REVIEW – It’s still weird – in a good way – to watch a late-’90s/early-2000s franchise suddenly wake up two decades later. After the two Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver remasters, Crystal Dynamics has now dragged the 2003 entry back into the light, with Legacy of Kain: Ascendance also in the mix. The problem is that this remaster can’t really fix what time already exposed: the original game’s rough edges are still doing most of the talking.

A lot of games carried some kind of baggage back then, and this one wasn’t an exception – which is largely why the score ends up where it does.

Return to Nosgoth

You’ve got Kain, an impressively self-absorbed vampire, and Raziel, his betrayed lieutenant who now qualifies as undead in every sense that matters. LoK:D continues the story threads of the earlier games, so knowing the series is strongly recommended – otherwise you’ll be staring at dramatic monologues and missing half the meaning. Kain tries to keep Nosgoth – a stylishly miserable gothic world – under control, then realizes he and Raziel (who’s digging into the tentacled horror known as the Elder God) are bound together by something supernatural.

There’s no clean “good” or “evil” here, and even franchise veterans won’t get answers to everything. The story is still solid, aside from the fact that it’s deliberately left open for a sequel. It’s also a pretty cheeky move to cram a demo of the canceled follow-up (Dark Prophecy) into the Deluxe version, since that was supposedly meant to close the book – and asking extra money for a “closure” slice that lasts about 15 minutes is… not great.

There’s another bonus that actually has more meat on it: the preserved Lost Levels, cut content that didn’t make it into LoK:D but survived. They’re not fully polished, but they’re still genuinely cool to see. What’s less cool is how loudly the remaster reminds you that this is a 22-23-year-old game.

The fixed camera angles are now optional, so you can handle the camera yourself – but it still gets (to put it mildly) ugly. We looked it up: our editor-in-chief complained about “frequently awful, unusable camera views” back in January 2004, and that criticism hasn’t magically expired. Some platforming also feels imprecise: there are climbs you should be able to make, but the game disagrees, and the end result is your character falling into the void more than once.

Kain and Raziel fight differently, at least on paper. Raziel favors speed and quick strikes, while Kain leans into brute force (and pays for it with slower movement). Combat can get repetitive, but telekinesis lets you toss enemies around, and that still has a fun, mean little kick to it. The controls, though, are clunky, and after a while the constant stop-and-fight rhythm starts wearing thin. Having to slam the brakes every fifteen steps because monsters or vampire hunters popped up again isn’t exactly a modern idea.

The Ravages of Time

The “Kain and Raziel in the same game” concept is still a great hook. The issue is how much the game stretches itself with combat padding. At least it looks better than it did at the end of 2003: the visuals are improved, and the UI overhaul is a genuinely smart upgrade. There are also new unlockable skins aimed at giving the remaster a more modern feel.

If you want, you can still stick to the original camera setup and even swap back to the original look. That’s a win for everyone: purists get their nostalgia, and players who want something cleaner can chase the upgraded presentation. But it also raises the awkward question of what, exactly, you’re rating here. The remaster work itself isn’t bad – yet the base game simply doesn’t hold up the way it once did. If you scored the remaster craftsmanship alone, you’d land somewhere else than if you scored the underlying game. Honestly, averaging the two is probably the fairest way to describe the end result.

Only for Franchise Fans

Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered at least makes Kain and Raziel’s chapter available on modern platforms. The visual refresh is decent, Dark Prophecy is an interesting idea, Nosgoth still nails its gothic mood, and the narrative has real depth – but story alone can’t carry everything. Combat tires out quickly, camera handling remains awful at best, and overall control feel is middling.

The base game today feels like a 6/10. The remaster plus extras lands closer to a 7.5/10. Put together, that averages out to a strong 6.5/10: not bad, but the Dark Prophecy slice ends far too fast, while the extra levels do bump the value up a bit. If Legacy of Kain isn’t already your thing, this isn’t the entry that will convert you. If it is, it’s an easy recommendation. This remaster is polarizing like that – you’ll either love it, or you’ll shrug and move on.

-V-

Developer: Crystal Dynamics, PlayEveryWhere
Publisher: Crystal Dynamics
Release date: March 3, 2026
Genre: Action-adventure