Review | Legacy of Kain: Ascendance

After its initial inception thirty years ago, Legacy of Kain has gone through many transformations (pun intended). It launched its first story in 1996 on PlayStation, and at the time there wasn’t really anything like it on the market. The game quickly went viral for its deep storytelling, great voice acting, and iconic character design. This inaugural action-adventure game established the dark fantasy world of Nosgoth and introduced the vampire protagonist Kain. Its gone through a series of changes over the years, with different teams handling different games, including the recent remasters that we even reviewed here at LiX. But none have been so drastic as the recently released Legacy of Kain: Ascendance. Developed by Bit Bot Media, and published by Crystal Dynamics, Ascendance shares a similar style to that of Castlevania, with its 2D-styled platforming and combat, and tells its story through a series of many different in game cutscenes. But after spending some time with this painfully short entry into the dark world of Legacy of Kain, I’m not sure if this one should have risen from its coffin, and instead stabbed through the heart with a wooden steak.

Things I liked!

• Fantastic Sprite Work | Leagacy of Kain: Ascendance has some very pretty, and very clean looking 2D sprites for its characters and enemies. Even the animations look smooth and deliberate, giving the characters a good sense of movement and responsiveness. I noticed that everything was easy to read on screen, which made gameplay feel more fluid and controlled. Even when the overall art direction felt inconsistent, this part stood out as being well executed. It showed that there was real care put into the core gameplay presentation.

• Music & Sound | First off, it’s great to see that the original cast have all returned to reprise their roles for voicing the characters. I found the voice acting to be one of the standout elements of the game, and it brings a sense of authenticity in the performances that made the characters feel familiar and grounded in the series’ legacy. I noticed that even when other aspects of the game didn’t quite land, the delivery of dialogue still carried emotional weight. The music also played a big part in this, reinforcing the tone and atmosphere in a way that felt fitting throughout. To me, this combination of strong voice work and a solid soundtrack helped hold the experience together.
  
  
• Multiple Characters | Legacy of Kain: Ascendance tells the story from three different perspectives, and you get to play as each one. I am glad they added the different perspectives to the game because not only has this been a series staple since the PlayStation 1 era, but it is genuinely fun to be able to use different abilities of the characters, and an interesting idea altogether. To me, it added a bit of variety and helped break up what might have otherwise felt too linear. I noticed that each perspective contributed something to the overall narrative, giving a broader view of what was going on. It made the world feel more interconnected, even if the execution wasn’t always perfect. This was one of the more engaging aspects of how the story was structured.
  
  
• Animated Cutscenes | I found the full motion anime-style cutscenes to be a real highlight and something I consistently looked forward to. Despite not using them a lot, and having many different styles, they added a level of visual flair and cinematic quality that the rest of the game sometimes lacked. I noticed that these sequences felt more refined and cohesive compared to the gameplay visuals. They did a great job of presenting key story moments in a more engaging and memorable way. These cutscenes were definitely the strongest presentation elements in the entire experience.

Mixed & disliked!

• Incoherent Art Styles | I found the visuals in Legacy of Kain: Ascendance to be all over the place, like the game couldn’t settle on a single identity. To me, jumping between different art styles made everything feel disjointed instead of immersive. I noticed that even the quality between scenes didn’t match, which made the experience feel uneven. I found it hard to stay engaged because the presentation kept breaking its own consistency. To me, it felt like separate ideas stitched together rather than one cohesive artistic vision. Despite loving the anime style cutscenes with full motion video and voice acting, for the most part, we got still 2D images with a voice over to tell the story.

• Painfully Short | Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is painfully short. I found the game ended far sooner than I expected, almost before it really got going. The Legacy of Kain series has always had a deep, interconnected story that twists narratives, builds on characters and their struggles, but to me, the experience felt more like a short episode than a complete game. I noticed that just as I started getting invested, it suddenly wrapped up. The pacing felt rushed, as if large portions of content were missing. Given the price of £15.99/$20, I find this to be incredibly poor value.
  
  
• No unlockable Abilities | The Legacy of Kain series has always had a strong base for character development. During the games, you could upgrade your character, gain new abilities, and have multiple ways to engage in combat. Ascendance is devoid of any sense of progression. I was doing the same things at the end that I was doing at the beginning. I noticed there were no meaningful upgrades or abilities to work toward, and t while there are some secrets to find, they do nothing apart from pad out the time you spend in each level, so I stopped looking. This made exploration feel pointless. There was no rewarding feeling of getting stronger or improving over time which has always been a staple of the series.
  
  
• Terrible Boss Fights | Legacy of Kain: Ascendance has five boss fights in total. Each boss encounter felt underwhelming with each of them having one set of attacks. This made beating them insanely easy even on the harder difficulty. Essentially, they pull off the move, then stand there wide open while you get your attack in. You can easily block all attacks as well by hammering the right shoulder button on your controller. They felt overly simple and didn’t leave me feeling like I had any real challenge in what was already an easy game.
  
  
• Minimal Enemy Types | By far the weakest point of Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is the lack of enemy variety. Throughout the main game you will be met with approximately nine enemy types. What makes things worse, is that each enemy type is just a re-skin of the previous enemies you fought in different levels. The flying enemies for example in chapters one to three emit a green glow, but later on they are swapped out for a yellow glow. It’s the same situation with the enemies from the Raziel stages. You have a knight, an archer, and a knife throwing monk. Everything gets reused and it becomes very repetitive quite quickly.
  
  
• Poor Level Design | I found the overall level design was also very rinse and repeat. It offered very little in the way of challenging design. Sure, some levels had traps and stuff to avoid, but most of the characters could fly over large areas and avoid them entirely. It feels like the placement of these traps and enemies was just lazily done. This goes hand in hand with my previous comments about the lack of any sort of challenge. There definitely wasn’t enough depth to keep things interesting when navigating through the world. Castlevania, which is the closest thing to its style that I can think of, had so much going on in the backgrounds with different scenery, props, items to smash and interact with, and Castlevania is almost as old as I am! Everything just felt bland.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 4 hours
How long to beat the story? 4 hours
How long to Complete the game 100%? 8 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 20/27
You’ll love this game if you like these | Castlevania,

CONCLUSION

Score: 35/100

What little fun Legacy of Kain: Ascendance does offer, is quickly replaced by the feeling of boredom. With a distinct lack of replayability, forgettable boss fights, and poor level design, fans of the series will indeed wonder what has happened to the series, and its usual pedigree of strong character development through storytelling. Sadly, what Ascendance does well, is overshadowed by its painfully short runtime, and mediocre enemy designs.

Aaron

Gaming is in my blood.  Be it handheld games, Xbox, PC, Switch or Playstation, I am all over it.
I make my own games as part of my profession and love playing co op games with friends in my spare time. Avid dog lover and camper van enthusiast.