The Let's Play Archive

Legacy of Kain: Defiance

by Alexeythegreat

Thanks! We like it too.Why not check out some similar LPs from our recommendations?
What would you like to tag this LP as?
Tag

Original Thread: The Final Turn of the Wheel. Let's Play Legacy of Kain: Defiance

 

Introduction



Thread title courtesy of Rigged Death Trap.
Alternative titles:
1) What in the hell... Let's Play Legacy of Kain: Defiance (SorataYuy)
2) I AM THE ORIGIN OF LIFE (Legacy of Kain: Defiance) (Me)
3) Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Where Impaling People is Fun (Me)
4) Legacy of Kain: Defiance (me)


It's time.


Other LoK LPs:

Blood Omen: playlist/thread/archive (note: low quality compared to the other three, I had no clue what I was doing for the first 2/3 of the LP)
Soul Reaver: playlist/thread/archive
Soul Reaver 2: playlist/thread/archive
Blood Omen 2: playlist/thread/archive

Legacy of Kain: Defiance is the fifth and the last Legacy of Kain. We are Kain and we are Raziel.
1) Raziel is looking for a way to not get trapped inside the Reaver and to escape from THE ORIGIN OF LIFE THE HUB OF THE WHEEL THE DEVOURER OF DEATH;
2) Kain is looking for a way for Raziel to not get trapped inside the Reaver and to prevent Blood Omen 2 from happening;
3) Moebius and THE ORIGIN OF LIFE THE HUB OF THE WHEEL THE DEVOURER OF DEATH are performing an evil, as usual.
4) New combat;
5) Linear progression;
6) Amy Hennig fixed most of the trash that BO2 unleashed upon us. Not all of it, but most of it.

Spoilers
Use tags.

The LP
It's a 100% LP where I collect everything there is to collect, sometimes against my better judgment.

Videos


























Alexey's note: beware the spoilers!

KieranWalker posted:

Ah, Defiance. Definitely the best game in the series, all around. They really managed to work out most of the flaws this time around; combat can still get fairly tedious, but you've got more variety and some nifty abilities to make up for it (impaling dudes on wall-mounted hooks or throwing them over cliffs is always entertaining). The more hacky-slashy combat may be hit or miss for some, but I find it more engaging than SR/SR2's if only because it's faster and more active. The camera angles do suck, but they're not horrible. I tend to find them mostly inoffensive. I have played around with a mod in the Steam version to give free camera control, but it has the unfortunate side effect of breaking cutscenes. In a game with as many cutscenes as Defiance has, it's basically unusable.

Controller support is finicky in the PC version. I think I went into this in the SR2 thread, but none of the PC versions recognize analog triggers (L/R2 and L/RT on a PS3/4 and 360/dogbox controller, respectively). The workaround I found for that is to map what you want on those buttons in-game to a keyboard input, then use a program like JoyToKey to map the keyboard inputs to your L/R triggers. It works surprisingly well. To use a PS4 controller, I think you'd need an XInput wrapper like X360ce, or to have specific DS4 controller drivers--there is a good set out there, but I don't presently have it installed and I'm not sure the name of it.

On the subject of the game, I find it interesting how differently Moebius comes across in this one compared to SR/SR2. Granted, you only see him through Raziel's eyes in those games, and this time when you meet him you're playing as Kain. I imagine he drops the smarmy nice guy pretense entirely when dealing with Kain because A) why bother at this point, and B) Kain sees through it and responds better to relative honesty. But beyond that, he's less... antagonistic than you'd expect this time around, and it's really quite difficult to tell whether he's working against you or not.

I also love that most of Kain's animations, voice clips, and what have you are directly calling back to Blood Omen. I started playing Defiance right after watching the BO LP and began to really pick up on that for the first time. The development team really didn't forget ANYTHING from the first game, and I find it endearing.

And they don't just do it for Blood Omen either; how many times did you go through that central courtyard in the Sarafan Stronghold in SR2? It looks a bit different due to fancier graphics in Defiance, but here we are again, now visiting it as Kain rather than Raziel. So good.

anilEhilated posted:

To mend my reputation (yeah, right) with the thread, I mentioned an LoK-themed power metal song in the last thread. Well, I found it. It's, uh, enthusiastic.
Uploaded it to tindeck because I can't find any mentions of the band still being around.

inscrutable horse posted:

I felt... inspired by that fight against those three statues.



No, I'm not proud.

anilEhilated posted:

I think it's safe to post this, just beware of spoilers in related videos: Turel's VA really gets into the role and it's great. First time I saw this and he did the "I must have BLOOD! YOURS!" bit, I veritably jumped in the chair.

e: You can definitely TK the gongs, that's how I beat him and I never had a controller.

Vicissitude posted:

And there we have it. The ONE time in the whole game that Kain smiles out of sheer joy, even if it's tinged with a bit of malice. All the times before now have been mostly malice or intimidation. This time, he's just happy

EDIT: I can only imagine Raziel would have the same satisfied smile in the spectral realm, were he capable of smiling at all

Zain posted:

nobody could see the squid. The corruption is basically twisting people. Kain wasn't really a good human to begin with, but was supposed to be. All the pillar guardians were supposed to be more or less good people that stood up for what their pillar represented.


Positive side I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWM_Vqh8qAg

Raygereio posted:

Here's a neat detail that I can't believe I never noticed this before: Check out the Scion of Balance's pose in his mural and compare it to Kain's symbol.

Archive Index