BO1 was an amazing game. The vastness of the world is humbling. There are just too many secrets to ever find them all. The sheer number of abilities and powers is daunting. I love the inclusion of old vampiric powers that you never see mentioned around vampires in pop culture today. The story, although not bad, was nowhere near as complex as the later games. While this game feels like the odd man out of the series, it is definitely still a work of art.

SR1 was very ahead of its time. 3D action adventure with no load screens, where every location had to be designed and rendered twice (once for spectral once for material). If you pick a spear up and leave it stuck in a wall, that spear will never leave that wall unless you take it out. That kind of material consistency was so impressive to me as a kid. The gameplay was outstanding. The fighting was nothing great, but every other aspect blew me away. Realm shifting was the coolest thing in the world to me as a kid; that and the mind blowing depth of extras such as the glyphs and the fire reaver. And OH MY GOD the script in this game still floors me to this day. None of the other games come anywhere near SR1 in terms of dialogue. Every line is delivered with so much power behind it. Even with a rather 2 dimensional story, this game shines (possibly brighter than all the others).

SR2 was a hot mess. This was the first game that Amy Hennig helped on, and masterful though she is, this game has its fair share of issues. The gameplay is, while more refined than SR1, somehow the worst in the franchise. It is repetetive, and somehow just doesnt feel anywhere near as fun as the other games. They still managed to make a large chunk of Nosgoth accessible without loading screens, but didnt have the warp gates of the previous games, so exploring is not really much of an option. Not that there is anything to explore in the first place. This game just felt too linear for the LoK name. And the expositional dialogue is PAINFUL. If I walk up to a painting of a blue angel, and the only thing you have to say is that there is a painting of a blue angel, then for fucks sake you dont need another cutscene to tell me that. If it depicts something from the story, then by all means, monologue away, but half of the cutscenes are explaining common sence observations. Having all that been said, this is still an amazing game. The visuals blow SR1 out of the water. The use of timetravel to change the same environment from swamp to ice tundra to pleasantly green was really cool. And this is the game that the story really begins to take on its real complexity. This is the game that introduces the greatest story ever told in a video game (in my opinion anyway). Now there are some issues with continuity that occur because the writers went in a totaly new direction, but they are forgivable.

Defiance was a good game to end things on. It took many of the flaws in SR2 and either fixed them or made them less noticeable. Once again the visuals were stunning. The fighting in this game is probably the best in the series. I wanted to keep fighting at the end of every ambush (especially when playing as kain). While nothing was done about the linearity, for some reason it really didnt bother me in this game as much as in SR2. I was a little dissapointed about the loadscreens, but they only happen when teleporting or changing characters. This games strongest quality though, above all else, is the story telling. They manage to take the bumpy writing of SR2, and polish it and develop it in ways that lead to my favorite game franchise of al time. This game makes the series. Without this story, I do not think I would hold the series in such high regards. I just wish they could have ended on less of a 'to be continued' vibe. And you are right aobut Kain outshining Raziel, but I dont see that as a bad thing. Honestly Kain was my favorite part of the previous games as well. As he rightly should be, his name is on the franchise after all.

Now we didnt mention BO2, and many of my fellow diehard fans would like to forget about the game entirely. I think that is a bit harsh because honestly this game is fun. The story is entirely forgetable and doesnt really have any effect on the other games at all, but the gameplay is COOL. The powers you get and the combat system all make this game worth playing. You can find ridiculously long blogposts out there detailing all the ways that BO2 is bad, but I wouldnt listen to them. It's all pretentious LoK elitism ("if you like this then youre not a real fan blahblahblah"). The game is fun and thats what matters.