legacy of kain blood: omen/soul reaver.

[boys from the dwarf]

do not read unless you have completed soul reaver two. there are some major spoilers.

i have a problem on which in the series to buy next. i own soul reaver one and two and have completed them both. at the end of soul reaver two where kain says something like "no! janos must stay dead." and raziel doesnt hear him that says to me that there probly will be a sequel. the two games i can get are legacy of kain: blood omen 2 and legacy of kain: defiance. id like to know where blood omen starts off (by that i mean what time period because i know a lot of the timeline from SR2. is blood omen 2 after kain kills the gaurdians of the pillars?) and also where does defiance pick up from? is it a seqel to SR two? is there a sequel to SR2 yet? if not it there one in production. overall i just want to know information about blood omen 2 and defiance. can someone help me?

[Slothy]

Avoid Blood Omen 2. I had bought it a few years back and on top of the story making no sense with regards to the series continuity, it was the glitchiest game I've ever played. About ten or fifteen hours in I couldn't even progress because a problem with the game kept me from loading my file. I promptly returned it and got a better game. Maybe the story would have made more sense if I had been able to complete the game, but since it seems to have no bearing on any of the events in Defiance, I doubt it's anything more than a throwaway story. Defiance would be the game you want. It continues the story directly from SR2, was a much more enjoyable experience than Blood Omen 2, and does a lot to answer some of the questions left unanswered after SR2.

[Dreddz]

BO2 serves little to the story, but it fun enough, some of the boss fights are cool. And the game does pick up later in the game. Defiance wasnt my cup of tea, story was passable but it wasnt what I wanted it to be, they seemed to focus on everything other than the story.

[boys from the dwarf]

thanks for the reviews but what i really want to know is what happens in the games (not spoilers. i just want to know where it picks up from.) is blood omen 2 after kain kills the gaurdians of the pillars and refuses to sacrifice himself? if not where does it pick up from. ive gathered from reviews and info about defiance that you play as kain and raziel in different time periods. is raziels directly after the ending of SR2 and where does the kain story pick up from? should i buy blood omen 2 first? im going to get them both sooner or later but id just like to know enough info to decide which first and things like that.

[Dreddz]

Technically you should play BO2 before the first Soul Reaver but after the original BO. Thats if you want to play them in time order. Thats impossible now but get BO2 before Defiance, definately.

[boys from the dwarf]

o.k. id mainly like to know where they pick up from though. thanks.

[Slothy]

Blood Omen 2 takes place before SR, but aftter BO (obviously). It does have to do with the beginnings of Kain's empire forming. Defiance takes place right after SR2. It picks up, literally, right after the final scene of the game, and does involve switching between Kain and Raziel who are in two different time periods. They're only in different time periods though because one of them (Raziel I think) gets transported back in time 500 years or something like that. There are no flashback sequences or anything like that.

And I stand by my opinion of skipping BO2. It really is one of the glitchiest games I've played and I thought the gameplay was mediocre at best. It's not a game that would have held up well over the last few years in that department either.

[Dreddz]

I thought BO2 was pretty good, I noticed no glitches, although the game is very sketchy if you know what I mean....

[mega_tonberry]

Blood omen takes place about..400 years or so after the original blood omen. It follows the alternate timeline created by Soul reaver 2's ending, in which Kain pulls the soul reaver out of Raziel before it can consume him. I would not advise you to play it untill you have completed Defiance, as parts of the story will make no since otherwise.

Defiance takes place in two timelines for the majority of the game. When you play as Kain, it takes place in the Sarafan crusades era and Raziel's takes place in the original blood omen era.

The games should be played in this order to have the story flow consistently:Blood omen-Soul reaver-Soul reaver 2-Defiance-Blood omen 2

You should only play Blood omen 2 if you are a hardcore fan and want to see how some (but far from all) of the story twist from Defiance get wrapped up.

[Slothy]

I thought BO2 was pretty good, I noticed no glitches, although the game is very sketchy if you know what I mean....

I just remember a lot of little things like some choppy framerates, as well as game freezes during some various points, not to mention that the game just completely crashed during a boss fight over halfway through the game, several times, and when I saved right before it to save some time wouldn't load the save file after that. Both my memory card and PS2 were fine, and I had gone through two copies of the game with all the same problems before giving up on it. When I took back the second copy, the folks at EB even mentioned that other people were having trouble with the game as well. If it had been just the odd game freeze, I might have stuck with it, but when I was probably most of the way through and lost all that progress I had no patience with it.

[Dreddz]

I can understand poor framerate but my game never freezed up, guess im just lucky :greenie:

[Reine]

Blood Omen 2 as far as ive gotten so far, is basically a Side Story, as nothing from it is mentioned in SR/SR2/LOKD

Defiance is the to get if you want to continue the story, yet for some strange reason, despite no new Kain games for a long time, the story still isnt finished (As far as im concerned)

[Markus. D]

I actuallyt havent played it yet.

I look forward to the day I do :]

[boys from the dwarf]

thank you. unfourunately the chance of me getting the original blood omen are low because of how old it is and im sure its for dreamcast or one of those consoles and im not willing to buy anything like that but i understand the basics of what happens because of SR2 bonus features and recaps. thanks. ill get defiance first like you guys said.