Code Vein

[Asian tech support]

This is our new blacksmith.

I think that puts to rest any of the sneeding over Io having her budget cut.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

Code Vein two comes out in three weeks

Some more gameplay

 

[Jace on ice]

Why does every fucking game have a motorcycle now? Metroid Prime 4 also did this shit.

 

[long waters]

CV2 has been out for a few days. Let's see how it's going.

Oh... Mixed reviews, and mostly negative in China.


Here's a random review:

This is written as someone who is a fan of CV1 and a longtime fan of the God Eater franchise. Against my own better judgement and personal policy, I preordered the game and went both barrels on the ultimate edition. So like the other 9,000 people who played this game on Steam, I'm somewhat of a fan. Or was a fan, at least.

I would have refunded this game if not for the fact that it took me 11 hours to determine it wasn't any fun and that it wouldn't redeem itself further into the game.

I've now made it to Chapter 1 and have unlocked more gameplay options, but none of them are any good. The game isn't what was advertised, insofar as it is a downgrade from its predecessor in terms of combat, balance, world, design and story.

What's good about it? Well, the Character Creator is stellar and is probably a 9/10 in terms of the options it gives you. Lou is charming and the NPCs look cool...albeit some get into uncanny valley with the unusual design-choice they decided upon when it comes to how revenants look. The voice acting is good also.

As for the bad...well, that's just about everything else. The world has no music. The sound effects are weak, ranging from footsteps, enemy soundbarks and weapon strikes. This seems minor but you'll be hearing these *a lot*. The artstyle of the game is...I dunno. It's feels like an asset flip a lot of the time. The open world layout adds nothing and actually detracts from the game, and this is said as somebody who loves open worlds. There's no reward for going off the beaten path and most areas are gated until you progress the right story beat or quest, so all that the open world achieves is to make it take longer to reach where you need to go. There is rarely any hidden item or treasure for exploring nooks and crannies. In fact, I'd say I haven't found anything of the sort.

The character sheet and stats are bloated, and the endless tutorials for every page make it clear that they over-designed how character builds work.

Enemies hit hard. Real hard. And really, really fast. One hit will chunk your health by 30-50%, and being stunlocked or input-read is frequent. Parrying is in the game but it lacks intuitiveness, like you have to parry too early compared to when the animation actually occurs. Coming from MHWilds, where blocking and parrying feels perfect, in this game it feels punishing and you'll miss most of the time. Enemies are spongey, so follow-up attacks feel unrewarding and not worth the risk - especially on bosses. Bosses have the annoyances of regular NPCs dialled up by 10x.

What else...? Well, the rating is Teen and the game is indeed censored. Some people are straw-manning that complaint by saying that upset fans are just gooners etc. etc, but it's not about that. The problem with the censoring is that they have stripped the game of gore, blood, (some) sensuality and a lot of the maturity that gamers hope to see. People don't like being infantilised, and this is a vampire game so there should be lots of those things that have been removed but in CV2, there isn't much of any of it. There's no blood at all, and not even any themes related to being a vampire since everything is concealed on that front. Revenants don't seem to really need blood to survive, enemies bleed golden, and even then they don't bleed so much as they explode into wisps of golden dust.

Combat is less of a power fantasy and more of a powerless fantasy. Once you encounter the first boss and from that point forward, prepare to get your arse kicked frequently.

My refund request was denied so I'll stick with this a little longer since what else am I going to do with the $150~ AUD that I spent. If things improve later then I'll change my review, but at the moment this game is not a recommend, it's not very good, and it's certainly not good enough to justify the price tag or being a retconned follow-up to CV1.

And another one:

I really wanted to like this more than I do.

There’s a lot of effort here, and some genuinely good ideas, but it feels like the game loses sight of what made Code Vein work in the first place.

The good

The character creator is excellent. Easily one of the most detailed I’ve used. You can make something very intentional if you have the patience, and it’s arguably the strongest part of the game. The general style and aesthetic are also solid. When the art direction lands, it really lands.

Combat is fine. It’s more complicated than Code Vein 1 and, honestly, a bit worse. Still playable, still fun at times, but it feels overdesigned rather than improved. Endgame might redeem this, but early impressions aren’t great.

The bad

NPC design is all over the place. Some look completely normal, others are so badly proportioned they hit uncanny valley even by anime standards.

Performance is absolutely awful. I’m happy running games on low or medium, and this is still catastrophic. Crashes, instability, terrible frame rates. This is worse than Monster Hunter: Wilds at launch, which says a lot.

DLC cosmetics are frustrating. Items are hard-locked into specific colours with very limited palette options, so you end up having to design your character around something you paid for. Paying for cosmetics that reduce creative freedom feels bad.

Where is the multiplayer? No co-op bosses, no playing with friends. What makes this worse is that the game looks like it was planned at some point. The hub area has multiple character customisation stations, far more than a single-player game needs. Either multiplayer was cut late or this is just a strange design choice. From Code Vein 1, all we wanted was multiplayer more like god eater and less like darksouls crappy multiplayer design, and aparently from that all they got was we didn't want/deserve it.

The open world feels like a gimmick. It’s big but mostly empty and unused. It adds very little to the actual gameplay.

The Tron-style motorcycle they keep pushing is also disappointing. It feels soulless and underwhelming to drive, more like a marketing feature than something that adds to the experience.

Story

The new story is… fine. But completely throwing away ties to previous Code Vein titles feels forced and unnecessary. The community clearly wanted some continuity. Even a token effort would’ve been appreciated. It’s hard to tell whether this was indifference or laziness.

Overall

I strongly prefer Code Vein 1. It felt tighter, more coherent, and more confident in what it was.

Code Vein 2 feels like it spent too long trying to be Elden Ring and forgot to be Code Vein. If I wanted Elden Ring, I’d just play Elden Ring.

If you’re expecting “Code Vein 1 but open world”, this isn’t it.

There’s potential here, but it’s buried under performance issues, strange design decisions, and an identity crisis.

And another one:

Not Recommended (for now)

I bought Code Vein 2 for anime vampire action.
What I got instead is Framerate Anxiety + The Censorship Conspiracy DLC.

Performance:
I’m running RTX 5090 + Ryzen 7 9800X3D and some areas are barely holding 60 FPS for 4k.
My PC is basically a nuclear reactor and the game is like:
“Best I can do is almost smooth, sometimes.”

Censorship (this is the weird part):
Player outfits and character creator sliders are censored so hard it genuinely feels like the developers are being held at gunpoint.

Like there’s an invisible guy behind them going:
“Blur the outfit. Nerf the slider. Cover the pixels. DO IT NOW.”

And the devs are just quietly tapping YES SIR while sweating.

Meanwhile the NPCs look way less censored, which makes it even funnier, because now it feels like the devs are asking for help through the NPCs.

I swear some NPCs are basically blinking Morse code:

“IF YOU CAN READ THIS, SEND PATCHES. WE’RE NOT SAFE.”

So my playable character is dressed like it’s a school field trip, while NPCs are walking around like they installed a different game.

Subtitles / localization:
English subtitles are sometimes weird too — not unplayable.

The game has a fun core, but right now it needs performance fixes, subtitle cleanup, and remove the censorship rules it doesn't make any sense.

Okay what about a positive review?

Wait for a sale. I think at best it's as good as the first game, but for different reasons. The characters here are given a bit more depth than previously even if you are only getting the cliff notes version of their lives. The story itself feels closer to an Octopath Traveler vibe. You get multiple short stories that have tidbits of the main plot, but don't really interact outside of their own little time bubble. Downside is it also comes across a bit harem anime at times. Like I personally don't care about the censorship, but given one Main story Quest starts with a loli riding you in her bed made me feel strongly I wasn't the target audience. Helped me understand why so many got upset when the main story is peddling that ♥♥♥♥ like diamonds and pearls.

Where i'm most personally upset, and why I suggest to again wait for a sale, is the gameplay itself. It's super lack luster in just about every regard except visuals. Except I have to put an asterisk next to the visuals as the game has performance issues. I've got an I9, 5080, 32 gigs of ram and the game regardless of fiddling with settings and trying 1440p 144frames instead and nothing I could do could get this game to stay smooth. It does run smooth for periods, but it just a matter of time till you drop to 1/3rd of your frames.

Leveling is pretty much pointless. Little HP and 1 atk point it's a nothing burger along with not being able to invest in any stats or character traits to make you feel like it is YOUR char. They have blood codes, but they have their own obtuse leveling system where you just don't gain exp for most of the game. You have to fight enemies of a certain rank. How do you tell the rank? You don't no indicator just progress story till they appear. You won't be notified either so you need to manually check. So if you have a build you like too bad you gonna shuffle codes just so you not wasting exp. It also why the preorder sword is so OP. STR/DEX/MND meant just about every code can use it well and why would I learn a different move set in middle of a dungeon or when i'm just trying to progress the story so I can get exp again? Path of least resistance matters alot when there isn't much here to make me feel like I can express myself thru the gameplay. 5 weapon types and a bunch of anime moves with too long animations. A basic soulsborne longsword would trivalize this entire game.

The open world is mostly empty and not really worth exploring. I felt usually punished for exploring as you stop gaining exp quick, you will revist 75% of anything important during the story and the rest during side quests, Huge swathes of the map are blocked off by story progress. You feel punished for having fun. I can't explore naturally, I can't use a blood code/move set I like as it doesn't gain exp, I can't enjoy the majority of combat as enemy layouts don't get beyond i'm behind a corner and all the mobs and most of the bosses have the same 10 or so move sets. This is especially bad, you will keep fighting the same move sets over and over. Bosses about 50% of the whole game are just the fat mobs given a boss HP bar.

Respect your money and wait for a sale. This game does work and the side characters can be interesting, but there are just so many more better options. Story and gameplay The first Berserker:Khazan or even Stellar blade. Gameplay AI limit is also great. Not to mention any of the soulsborne games if you haven't already. So many games that were even cheaper than this at launch. So unless you've gone thru all those already like me it's worth the wait. If you here for that anime harem... well you know rule34 exists right? You have options.

Wait... what?!

Downside is it also comes across a bit harem anime at times. Like I personally don't care about the censorship, but given one Main story Quest starts with a loli riding you in her bed made me feel strongly I wasn't the target audience. Helped me understand why so many got upset when the main story is peddling that ♥♥♥♥ like diamonds and pearls.

From what I see, TL;DR is:
- The character creator is really good.
- Performance issues (lol).
- Empty open world.
- Grindy/boring combat.
- The motorcycle apparently sucks and isn't fun.
- Rated Teen instead of Mature and suffering from censorship. One reviewer says there's no blood?? but I see some blood in various videos on yt, maybe he's Chinese?
Not worth 70-100 bucks for sure. Meh.

Also this is a completely personal take from what I've watched on YT, but something about its aesthetics doesn't vibe with me. And I remember really loving how the first game looked, but dunno, it just looks ugly to me.

EDIT: A gooner v-tuber fella complaining about having shorts instead of panties for female characters and no bulge on male characters He makes a male character and at 5 minutes in complains about how bad the bare feet look

@9:05 Looking at the feet that was enough to know this is dogshit

 

[The Fair Lady]

I'm still in the early game but I have some thoughts.

D.Dark

Cali

Have to agree with a lot of what these guys said. Combat is much more punishing than the first game and enemies can get in a bunch of cheap shots with how hard they hit. The first storyline boss is also extremely overtuned and basically requires you to parry unless you're absurdly good at dodging or have a long-range build.

It can barely be considered open world due to sections of it being locked until you progress the story. Wanna try going somewhere you haven't been to yet to start a different quest? Too bad.

The story is generic as fuck, your standard "save the world" plot mixed with time travel. I still say them deciding to abandon everything to do with the first game was dumb. Characters thus far are meh for the most part (Lou is essentially Io 2.0 except she's more useful in battle) but I like Noah.

I don't really have anything else to add since I'm currently stuck on a boss and can't do much other than grind. I wouldn't say it's a bad game, but it's a step down from the first Code Vein in pretty much every category except character creation.

 

[long waters]

@The Fair Lady how's the music? One of the reviews was saying there's like no music outside of combat. That sucks if it's so, I'm a big music enjoyer in these kind of games and the first had a nice soundtrack. I was also really spoiled by Stellar Blade's stellar soundtrack. Hard to beat that one.

 

[The Fair Lady]

@The Fair Lady how's the music? One of the reviews was saying there's like no music outside of combat. That sucks if it's so, I'm a big music enjoyer in these kind of games and the first had a nice soundtrack. I was also really spoiled by Stellar Blade's stellar soundtrack. Hard to beat that one.

There isn't a lot, yeah, and what does play isn't much to write home about.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

What a fucking disappointment, well got my money back.

Maybe Nioh 3 will not run like complete shit

 

[BibiLivesMatter]

What a fucking disappointment, well got my money back.

Maybe Nioh 3 will not run like complete shit

you should try the demo for Nioh 3 to see how it runs on your PC. It ran good for me on the most part, I did have this weird slowdown in the open field area, but I was able to fix it quickly by limiting my fps to 120. Don't know why the open field had that weird bug for me, but worked fine after.

 

[The Fair Lady]

There isn't a lot, yeah, and what does play isn't much to write home about.

Okay I kinda take this back, there's some good music, but almost all of it plays during boss fights.

 

[When will it begin?]

I like Noah.

Noah looks like he was designed by CLAAMP. But yes he's alright.