A perfectly adequate game. Leans very heavily into retro-aesthetic Earthbound-style charm, and only mostly succeeds. Combat is inventive in premise, but becomes samey and tedious pretty quickly. Timing attacks and defense is extremely swingy, with failure punishing more than success rewards. The story of the main character's relationship with her sister is intriguing, but some of the other themes are a bit heavy-handed. I am marginally curious to see new areas and uncover the story, but the gameplay just isn't gripping enough to be worth it.

Code Vein is an adequate facsimile of Dark Souls, but lacks that game's storied charm. Enemy design is repetitive and level design ranges from mediocre to horrible (although the excellent map system helps mitigate that somewhat). While the overall plot and premise are interesting, the cutscenes are excruciating to the point that I lost interest in the plot. Side-quests are utterly meaningless with generic rewards. The veil/blood code system is interesting and allows for flexible class-building/switching. The combat is fast-paced and smooth, with well-designed encounters, but the difficulty is extremely uneven. Overall a game with a lot of promise that slowly wore down my enjoyment until I couldn't be bothered to keep playing.