Blood Omen 2

Written by Tim McGrew  on February 12, 2003

Review: It's bloody, it's brutal, and it's boring

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Getting right to the point, Blood Omen 2 is about Kain, the protagonist from the first Blood Omen game that was released back in 1996. It precedes the timeline of the two Soul Reaver games released on the pair of Sony consoles over the past couple of years. After a lengthy slumber, Kain awakes to see the world ruled primarily by technology and magic and he seeks to conquer the lands of the world once again. However, you'll soon discover that although Kain is a very interesting character, he's hardly a hero.

The primary objective of the game, aside from beating the tar out of everyone you come across, is to suck massive amounts of blood. There is so much blood sucking, in fact, that it quickly becomes a repetitive but necessity of the game's basic format. Sucking blood not only restores Kain's health, much like when Raziel steals souls in Soul Reaver, it also increases Kain's health level. Some of these enemies you slay have copious amounts of blood in them and there will definitely be times when you'll be spending quite a few seconds sucking blood when it should be spent actually playing the game. Although sucking blood is a gameplay facet of Blood Omen 2, it feels like a daunting evil that will definitely become a tedious detail about an hour into the game.

Aside from sucking blood, the game has a rather interesting combat engine. Unlike the first Blood Omen, Blood Omen 2 is done in full 3D as an action game where the camera follows Kain wherever he goes and focuses on a particular enemy when you use the game's lock on feature. Once Kain springs into action he can perform a number of different attacks. One particularly interesting operation is when you grab enemies by the neck, similar to when Raziel picks up enemies off the ground and hoists them up above his head to be thrown into fire or water. Kain can literally perform dozens of different moves depending on what weapon he is currently wielding and this one particular action is actually quite fun since there are so many enemies and so many ways in which to dispatch them.

Despite how fun it is to vanquish enemies, the game never really presents any challenge making each kill much more, forgive the pun, hollow than the last. Enemies attack the player one at a time, making them easy prey for Kain's huge array of maneuvers. You can literally pick up an enemy, skewer them, and then toss them over your shoulder before the next enemy even thinks twice about facing you. Little moments like these, of which there are plenty, just become too boring too quickly. It's sad since the previous Legacy of Kain games pulled off these features with far more finesse.

Also similar to Soul Reaver, Blood Omen 2 has a few boss battles thrown in where you'll fight other vampires to the death. Each enemy generally has a weakness that can be exploited and once discovered the bosses become pushovers with little to no originality whatsoever. Also mimicking the presentation of Soul Reaver is Kain's ability to gain new abilities by slaying these enemies. Some of the more unique abilities you can acquire include a form of mind control, the ability to leap huge distances into the air, telekinetic powers which include the manipulation of switches throughout the levels and the ability to transform into an undetectable mist. The abilities are fun to use, but many of them are not practical aside from one or two obvious instances in the game.

Another problem with Blood Omen 2 is that the puzzles are structured like those in Tomb Raider instead of the previous and incredible puzzles in Soul Reaver 2. Levers, switches and wheels appear more often then anything else in the game and even then, it's painfully obvious that's what you're looking for. If you're going to ground a game in action and are forced to add puzzles to prolong the experience, then you should look into creating puzzles that actually make sense rather then a lever on top of some forsaken platform that no human could ever reach.

The graphics in Blood Omen 2, particularly with the GameCube version, are quite exceptional. Kain is ruthless when he slays enemies amidst a shower of blood that he happily sops up. The texture work is very good with some great detail on walls and buildings. The framerate is also excellent and operates without a hitch, no matter how big the level is or how many enemies are on screen. It dwarfs the Playstation 2 version graphically but the game comes up ever so slightly short when compared to the Xbox's visuals. Despite these great points, this is not where the game truly shines.

In fact, the greatest aspect of Blood Omen 2 is the audio. Simon Temple gives yet another stunning performance as Kain with the same grit and pleasure that you would expect to come from this truly evil vampire. The rest of the cast isn't nearly as good, but that doesn't mean they're bad either. It's just that Simon is obviously far more skilled at this then the other actors, probably since this is his 3rd game in the Legacy of Kain series. It's always good to have returning voice actors for games since it lends a bit of continuity to an otherwise jumbled up time line of releases.

The music is probably where the game falters the most since, unlike the Soul Reaver games; there just isn't enough of it. Boss battles are deceptively quiet and non-provoking while level music itself is terribly limited. However, given the game's exceptional voice work, it's not missed all that much since it might detract from the acting, seeing as how the soundtrack is bland and not really worth listening to with a stereo television.