Legacy of Kain - Reception

Reception

By 2007, the Legacy of Kain series had collectively sold over 3.5 million copies, but its commercial success has varied with each game. Blood Omen surpassed Crystal Dynamics' expectations, shipping over 700,000 copies for the PlayStation, whereas Soul Reaver sold over 1.5 million copies, and was included on Sony's "Greatest Hits" list. Soul Reaver 2 and Blood Omen 2 also performed well, selling in excess of 500,000 copies each and becoming Greatest Hits titles. Defiance sold between 500,000 and 1 million units, but failed to live up to Eidos's sales targets.

Legacy of Kain has been cited as one of the most popular video game intellectual properties associated with vampires. IGN's Douglass C. Perry regarded the series as "a strangely attractive, yet equally obscure one that torn between loving and hating it". GameSpot's Greg Kasavin was critical of Blood Omen 2, but praised the Soul Reaver games as "great" for their "innovation and surprising drama", voice acting and technical feats. Matt Clemens of Computer and Video Games noted that the series had engaging narrative, impressive cinematic sequences and fluid combat", calling Soul Reaver an "absolute classic". The Houston Press described Legacy of Kain's voice cast as "the greatest unrecognized brilliance in video game acting", and compared the dialogue of the series to plays by William Shakespeare. Mikel Reparaz of GamesRadar said that "known for nuanced storytelling, unconventional protagonists, amazing boss fights and rich Shakespearean baritones, the series raised the bar for writing and acting in games". GameSpy's Chuck Osborn complimented the games' storyline as "deep", but described their mythology as convoluted.

Individually, each title has generally been received well by critics. GameRankings, a video game review aggregator website, determined that Blood Omen received an average review score of 83.25% on its PlayStation debut, that Soul Reaver achieved 88.16% on the PlayStation, that Soul Reaver 2 was ranked at 80.90% on the PlayStation 2, and that Blood Omen 2 and Defiance scored 73.33% and 77.72% on the Xbox respectively. Metacritic, which similarly aggregates reviews, calculated that Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance received generally favorable reviews on multiple platforms, that Blood Omen 2 ranged from mixed or average to favorable scores, and that Soul Reaver achieved universal acclaim. Later games in the series were criticized for repetitive gameplay elements and unsatisfying conclusions, and review scores of subsequent titles trend downward.