Blood Omen 2

"A terrible sequel, a disgrace to the original"

I had such high expectations for Legacy Of Kain: Blood Omen 2. I can't say I was a diehard fan of the first one, I haven't played it through 10 times like some of you obviously have, but I did complete it twice and I would give the original a solid 9/10 because it was a very satisfying game with old-school graphics and a really vile theme. I couldn't have cared less about its ''successor'' Soul Reaver because I don't buy into the Tomb Raider genre. And when Soul Reaver 2 became available, I bought it for the heck of it, to prepare myself for BO2 and get in touch with the storyline. I was excited by the BO2 preview on the SR2 DVD!! So I was really all pumped up for BO2 and here's how it all fell down.

GAMEPLAY (4/10)
First of all, the Blood Omen series migrates to the 3d world just like EVERYTHING out there lately, and there's always some controversy around that, some people would always rather have the game stick to a top down 2d view. It's too bad they had to go for a tomb raider type of thing AGAIN, but once you get past this, it's ok, you live with it. In Blood Omen 2 you will do 5 things: Fight, Suck Blood, Solve Puzzles, Walk and use super moves called Dark Gifts. That's IT. These 5 elements, over and over again, are what make up the game (with some cutscenes of course, we'll talk about that later). The first one had items, various equipment as well as everything listed up there or almost; well it was a much more complete gameplay experience. To sum it up, very little gameplay variety, plagued by horrible controls. YOU CAN NOT STRAFE. ''Avoiding'', which was extremely well done in SR2, is a real pain to use in BO2. Ah like it would matter anyways, the fights are so stupid, you'll end up running away from all of them by the last few stages. AI is extremely poor, I often stood in front of enemies just walking up into them and nothing back. Very little good to say about BO2's gameplay, it is slow and tedious, though learning curve is not too high.

Story (4/10)
I'm not gonna get into details, but I will say this, the story is NOTHING compared to BO1, it is based in one city only (well almost), very predictible plot twists, you get the picture. You probably will NOT care about the story at all, past a certain point. I guess I should put the voice acting in here, it is rather well done, just as good as SR2.

Audio/Video (6/10)
If it weren't for the horrible slow-downs and choppy movie sequences, this would be getting a 7. Graphics are far from amazing but they're not bad at all. Music gets a big fat 1/10, why? There isn't any!!! Man, the BO1 songs would haunt me for a while everytime I would play it, but BO2 either it's just ambient noise or nothing at all even!!! If they were trying to carry a point across with this, I sure couldn't see it. I normally play this game with new-school hardcore such as Between The Buried And Me and Killswitch Engage, fits the mood perfectly.

Replayability (1/10)
None. Replaying it would be TORTURE. I can't believe it myself when I think that I beat the game, but I just did it cause I had been waiting for so long to get my hands on it.

Buy or rent?
I dunno, the game's kinda long though. I spent what, a good 30 hours maybe on it. Maybe less, I'm not sure. Well it's not long compared to Dragon Warrior 7 but it's still twice as long as Soul reaver 2, if not more. I bought it cause I take my time with games then trade them back for another

So rent it, or stay away from it!

In conclusion: bad game :(

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/02, Updated 05/19/02