Legacy Of Kain: Defiance Remastered Review (PS5)
Summary: If you've the time and patience for a game that's almost two and a half decades old in remastered form, then you can do a lot worse than Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Defiance is a throwback to the simpler days of action adventure games that some may struggle to tolerate in this day and age, but if you grew up playing it and want to schedule a revisit all these years later, then go right ahead. If you demand more from your action adventures, you certainly won't find anything here that rivals the modern bigwigs of the genre, but ultimately you will still find this remaster to be worth several hours of your time.
3.5
Dimly Defiant
PlayEveryWare in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics presents to you the remaster of 2003’s Legacy of Kain: Defiance. This hack‑and‑slash adventure has been reincarnated for modern audiences and has been injected with enhancements to help preserve it and bring it up to the heady heights of modern standards, but will these refinements be enough to garner your attention, or is it merely stuck in the past?
The Legacy of Kain series contains a significant amount of lore to comb through for those who are intrigued by it, but Defiance is all about protagonists Kain and Raziel as they travel through time in an attempt to resolve disputes between vampires and entities known as the Hylden. What this means is you’ll be navigating through ruins and temples to cleave through nefarious enemies and solve environmental puzzles with a smidge of platforming thrown in.
What you’ll gain a true understanding of as you progress through Defiance is that the game sticks rigidly to its old‑school roots. Environments are linear and the path ahead is straightforward and commonly interspersed with needless brief cutscenes that break up the gameplay. There are story‑related cutscenes which help move things forward and they’re all well and good, but when the gameplay is interrupted momentarily for no good reason, Defiance really starts to show you how old it is.
Playing as Kain and Raziel throughout the story offers unique combat characteristics to both protagonists, though they are also similar as well. You’ll find many of their differences to be quite subtle, but still contrasting enough so you don’t feel like you’re playing two protagonists with the same skill set. Kain can drink his fallen victim’s blood which helps with replenishing his vitality. In addition, he can utilise telekinesis to manipulate his foes however he sees fit by keeping them aloft in the air to punish them with projectile attacks and dispose of them at will.
Raziel meanwhile can wield his aerial flurries, perfect for pummelling lone targets. Raziel can unleash a variety of powers with his Soul Reaver including freezing water and enemies, generating whirlwinds, cloaking himself with invisibility to maintain stealth, and blinding enemies with his light magic.
The trickery is more compelling with Raziel due to there being a greater array of abilities that are more contextually interesting, yet the raw empowerment Kain has at his disposal gives you the sense he’s a vampiric juggernaut who can eradicate his foes swiftly and painfully using his almighty arsenal.
The biggest distinguishing factor relating to gameplay between Kain and Raziel is that Kain is best when surrounded by multiple foes and overwhelms them confidently in this fashion, whereas Raziel is swift and agile, the character best suited to individual encounters. It’s also worth noting Kain fights human entities while Raziel tends to fight creatures and spirits.
One such ghostly spirit enemy Raziel encounters looks like the Pokémon Haunter as they tend to float in the air and then strike with their hands, but Raziel’s swifter movements make defence and attack smooth, flowing with the same agile grace Raziel harnesses within himself. On the flip side, Kain is usually clanging weaponry with generic guards who carry spears and who may attempt to strike him down at long range with bows. It’s generally more satisfying to play as Raziel due to his springier qualities, but exacting punishment with Kain is satisfying in a pre‑God of War sense.
The similarities are glaringly apparent as both Kain and Raziel generally engage in hack‑and‑slash combat, they can both clamber up walls, and they can both utilise the power of the elements to provide extra pep to their combat prowess using the special Soul Reaver weapon.
Kain and Raziel harness elemental augmentations in different ways. Kain sticks to the five principal elements to wield the Soul Reaver, while Raziel can equip up to seven elements. Kain is capable of using forges to upgrade his abilities and those enhancements do a great job at allowing you to feel a rise of strength and endurance, but Raziel’s repertoire is more fun to muck about with as there are more and they are merrier than Kain’s.
As for the sheen in this remaster, Crystal Dynamics have applied the care and attention to Legacy of Kain: Defiance in a similar manner to how they glossed up the Tomb Raider I–III and Tomb Raider IV–VI collections. The visuals and frame rates are crisp and do a really convincing job of bringing this 2003 game up to satisfy 2026 standards. You can toggle between the classic graphics and the new upscaled HD visuals too, so you can truly gain a sense of how far the games industry has come in 23 years. Oh, and what would a modern remaster be without a photo mode? Defiance has one, so there’s a novelty you can use to put together your secret Kain photoshoot.
Equally, the sound design is much crisper, giving the audio a great sense of sharpness, even though the weapon sounds are still extremely amateurish by today’s standards. Just listen to those hollow thunks from the swords Kain and Raziel use, they definitely wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny today, but it can be forgiven due to the clear ambition to retain the original Defiance experience as fans would want it.
On top of audio and visual touch‑ups, you can play the cancelled demo for Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy, and there’s a lore reader, which will undoubtedly help newcomers catch up with everything going on in the Nosgoth realm and with the Elder Gods, vampires and everything else. Maybe there should’ve been a video explaining all the lore instead of a reader, though unlike a video you actually need to pay attention when reading.
If you’ve got the time and patience for a game that’s almost two and a half decades old in remastered form, then you can do a lot worse than Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Defiance is a throwback to the simpler days of action‑adventure games that some may struggle to tolerate in this day and age, but if you grew up playing it and want to schedule a revisit all these years later, then go right ahead. If you demand more from your action adventures, you certainly won’t find anything here that rivals the modern bigwigs of the genre, but ultimately you will still find this remaster to be worth several hours of your time.
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