Oof. I’m going to need some Fs in the chat because this was my first full playthrough experience with a Legacy of Kain game. I’m sure long-time fans of the series can’t imagine a worse place for me to jump into it with, but you have to understand that this game caught me at a very 2D side-scroller time in my life and it looked appealing as such.
So here we are, on the dawn of the return of many people’s favorite suck ‘n’ slash franchise dating back 30 years ago and it’s… not looking good. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance has a lot in its way when it comes to enjoyment of this eternal gang war between the righteous human Sarafans and aura-farming vampires. Less than stellar controls and feel, unbalanced story-to-game ratio, a sameness that pervades the whole game despite three (technically four) playable characters, and a few more annoyances that I may or may not highlight in this epitaph of a review. Honestly, they’re numerous enough where I already feel my memory of them fading either out of self-preservation or my usual ADHD forgetfulness.
I began just as confused as Elaleth did
Notice how in that last paragraph I didn’t say the graphics or presentation were bad. That’s because they’re some of Ascendance‘s stronger points. It’s a high-definition 2D pixel affair not unlike Blasphemous or a handful of other indie titles that pull off this style with flavor and allure. Mixed in is hand-drawn art for cutscenes and in-game conversations that breathe with life and flair. Facial expressions switch and morph to match the mood, a nice touch that’s always appreciated.
Some environments are capable of dazzling as well. There’s an abundance of dark fantasy locales that can be compared to a number of games, but they’re well done overall with a couple sticking out for the better. The menu screen has some of the best key art in the whole damn game which helps distract from the barebones and disappointing menus themselves (what do you mean I can’t even rebind my controls?!). Truly, the artists were the MVPs here, as they usually are in any context of culture.
It’s unfortunate that Ascendance‘s low points were apparent from the very first few minutes, even worse that they didn’t improve with time, but instead persisted and in some cases even expounded on themselves from moment to moment. Even still, there’s a fun factor in the beginning. I thought to myself, surely this can’t be as bad as I was hearing, this seems fine so far. Well, about that….
This game does have some cool moments visually
Its closest analogue to me is a linear Castlevania game perhaps from the Game Boy Advance, but even that profoundly oversells Ascendance. Though if this game did release on the GBA or maybe the original DS, perhaps a little more leeway would be given to it. The fact that this is the first new Legacy of Kain game in a couple decades and released on all current major platforms immensely works against justifying its existence, even at its budget pricing. If this is how Castlevania chose to return after decades gone, I’d be distraught (no pressure, Belmont’s Curse).
The controls feel slightly off. The first thing that stood out was how jumping forward and attacking causes a brief midair pause–it’s like an air stall, but without much purpose or finesse. Since you have to jump and attack frequently, you end up just adapting to it and building it into your instincts over time. Ledge grabbing also feels inconsistent. Sometimes pressing jump near a ledge lets you grab it, while other times simply holding forward or up-forward toward it is enough.
This was one of the more fun moments and it’s just an autoscroller
Wall jumping is a little unintuitive too. I would jump, press in the direction of a wall I was obviously supposed to go up, cling to it, then the intended method to jump across to the other wall or a ledge was to press jump to leap away and then press the opposite direction to continue traveling across. Anything else results in falling. It makes for some clumsy movement especially when you take into account that any kind of fire, including torches you’d be forgiven for taking as part of the scenery, hurts you and kills momentum.
You start playing as Elaleth, vampire sister of Raziel, and the main character of Ascendance as far as I’m concerned. Her drive for vengeance against Raziel for killing her lover sets her on a path that runs between and through the other two playables, Raziel himself and Kain. They all share similar movesets and abilities – an attack, dodge, finishing move, jump, and parry – but there’s differences, like how Kain explodes into a cloud of bats to travel short distances (cool!).
Raziel before he became enslaved to an elder god
Elaleth and Kain have to feed on blood to live. Fair enough as they’re both vampires, but the rate at which you lose life and must feed acts as quite the annoying gameplay timer. You die in around a minute without feeding with your base health bar which puts pressure on you to move forward, attack enemies, and finish them with a nice suck. This would be fine I suppose if the game was more straightforward than it is, but there’s hidden collectables to find in the world, tougher to look for when you’re on a leash made of hemoglobin.
Finishing vampires as Sarafan Raziel is annoying as well. He uses fire to seal the kill after making them kneel, but you have to light them aflame in about two seconds and some change, otherwise they stand back up and start slashing at you again, annoying because the enemy AI is silly and erratic across all enemy types you fight. They pace chaotically, shooting or slashing at you with their weapons with little order or predictability. They’re self-destructive as well, regularly walking off cliffs without me having to do a thing, or piling onto each other so I can kill three of them at once. I welcomed it regardless as it meant pushing forward. It all starts to wear on you pretty quickly.
Boss fights aren’t much to write home about either, but they are enough for me to write to you about. They were the moments I was engaged the most, a bit tougher than most enemy encounters and require some semblance of strategy, but they’re still remarkably easy and usually can be made trivial with your character’s divebomb/homing attack while airborne. You can’t feed during these fights though so it’s fun beating them all on a timer while getting hit which shaves off big chunks from said timer.
One of the hardest lines in the game
I think I spent more time watching cutscenes and dialogue than I did platforming and fighting, not a wholesale negative especially when the writing and voice acting performances are solid across the board if you enjoy or tolerate the grim theatrics of it all. Some of my favorites were Darin De Paul as Ky’set’syk (also Revenant from Apex Legends) and Elsie Lovelock as Elaleth (and most recently Sammy Dietz in Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!). The original and revered voice actors from the Legacy of Kain series return like Richard Doyle (Moebius), Simon Templeman (Kain), and Michael Bell (Raziel) all chewing the scenery in their own melodramatic ways that prove effective for a fantasy story like this. I will say, with absolutely no disrespect intended for Mr. Bell, it was a little off-putting to hear him voice a younger, raven-haired, human Raziel when he was part of the Sarafan when his current vocal timbre in his 80s is much more attuned to the older, wiser, vampired Raziel, son of Kain. Anna Gunn also does great returning as the spirit of Ariel, Guardian of the Pillar of Balance, during a key but overlong moment in Ascendance‘s story that I wouldn’t have tolerated as well without her involvement.
When it goes to being a negative point against Ascendance is when you realize the gameplay itself isn’t particularly intriguing to begin with. So, I’m watching a story and characters that I’m curious about, but not fully invested in, only to be let loose to play a game for 10-15 minutes in between long stretches of exposition and brooding that I have trouble gleaning any sort of value and little fun from thanks to the lack of variety and odd-feeling controls? Rad. This all came to a head toward the end where you’re tasked with flying with subpar controls through a slog of a section to get to the final confrontation between Raziel and Elaleth. My most common reaction during my gameplay of Ascendance was sighing, either of relief that a section was over or frustration that I had to repeat them in order to achieve relief. At least the checkpointing is fair. The most egregious thing is that I beat this game in about four hours. With very little to justify repeat playthroughs or returns to individual chapters, it’s a sizable ding against it.
A few cutscenes use low-poly 3D renders, a reference at best and inconsistency at worse
I didn’t hate this game at all. I don’t really hate anything like that. The most damning thing I can personally say about subjectively evaluated pieces of art, media, or interactive game of any sort is that it’s simply not for me. Unfortunately for Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, I have to find several hundreds of words to justify that thesis statement of it being “not for me.” Honestly, as much as it is a negative in the bigger picture, its length is what made it tolerable. If I had to somehow play 8+ hours of it, this review may not have been as calm and collected. We could’ve ended up with an abandoned Angry Video Game Nerd episode script outline with at least 22 astute references to poop and nobody wants that, least of all my editors I’m sure. Even though I’ve been clear that Ascendance isn’t a total wash and there are elements that are absolutely enjoyable, it just didn’t do much for me.
I do also want to make it perfectly clear in lieu of the above that I don’t wish to chastise the developer Bit Bot Media for this game. While there’s a lot to critique and people should be able to do it constructively, clearly there was a lot of effort made here. It’s my hope that, for whatever projects may be in the small team’s future, lessons were learned and the next one will be better, different, and more indicative of the obvious talent on this team. If resources were an issue, I hope they get more. If manpower was an issue, I hope they connect with others to help. If deadlines squished their creativity and technical potential, give them more time. Everyone deserves a second chance to make something well-loved and interesting and I for one won’t be holding this against them during an era where the industry sacrifices entire studios because of games that don’t do well. Hell, the industry even doles out consequences for games that do great and the very real people that make them.
I feel you, buddy
I can only reasonably recommend something like Legacy of Kain: Ascendance to the most frothing and obsessed series fans and only primarily for the additional lore and performances. It apparently brings a franchise comic to playable life and remakes some moments from past games, but for many people, those who have been fans for decades deflated by the perceived continued mistreatment of the property, even those aspects weren’t enough with them leaving gutting, disappointed, frustrated reviews of their own. For some, it’s business as usual; others, a massive missed opportunity to resurrect a much-loved franchise into the current generation. In that regard, I am privileged in the sense that at least my disappointment only lasted a weekend. “Vae victis” to all who purchased this game hoping for the best. You deserve better, Kain raisers.
So here we are, on the dawn of the return of many people’s favorite suck ‘n’ slash franchise dating back 30 years ago and it’s… not looking good. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance has a lot in its way when it comes to enjoyment of this eternal gang war between the human Sarafans and vampires.
Oof. I’m going to need some Fs in the chat because this was my first full playthrough experience with a Legacy of Kain game. I’m sure long-time fans of the series can’t imagine a worse place for me to jump into it with, but you have to understand that this game caught me at a very 2D side-scroller time in my life and it looked appealing as such.
So here we are, on the dawn of the return of many people’s favorite suck ‘n’ slash franchise dating back 30 years ago and it’s… not looking good. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance has a lot in its way when it comes to enjoyment of this eternal gang war between the righteous human Sarafans and aura-farming vampires. Less than stellar controls and feel, unbalanced story-to-game ratio, a sameness that pervades the whole game despite three (technically four) playable characters, and a few more annoyances that I may or may not highlight in this epitaph of a review. Honestly, they’re numerous enough where I already feel my memory of them fading either out of self-preservation or my usual ADHD forgetfulness.
I began just as confused as Elaleth did
Notice how in that last paragraph I didn’t say the graphics or presentation were bad. That’s because they’re some of Ascendance‘s stronger points. It’s a high-definition 2D pixel affair not unlike Blasphemous or a handful of other indie titles that pull off this style with flavor and allure. Mixed in is hand-drawn art for cutscenes and in-game conversations that breathe with life and flair. Facial expressions switch and morph to match the mood, a nice touch that’s always appreciated.
Some environments are capable of dazzling as well. There’s an abundance of dark fantasy locales that can be compared to a number of games, but they’re well done overall with a couple sticking out for the better. The menu screen has some of the best key art in the whole damn game which helps distract from the barebones and disappointing menus themselves (what do you mean I can’t even rebind my controls?!). Truly, the artists were the MVPs here, as they usually are in any context of culture.
It’s unfortunate that Ascendance‘s low points were apparent from the very first few minutes, even worse that they didn’t improve with time, but instead persisted and in some cases even expounded on themselves from moment to moment. Even still, there’s a fun factor in the beginning. I thought to myself, surely this can’t be as bad as I was hearing, this seems fine so far. Well, about that….
This game does have some cool moments visually
Its closest analogue to me is a linear Castlevania game perhaps from the Game Boy Advance, but even that profoundly oversells Ascendance. Though if this game did release on the GBA or maybe the original DS, perhaps a little more leeway would be given to it. The fact that this is the first new Legacy of Kain game in a couple decades and released on all current major platforms immensely works against justifying its existence, even at its budget pricing. If this is how Castlevania chose to return after decades gone, I’d be distraught (no pressure, Belmont’s Curse).
The controls feel slightly off. The first thing that stood out was how jumping forward and attacking causes a brief midair pause–it’s like an air stall, but without much purpose or finesse. Since you have to jump and attack frequently, you end up just adapting to it and building it into your instincts over time. Ledge grabbing also feels inconsistent. Sometimes pressing jump near a ledge lets you grab it, while other times simply holding forward or up-forward toward it is enough.
This was one of the more fun moments and it’s just an autoscroller
Wall jumping is a little unintuitive too. I would jump, press in the direction of a wall I was obviously supposed to go up, cling to it, then the intended method to jump across to the other wall or a ledge was to press jump to leap away and then press the opposite direction to continue traveling across. Anything else results in falling. It makes for some clumsy movement especially when you take into account that any kind of fire, including torches you’d be forgiven for taking as part of the scenery, hurts you and kills momentum.
You start playing as Elaleth, vampire sister of Raziel, and the main character of Ascendance as far as I’m concerned. Her drive for vengeance against Raziel for killing her lover sets her on a path that runs between and through the other two playables, Raziel himself and Kain. They all share similar movesets and abilities – an attack, dodge, finishing move, jump, and parry – but there’s differences, like how Kain explodes into a cloud of bats to travel short distances (cool!).
Raziel before he became enslaved to an elder god
Elaleth and Kain have to feed on blood to live. Fair enough as they’re both vampires, but the rate at which you lose life and must feed acts as quite the annoying gameplay timer. You die in around a minute without feeding with your base health bar which puts pressure on you to move forward, attack enemies, and finish them with a nice suck. This would be fine I suppose if the game was more straightforward than it is, but there’s hidden collectables to find in the world, tougher to look for when you’re on a leash made of hemoglobin.
Finishing vampires as Sarafan Raziel is annoying as well. He uses fire to seal the kill after making them kneel, but you have to light them aflame in about two seconds and some change, otherwise they stand back up and start slashing at you again, annoying because the enemy AI is silly and erratic across all enemy types you fight. They pace chaotically, shooting or slashing at you with their weapons with little order or predictability. They’re self-destructive as well, regularly walking off cliffs without me having to do a thing, or piling onto each other so I can kill three of them at once. I welcomed it regardless as it meant pushing forward. It all starts to wear on you pretty quickly.
Boss fights aren’t much to write home about either, but they are enough for me to write to you about. They were the moments I was engaged the most, a bit tougher than most enemy encounters and require some semblance of strategy, but they’re still remarkably easy and usually can be made trivial with your character’s divebomb/homing attack while airborne. You can’t feed during these fights though so it’s fun beating them all on a timer while getting hit which shaves off big chunks from said timer.
One of the hardest lines in the game
I think I spent more time watching cutscenes and dialogue than I did platforming and fighting, not a wholesale negative especially when the writing and voice acting performances are solid across the board if you enjoy or tolerate the grim theatrics of it all. Some of my favorites were Darin De Paul as Ky’set’syk (also Revenant from Apex Legends) and Elsie Lovelock as Elaleth (and most recently Sammy Dietz in Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!). The original and revered voice actors from the Legacy of Kain series return like Richard Doyle (Moebius), Simon Templeman (Kain), and Michael Bell (Raziel) all chewing the scenery in their own melodramatic ways that prove effective for a fantasy story like this. I will say, with absolutely no disrespect intended for Mr. Bell, it was a little off-putting to hear him voice a younger, raven-haired, human Raziel when he was part of the Sarafan when his current vocal timbre in his 80s is much more attuned to the older, wiser, vampired Raziel, son of Kain. Anna Gunn also does great returning as the spirit of Ariel, Guardian of the Pillar of Balance, during a key but overlong moment in Ascendance‘s story that I wouldn’t have tolerated as well without her involvement.
When it goes to being a negative point against Ascendance is when you realize the gameplay itself isn’t particularly intriguing to begin with. So, I’m watching a story and characters that I’m curious about, but not fully invested in, only to be let loose to play a game for 10-15 minutes in between long stretches of exposition and brooding that I have trouble gleaning any sort of value and little fun from thanks to the lack of variety and odd-feeling controls? Rad. This all came to a head toward the end where you’re tasked with flying with subpar controls through a slog of a section to get to the final confrontation between Raziel and Elaleth. My most common reaction during my gameplay of Ascendance was sighing, either of relief that a section was over or frustration that I had to repeat them in order to achieve relief. At least the checkpointing is fair. The most egregious thing is that I beat this game in about four hours. With very little to justify repeat playthroughs or returns to individual chapters, it’s a sizable ding against it.
A few cutscenes use low-poly 3D renders, a reference at best and inconsistency at worse
I didn’t hate this game at all. I don’t really hate anything like that. The most damning thing I can personally say about subjectively evaluated pieces of art, media, or interactive game of any sort is that it’s simply not for me. Unfortunately for Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, I have to find several hundreds of words to justify that thesis statement of it being “not for me.” Honestly, as much as it is a negative in the bigger picture, its length is what made it tolerable. If I had to somehow play 8+ hours of it, this review may not have been as calm and collected. We could’ve ended up with an abandoned Angry Video Game Nerd episode script outline with at least 22 astute references to poop and nobody wants that, least of all my editors I’m sure. Even though I’ve been clear that Ascendance isn’t a total wash and there are elements that are absolutely enjoyable, it just didn’t do much for me.
I do also want to make it perfectly clear in lieu of the above that I don’t wish to chastise the developer Bit Bot Media for this game. While there’s a lot to critique and people should be able to do it constructively, clearly there was a lot of effort made here. It’s my hope that, for whatever projects may be in the small team’s future, lessons were learned and the next one will be better, different, and more indicative of the obvious talent on this team. If resources were an issue, I hope they get more. If manpower was an issue, I hope they connect with others to help. If deadlines squished their creativity and technical potential, give them more time. Everyone deserves a second chance to make something well-loved and interesting and I for one won’t be holding this against them during an era where the industry sacrifices entire studios because of games that don’t do well. Hell, the industry even doles out consequences for games that do great and the very real people that make them.
I feel you, buddy
I can only reasonably recommend something like Legacy of Kain: Ascendance to the most frothing and obsessed series fans and only primarily for the additional lore and performances. It apparently brings a franchise comic to playable life and remakes some moments from past games, but for many people, those who have been fans for decades deflated by the perceived continued mistreatment of the property, even those aspects weren’t enough with them leaving gutting, disappointed, frustrated reviews of their own. For some, it’s business as usual; others, a massive missed opportunity to resurrect a much-loved franchise into the current generation. In that regard, I am privileged in the sense that at least my disappointment only lasted a weekend. “Vae victis” to all who purchased this game hoping for the best. You deserve better, Kain raisers.
by David Rodriguez
