Here’s Jay, a lifelong LoK fan presenting Gameffine’s Legacy of Kain: Ascendance Review.
Carrying the weight of a fandom is never easy. Nor is it easy to be a fan of a long-dormant IP. Fandoms can get very touchy when it comes to the canon of their favorite IPs, even more than their owners. Sometimes, the fans are in the right, and sometimes they tend to go overboard. Last year’s graphic novel Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver – The Dead Shall Rise was an example of the former. An extended media with terrible writing and inconsistent art, it sought to add a new canon timeline to the revered canon of Legacy of Kain, as well as shoehorning a bland new third hero, only to be met with overwhelmingly negative reception from those who read it.
For the same reason, Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, the next project from the publishers of this graphic novel, drew the ire of the LoK fandom. It’s true that a 2D action-platformer is not where I wanted LoK to go next, but even I thought the backlash was a bit too much for something that’s not even out yet. Then I played Legacy of Kain: Ascendance to completion. It’s not often I get to say that a game ruined a day for me. Congratulations, Ascendance; you managed to do it.
Pocket Sand
To be disappointed in a game without even having any expectations in the first place is a rare feat. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is unworthy of the Legacy of Kain branding because the devs took a highly respected IP with strong potential even in the current market and churned out a basic, low-effort platformer that does none of the things advertised on its store page in a competent manner. Ascendance’s Steam page, for example, markets it as an action platformer “built around vertical movement, fluid combat, and skill-driven play.” After completing the game, I can say for certain that none of these things are fully true. The vertical movement is limited to a handful of levels, the combat is stiff and basic, and it’s perhaps the least challenging platformer I’ve played in a long time. The only skill it demands is your ability to button-mash the A/X button to keep the characters airborne by flapping their wings.
It’s ironic that The Dead Shall Rise, too, was accused of deceptive marketing practices. The graphic novel was crowdfunded by selling it as a Raziel prequel story, only to be hijacked by a new sister character who was just mentioned once passingly in the marketing blurb. Lady Elaleth was unlikeable and annoying and had suddenly become the most important character in the canon, acting as the catalyst for everything that’s happened after Blood Omen. It managed to make an already complex canon even more complicated by introducing new timelines and several poorly explained revelations.
It was evident that Elaleth would take center stage in Legacy of Kain: Acendance. But due to a total lack of information surrounding the story in pre-release marketing materials, we were left guessing. I believed that since the comic ended on a cliffhanger, the game would obviously pick up from there and try to make sense of some of these lore changes. I don’t think even the game’s strongest detractor would have guessed that Ascendance is a straight-up adaptation of The Dead Shall Rise. Yes, you read that right. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is 100% a direct adaptation of the graphic novel with the awful story and writing. Who thought this was a good idea?
Who Approved This?
The story is the most problematic element of Ascendance. The only difference it has from the graphic novel is that they changed the order of some of the events. For example, the game picks up with Elaleth on the hunt for her Raziel before he turned into a vampire, whereas in the graphic novel, this scenario was explained as a flashback towards the end. The game even uses the same dialogue from the comic, with some scenes being expanded slightly while some get the opposite treatment. Similar to the comic, the perspective shifts between Elaleth, pre-vampire Raziel, vampire Raziel, and Kain as it tries its best to convince you with the changes to the canon as well as trying to establish Elaleth as an important player in the series moving forward. It didn’t work in the graphic novel and doesn’t work here.
Unless you’re familiar with the comic, the story of the game becomes hard to follow, and Ascendance depends on a massive late-game exposition dump to spoon-feed everything to the player. I was only able to understand what was going on in the game’s intro because I had the misfortune of reading The Dead Shall Rise first. At the same time, if you’ve already read the comic, there’s zero reason to play the game because it offers nothing interesting when it comes to the gameplay.
Falling Down
The best compliment I can give Ascendance is that the gameplay is just “ok.” Action-platformers have come a long way since the NES days, but someone didn’t give Bit Bot the memo. What’s even more puzzling is that the game is co-developed by Freakzone Games, who made the excellent AVGN games. The end result is a rudimentary platformer that pales even in comparison to games made over 30 years ago. It certainly works but is a far cry from what it’s advertised to be and what the LoK legacy deserves.
Strictly following the comics, the game, too, is divided into 12 chapters, each containing 1-4 short levels. These levels are highly linear, offering only the occasional corner or hidden area that conceals lore notes or resources. As the story progresses, control shifts back and forth between Elaleth, Raziel, and Kain. Aside from the fact that Elaleth and Vampire Raziel have wings and Kain can teleport to designated markers, each character is identical to the other.
Contrary to what the Steam page says, the combat in the game is as basic as it gets. Castlevania III, which was released nearly 40 years ago, has more gameplay variety than Ascendance. The combat is limited to just a basic sword strike, and most enemies go down in 1-2 hits, opening up the opportunity to feed on them (since vampires constantly lose health). There is little to no enemy variety, with the same basic foes encountered in the final level as in the opening one. There is no sense of character progression, nor do you feel like you’re getting any better at the game. There is nothing to get better at, since there is no sense of challenge, at least on the hard difficulty. Literally every single enemy in the game can be cheesed by doing the same move over and over again.
The same goes for the boss fights as well. Ascendance features some of the most poorly designed boss fights I’ve seen in a while. You can stand still and keep parrying or do your jump attack move repeatedly to bring them down with no issue. The only thing that separates it from an NES-era platformer is the option to perform parries and dodges, which I admit are snappy, but there wasn’t any scenario where I felt compelled to do little more than stand and keep hitting the X button.
For some added variety, there is a section in the game where you get to ride a horse. Unfortunately, it’s not as exciting as it sounds. It’s literally Raziel riding a horse and jumping over some obstacles like Circus Charlie. What have you been reduced to, dear Raziel? There’s also another section that’s just Ariel asking you the names of the different pillars. There are also levels where all you do is walk from one end of the map to another. Remember that the game is 5 hours long…
Nostalgia Banking
One aspect the developers emphasized in pre-release marketing was the return of original voice actors Michael Bell, Simon Templeman, Richard Doyle, and Anna Gunn, lending their voices. Yeah, that is cool. It’s a shame that these great voices are given such poor material to work with. It’s also worth noting that the voices do not sound the same, especially Michael Bell as Raziel. It’s been more than 25 years since they last played these characters, and that is to be expected. Still, it was nice to hear the old cast again, and they genuinely sound excited at the prospect. Ascendance also features an original score by the rock band Celldweller, and they did their part just fine. The pixel art graphics can look quite good at times too, especially the vibrant lighting and pseudo-reflections. Sadly, most of the levels are just unremarkable.
There are a couple of weird design choices I do not understand. There are two sections where the game completely shifts into 3D rendering for no real purpose. The latter sections of the game feature fully animated cutscenes that are actually pretty sick. However, there are like only two of them. The rest of the game only features pop-out stills with voice acting. If you are dead set on replaying the game for some reason, note that the cutscenes and dialogues are unskippable for some reason.
Real Talk
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is the worst thing to happen to the IP since Square Enix. A project that’s half a rudimentary platformer and half a painfully faithful adaptation of a terrible graphic novel was, of course, exactly what I was wishing for the IP in 2026.
FINAL SCORE: 45/100
Legacy of Kain: Ascendance Review—Nostalgia Deserves Better
In his Legacy of Kain: Ascendance review, Jay calls it a soulless, half-baked product seeming to capitalize on the legacy of the classic IP
Price: N/A
Price Currency: USD
Operating System: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
Application Category: Video Game
1
