Quite fun, certainly better than BO2 but the story and gameplay leave something to be desired.
I hark back to the original Blood Omen because it is still the best in the series, the gameplay was great, it was more of an RPG than a adventure which is what the other blood omen games have become, the story line had its twists and turns BUT remain intelligible. You could understand it without difficulty, however the story line has progressed in such a fashion, throwing many characters, time travelling that it is convoluted, and it has plot holes some of which are not explained in Defiance either.
The gameplay is good, a few new things have been added for example you can learn new moves to use in battle which have some rather bloody consequences. The game is mainly action, killing humans, monsters and the like with the occasional boss battle thrown in, saying this tehre are also alot of puzzle elements which can be quite fun but this element is let down severely by silly platformer parts, even at the end with Raziel you get the pointless earth reaver ability and have to summon platforms to quickly jump across, utterly pointless, were in the 21st century here no need for such platformer gameplay.
Also another negative which does bear mentioning is the camera, its atrocious, it'll spin too quickly one way, cut of everything that you need to see in a fight and so on, very distracting, very annoying.
The sound is the games strongest point, voice overs are impeccably done and the music is good throughout fitting the scene perfectly, still not quite as memorable as the first Blood Omen legacy of Kain game but still vastly superior to most other titles.
Graphically, the game is great, no doubt about it, still holds up quite well today in 2006!, characters look good, well modelled and animated, it also worth mentioning that the envrionments are even better and quite well varied too.
I would love to say Defiance was worthy of a 35 pound purchase on its original release, but it wasnt, it is worth buying if your a fan of the series or at a budget price (which it probably is by now).
I do hope another LOK game gets made focusing on Kain which at least explains a few more things in the story.