Product Description
In Blood Omen 2 you are the vampire Kain, the most evil figure ever to appear in a video game. You will move through crowds cloaked in stealth and unseen, travel stories above the peasant herds on which you feed, leaping from roof-top to roof-top, and use mind-control to overcome vampire-proof inventions.
The combat choreography unfolds with dance-like precision as Kain engages armies of demons and humans alike. The comprehensive menu of unstoppable attacks, nimble combos and special moves are designed to appeal to even the most jaded of fighting game fans.
The world that Kain moves through is a lushly detailed gothic environment that is not only gorgeous to the eye, but also alive with the soon-to-be dead. The AI behavioural response makes peasants and enemies variously flee, take up arms or remain unaware as Kain moves through crowds or charges, sword raised, into open areas.
Review
In Blood Omen 2 you play the bad guy, but the vampires in the Legacy of Kain series are more likely to talk you to death than get around to chewing on your jugular.
Blood Omen 2 is a sequel to the okay-ish original, whose greatest claim is that it spawned two much higher quality spin-offs, in the form of Soul Reaver 1 and 2. The original Blood Omen was a top-down, 2-D, with vaguely Zelda-esque RPG action that sold pretty much on the fact that you were the baddie and could run around drinking innocent people's vital fluids. This new game has the same concept, but because everything's in 3-D it comes across as nothing more than a poor man's Soul Reaver 2.
Despite the fact that there's just as much combat in this game as Soul Reaver you're saddled with a very sluggish control system, and the puzzles have been made much less interesting--90 per cent of them involve pulling switches. The game is also incredibly linear and the graphics, although quite detailed in places, suffer from bad slowdown.
In short, if you're a fan of the Legacy of Kain series buy Soul Reaver 2 on PS2 instead. If you can take or leave all the vampire nonsense then Star Fox Adventures is a much better entry in the hall of 3-D adventuring fame. --David Jenkins
This review refers to the PlayStation 2 version.
