It’s been 23 years since a mainline Legacy of Kain game hit the market. I lost countless weekends in my twenties exploring the dark corners of Nosgoth in Blood Omen and Soul Reaver. I lost long nights solving block puzzles and shifting realms. Those early games defined a specific era of dark fantasy gaming for me. When Crystal Dynamics and Bit Bot Media announced Legacy of Kain: Ascendance as a 2D action platformer, I had serious doubts. A side-scrolling pixel game is a massive shift from the 3D exploration we remember. After finishing the campaign on PS5, my feelings are completely mixed. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance finally gives us the lore and answers we have waited decades for. The problem is you have to play through a repetitive, and somewhat frustrating adventure to get them.
The narrative does a great job filling in the blanks before the events of the older games. The original voice cast returns in top form. The actual combat falls completely flat. The platforming is cheap. The visual style lacks any real coherence. If you just want the story, turning the difficulty all the way down to Story mode is your best option. I found myself pushing through the tedious sections just to see the next cutscene.
The characters deserve a better framework around them. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance brings the franchise back, but the final product leaves a lot to be desired. I appreciated the nostalgia of the audio. The combat and movement remain stuck in the past for all the wrong reasons. I really wanted to love this return to Nosgoth. The reality here is much more complicated.
A Story That Finally Answers The Old Questions
The narrative here is the real reason to jump back into this universe. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance acts as a direct prequel to Soul Reaver. It introduces Elaleth. She is Raziel’s sister. This is a character previously only seen in the comic books and graphic novels. Moebius locked her inside a time distortion. She hates Raziel for killing her beloved. This setup lets Elaleth interact with major events from the past. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance shows exactly how Raziel got his wings. It explains how Kain found the Sarafan lieutenants and resurrected them.
The plot does a great job filling in the blanks. I loved seeing these characters interact again. The story answers questions fans have had since the 90s. The dialogue is occasionally basic and lacks the poetic flair of the older games. The overall arc remains strong. Elaleth is a relatively one-note character driven entirely by anger. She lacks the complexity of Kain or Raziel. She serves her purpose well enough as a vehicle to explore the timeline.
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance introduces Ky’Set’Syk. This character is half-human and half-Hylden. They give Elaleth the magic she needs to escape Moebius. These new additions fit perfectly into the established lore. The narrative manages to bridge the gap between the first game and Soul Reaver without breaking the established canon. The story alone makes the experience worthwhile for longtime fans. The writers clearly understand the history of Nosgoth. They treat the source material with respect. The script reveals secrets that change how you view the original games. For an adventure with so many flaws, the writing team accomplished their primary goal.
Basic Combat And Frustrating Platforming
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance gives you control of Elaleth, Kain, and Raziel in both his human and vampire forms. The issue is they all play almost exactly the same. You jump, attack, and dash. You have one character-specific ability. Human Raziel throws firebombs. Kain hits harder and takes more damage. The winged characters fly upwards for short bursts to solve mini-puzzles.
Combat gets old fast. You only have a basic sword attack and a downward strike. I found myself just spamming the downward strike. It easily defeats most enemies and trivializes the bosses. Boss fights boil down to dodging a simple attack and hitting them back. There are no RPG additions, no skill trees, and no accessories to equip. The AI makes things worse. Enemies constantly jump off cliffs to their deaths. They get stuck in corners.
Draining blood restores your health and gives you invincibility frames. I exploited this constantly just to bypass annoying fights. The platforming sections demand absolute perfection but don’t give you the tools to succeed. You often have to make blind leaps of faith into the unknown. You can’t look down to see where you’re going. When I played the human Raziel stage, the lack of healing items made every small mistake heavily punished. The developers aimed for an old-school arcade difficulty. It ends up becoming tedious rather than challenging. Checkpoints are frequent. You rarely lose much progress, but dying to a cheap jump still hurts. The controls are responsive, but Legacy of Kain: Ascendance demands a level of exactness that the level design doesn’t support. You find yourself fighting the environment more than the actual enemies.
Excellent Audio Trapped In A Disjointed Art Style
The visual direction in Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is completely disjointed. The 16-bit pixel art looks fine on its own, but it lacks the dark, brooding atmosphere Nosgoth is known for. The environments are mostly generic rocky cliffs, caves, and mountains. Very few areas grab your attention. The cutscenes are all over the place. The developers mashed together cheap anime sequences, blocky 3D models, and confusing chibi art. It looks like three different games stitched together rather than one unified vision. The character portraits during text conversations look great. The animated sequences fail to capture the magic of the older video intros.
The audio saves the day. Hearing Michael Bell and Simon Templeman voice Raziel and Kain again is incredible. They give everything they have to these roles. The supporting cast does a great job as well. Anna Gunn returns as Ariel. Richard Doyle returns as Moebius. The voice acting carries the weaker parts of the script.
The soundtrack by Celldweller mixes heavy metal with symphonic tracks. The new versions of classic themes sound incredible. The audio alone kept me going when the platforming got annoying. The music fits the gothic tone perfectly. The sound design has one major flaw. Enemies repeat the same sound bites over and over when they die. This gets incredibly annoying when you’re stuck on a difficult section. I heard the same grunt twenty times in five minutes. Despite the weird visuals, the music and acting prove why this franchise remains so beloved. The developers clearly spent their budget securing the original talent. I just wish the graphics received the same level of care.
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance Has A Great Story Trapped In A Sometimes Frustrating Game
Nobody wanted this franchise to return more than I did. The lore additions in Legacy of Kain: Ascendance are genuinely interesting. Hearing the original cast together again is a treat. The actual game surrounding that story is just not very good. The basic combat, terrible AI, and cheap deaths make the actual act of playing a chore. The disjointed art style distracts from the narrative.
The complete lack of character upgrades hurts the replay value. Once you finish the four-hour campaign, there’s no reason to go back. The hidden collectibles provide some extra lore text, but they don’t change how Legacy of Kain: Ascendance plays. The controls are stripped back to a fault.
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a Story Better Read Than Played
If you love the franchise, the narrative is worth seeing. Just put it on the easiest difficulty and treat it like an interactive graphic novel. Crystal Dynamics and Bit Bot Media clearly respect the source material. They just failed to build a fun action platformer around it. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance acts as a vital piece of the timeline for dedicated fans.
If you’re just looking for a top-tier 2D platformer and don’t care about the history of Nosgoth, there are better ways to spend your time. I’m glad we finally have a new game in the series. I just hope the next adventure in Nosgoth gets the budget and focus it deserves. This release acts as a stepping stone to something bigger. The foundation is there, but the gameplay design needs a massive overhaul. The vampires of Nosgoth have plenty of stories left to tell. They just need a better gameplay vehicle to tell them.
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance
Summary
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance offers a fantastic prequel story with the iconic original voice cast, finally answering decades-old questions for fans of the series. However, the disjointed art style, repetitive combat, and frustrating level design make the actual gameplay a struggle to enjoy. It is a vital piece of lore for fans, but playing on Story mode is the best way to experience it.
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