Despite its pretty art, Blood Code is a mess of a stat-raiser VN held down by its confusing story and tedious game mechanics. The initial hook of the plot - the main character has to solve her father’s murder - is quickly lost in a bland presentation of character concepts and world building ideas that are never fleshed out. Curious about the vampires? They’re barely discussed outside of the opening screen. Some people are just vampires and some people hate them Because of Reasons. The vampire part of the story is as deep as a wading pool. Interested in the magic academy and the role that magic plays in society and the wider world? Don’t be, because it’s only used as an excuse for the stat-raiser part of the game to exist and to occasionally cast some magic spells with the male cast. It’s not explored outside of that. The story frequently feels like someone threw all the tropes from popular otome games into a blender, hit the puree button, and forgot to check the resulting flavor for taste. As a result, the characters feel flat, the anachronisms in the fantasy setting stand out all the more (“Let’s design a lantern after the Statue of Liberty” - ???), and the twist villain is the kind you can see coming a mile off. While the art is nice to look at, there’s little of actual substance going on with the plot.

Apparently all of the above used to be worse because of a bad translation, but in its current form I think it’s serviceable if a little flat. Other bits were unintentionally funny, like a character name making the main character sound like she was frustrated all the time (ex: “Christ, I’m fine”). There’s also problems that I can’t really blame the translation for, like when general route dialogue contradicts the story of the route you’re playing. Who is that mysterious silver haired vampire you keep seeing glimpses of? It couldn’t possibly be the guy you’ve been talking to for months already, that would mean the devs never considered how this would come across when you already know the secret! The only actual problem I have with the translation is when it vanishes - I stumbled across two in-game letters - one in a route and one during the finale - that weren’t translated at all. I guess I’ll never know what secrets the main character’s dad was hiding because I can’t read Chinese.

But despite all the story issues, it’s the gameplay portion where everything falls apart. There’s a fine line dev teams have to walk with stat raiser games to not make the scheduling part tedious (see: the Princess Maker series, Long Live the Queen, etc.), and unfortunately Blood Code is an example of this gone wrong. There’s is nothing in the scheduling section to break up the monotony or make things more engaging - it’s just a series of clicking buttons to eventually make pretty pictures appear on your screen. This gets very old very fast, and grated on me even more when the game crashed three separate times without warning, adding to the tedium because I had to redo weeks of schedules. It can also actively contradict what’s going on in the game story as well. During one of the routes I played, the main character’s love interest made a big deal about how he wouldn’t allow her to see him anymore. Then the schedule menu for the week opened up, and I was immediately able to make them meet up to give him a gift. It’s the little things that break any immersion this story might have had.

I’ve played two routes in this game, the non-romance route and the secret route that unlocks after beating the game once, and at this point I have no desire to go back and redo the tedium to see the other character stories. While the translation may have improved, Blood Code still lacks a solid story and compelling gameplay. Others in its genre have done better, which is shame, because there’s the start of a good game here. It needed a bit more time and care to really lean in to the genre it clearly wants to be part of. But as things currently stand, you’re probably better off playing a different stat-raiser than this one.