenal. Vorador's name was briefly changed to Infernum, but it was changed back.

Although it has never been stated officially, it's possible that Nosgoth is derived from Nosferatu, another name for vampires, and Goth or Gothic.

Chess sequence

One of the most important gameplay sequence that was cut in Blood Omen was the chess sequence that Vorador would have used to challenge Kain. In the words of the Silicon Knights themselves:

The chess match was a board with real people on it, which Vorador had set up to challenge Kain. Kain had to figure out which piece to move using the Control Mind spell, and, if he made a mistake, the pieces would come to life and attack him. The correct move was a classic chess checkmate

The sequence was cut because it was not working very well and the development cycle was nearing the end.

Cutscenes

Originally, there was an FMV depicting Kain's murder. It was supposed to be part of the opening cinematics tell the story of how Kain becomes a Vampire.

Graveyard

First, find the blood script in the mausoleum. Copy the symbols down on paper.

Go to the graveyard outside. Read the gravestones. Get your paper and pen ready and waste one hour of your time deciphering the code.

The symbols each represent the corresponding letters of the alphabet omitting the letters K, Q, and W.

You then can "read" the gravestones to see the names of some of the games' developers.

Legacy

The game's plot is actually the centerpiece of what in the sequels develops into an intricate vampire-time-travel-drama. Events from Blood Omen are constantly referred to in the following games, for example, the vampire Janos Audron, who is never encountered in Blood Omen and whose backstory merely adds flavour to a power-up, becomes a character of major importance in almost all sequels.

Lightning spell cave

Using the alphabet from the Nosgoth's Blood Script, you can translate the writing at the Lightning Spell cave. It says: "He will come when the moon is full and learn to call death from the sky".

Title

Blood Omen was originally going to be called "The Pillars of Nosgoth", due to the importance of the Pillars to the storyline.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • March 1997 (Issue 92) - Role-Playing Game of the Year + Role-Playing Game of the Year runner-up (Readers' Choice)

Information also contributed by chirinea, Little Yoda, Mark Ennis, MasterMegid and MDMaster

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

The Legacy of Kain Series: Blood Omen 2
Released 2002 on PlayStation 2, Xbox, Windows
Sword Legacy Omen
Released 2018 on Windows
Legacy of Kain Collection
Released 2012 on Windows
Legacy of Kain: Defiance
Released 2003 on PlayStation 2, Xbox, Windows
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Released 1999 on Windows, PlayStation, 2000 on Dreamcast...
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
Released 2001 on Windows, PlayStation 2
Omen of Sorrow
Released 2018 on PlayStation 4, Windows, 2022 on Arcade...

Related Sites +

  • Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds
    Website dedicated to the 'lost' content of the games in the Legacy of Kain series. Missing bosses, areas and plotlines that might have been.
  • Nosgoth Realm
    every part in Legacy of Kain is here, with fan-art, screenshots, wallapaper and much much more!
  • The Nosgothic Realm
    Site dedicated to Legacy of Kain

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 2207
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Wolfang.

PS Vita added by GTramp. PSP, PlayStation 3 added by CaKeMan. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Casualty, Jony Shahar, Shoddyan, Qlberts, Wormspinal, Alaka, Patrick Bregger.

Game added August 22, 2000. Last modified February 10, 2024.