Code Vein is an okay game, I really feel like the hate it gets is undeserved and especially the criticism towards the devs being assholes or things in that line of thought. Please at least refrain from insulting developers for no reason.


Soulslike combat with some tweaks:

Combat is pretty much the Souls system: but with one weapon: you get your light and strong attack, dodge, block and parry. It is not as good because of the weapon feedbacks and messy hitboxes but it’s overall decent.

On another hand, the game adds a nice skill system allowing you to equip up to eight skills at once, ranging from melee attacks to spells or buffs. This is where the combat shines as it adds a lot of variety and compensates for the weaker Souls imitation that the core combat is. With the addition of skills, the combat becomes really fun and different from Souls games. It also allows you to switch builds on the go, freely going from a caster to a melee build or anything you’d like to.

However, the code system is also pretty restraining. The main way of unlocking skills for free use is to equip a code, equip the skills you want to unlock and go kill enough monsters (usually around the length of an entire map segment). This essentially means that the game encourages you to constantly switch builds and makes it difficult to sustain a playstyle, let alone make an optimal build (which is a problem in NG+, when you start getting wrecked). I think this problem would be solved by having fewer codes. A lot of them are pretty similar and it turns into an oversaturation of choices for similar results. Likewise, there are many duplicates of skills. In both cases, one is always better than the rest.

The heavy focus on the companion system ultimately leads to a lack of balance. There are a lot of gank fights similar to Dark Souls 2 and the game relies on the NPC partner to compensate for the jankiness of many aspects of the game. The companions are rather interesting and I like them personally, even though I would totally solo a Souls game instead. However, they really trivialise many sections of the game because of how strong they are and sometimes you wish you could only call them when you actually want to. On another hand, you may also be thinking that the combat isn’t so good that you would want to challenge yourself on it, anyway. Very few fights seem fun in solo, most enemies are extremely aggressive and the only downtime you get from them is when they switch aggro to your partner. Even basic enemies will not leave you a second of respite as they can surprisingly run to catch up to you and attack you before you get any chance to heal.

The game also suffers from its overall choice of enemy patterns and hitboxes. The hitboxes are pretty bad at times, oftentimes you just don’t hit for no reason and it can be very frustrating especially with some weapons that require precise hits like the stabbing lance. On another hand, the enemies are very likely to hit when they should not. For example, a thrust attack can often hit you if you’re close enough to the side or even behind the enemies. What’s also terrible about getting hit is that a lot of enemies in this game have either good tracking or wide swing attacks, this means that they are likely to reach you no matter your placement. It reduces the importance of positioning and forces you into always having to dodge, but this problem is also exacerbated by the fact that the game relies heavily on gank fights so you can only imagine the result of having to fight a lot of enemies at once when all of them have such extended reach.

Hardcore souslike level design with a tweak too (the map):

The level design is cool. Seriously, I really liked it. The environments are varied but the decorations themselves are relatively subpar. However, every level has a lot of branching areas and secrets to be found. I had an absolute blast looking for them. The game makes an extensive use of verticality and having you drop down or climb up ladders to access hidden areas. One of the most infamous areas of the game, a certain copy of Anor Londo, was especially fun in my experience.

A lack of cohesiveness is also the level design’s weakness, while early areas tend to branch out more, later areas are more linear but they’ll instead have more shortcuts and circle around back to the checkpoints. It’s unfortunate that this design element appears so late in the game and the early levels are full of checkpoints instead. There are many cases where the placement is quite questionable, especially when the checkpoint is before a straight line leading to a branch of more paths: why not put the checkpoint there instead so the paths all lead to it?

There is an intriguing map system. By default, the map only registers your footsteps until you reach a certain spot where you can “unlock” a part of the real map. This footstep system allows you to manually map the levels and is very helpful in remembering where you went. I thought the combination works really well. This is also why I think the confusing layout of levels works because with your footsteps being tracked, it’s very easy not to get lost. Also, the solution to most levels is ultimately pretty straight forward because most branches are dead ends, so honestly it’s not that difficult to find where you’re going. The only weakness is that the map doesn’t show every vertical layer, which can be troubling in some areas or if you want an overview.


Weak story and chara design, but some cool ideas:

One thing I’m not a fan of is the character design. While male characters are mostly cool, the female ones can really be summed up to “boobies” for a huge part and that was very disappointing. A lot of the monsters look cool, on another hand, but when you get close up you realise they are also often naked female monsters so yeah… I think other games from Bandai Namco like Scarlet Nexus had much better designs overall.

The story is okay, not amazing but not completely boring either. I rather liked it and I think the character interactions are pretty fun. There are one or two sections in the game where you get bombarded with cutscenes for twenty minutes or more and it gets kinda boring.

The game uses a unique storytelling method of having the player collect memories which will be told in a theatrical manner as you walk down a corridor. This feature was cool and there were a lot of interesting ideas, however I think there are way too many memories and it makes them more boring than anything at some point. The lore points that they add are cool and allow to deepen some character backgrounds. The most annoying part is really the way you have to walk through them at a slow speed, only a few of the memories take advantage of this to do something interesting (and those were really well done). For most of them, you just walk as you observe scenes in the background in the form of theatre plays, you might as well just have been standing still no?


Overall, Code Vein is a fun soulslike with some flaws, it’s very subjective whether you’ll enjoy it or not. I’d say the game is pretty similar to Dark Souls II if anything, so if you really enjoy DaS2 and anime isn’t a problem for you then you’ll probably like this game.