Code Vein II review

Code Vein II had my hopes high. I’m no stranger to FromSoftware games or Soulslikes, and I loved the 2019 original, the anime Soulslike with vampires. I’d played it three times and replayed it again for a full walkthrough series in late 2025, just to get ready for this sequel.

On paper, it’s a great evolution: take what made the first game great (solid combat, fun bosses, deep build variety and the unique Blood Code system), then add an Elden Ring-inspired open world and some upgraded systems. In execution, after 45 hours, every main story and side quest, all three endings, every boss and 100% of the achievements, I think Bandai Namco took a great idea and dropped the ball.

To be clear, I enjoyed a lot of it. You don’t do a full completionist run on your first playthrough just for a YouTube series. But the problems are painfully obvious after the first 10 hours.

Do you need to play the first game?

No. It’s the same universe, but it takes place in a different timeline, actually several, with very little connection beyond the general world-building and the build system. That cuts both ways. It lets the story stand on its own, but it largely ignores the lore and depth the first game built up. If you played the original, it can feel like all that effort to save the world didn’t matter.

The story: anime pulp, but kind of good

Code Vein’s world is one where humans live at the mercy of Revenants, immortal vampire soldiers created from human corpses to fight monsters. Humans are often treated as little more than blood bags.

You play a nameless, voiceless Revenant hunter, part human hybrid, who wakes up to meet Lou, a companion who split her heart in two and shared it with you to give you life. The opening hours throw a lot of lore, made-up words and cutscenes at you. Don’t worry if you don’t follow it all. I didn’t for the first few hours.

Once you dig out from under the terminology, the plot is pretty straightforward. The world is on the brink of annihilation, and you have to find and slay a group of former heroes who’ve turned into monsters, trapped in giant cocoons in the present. To do it, you use Lou’s ability to travel back in time to each hero’s era.

This is the best idea in Code Vein II. In the past, you meet the heroes before they turned, learn their stories and become their friends. They fight alongside you as AI companions and gift you their armor builds. Each hero is unique and mostly well voice-acted, and some have arcs strong enough that I felt bad when I had to face them in the present.

After you defeat a hero, a time decision questline opens up, giving you the chance to go back and change their fate, and with it the future. That’s where most of the 40-plus hours are spent. Unlike FromSoftware games, where you piece the story together from item text, Code Vein II tells its story head-on with lots of cutscenes and voice acting.

Blood Codes: the series’ calling card

Instead of putting points into stats and committing to one play style, Code Vein uses Blood Codes. They sit on top of your base stats, which still grow as you level, and define your build. You can swap them at any time.

I spent most of the game on a strength and defense Blood Code that unlocks up to four tiers and scales with strength weapons. At any point I could switch to a magic-focused code and become a ranged caster. All I’d need is an upgraded weapon that scales with mind, the game’s magic stat, instead of strength.

In practice, though, there were so few enemies or bosses with real weaknesses that I got lazy and stayed with strength the whole game. If something called for a ranged approach, I just swapped my AI companion for support or damage. It’s still the most unique part of Code Vein, and it lets you experiment quickly without ever being locked in.

Combat systems

Under all the made-up names, the systems are simple:

• Drain attacks: special attacks from a weapon that lives on your back drain the enemy’s blood, which the game calls Ichor.
• Abilities: you spend that Ichor on abilities attached to your weapons, to buff yourself, your weapon or your companion, or to unleash special attacks.

That gives you a nice loop: attack, drain blood, then spend it on buffs and specials.

You get a solid range of weapons: two-handed greatswords and axes, faster one-handed swords, even faster dual blades, and guns for range. There are shields for blocking and parrying, a big crafting system for items that buff you or cure status effects, and boosters that work like charms for semi-permanent bonuses. You can sprint, jump, dodge, backstab, and stagger enemies to open them up for more draining. There’s even a motorcycle that works like a horse in other open-world games, although it gets stuck on things a lot.

Where the combat falls apart

On the surface it all works. The longer I played, the more the cracks in the controls and balance showed. The developer has said a lot of this will be rebalanced, but in the early-access version I played, it was a mess:

• Getting knocked down is punishing. It takes forever to stand up, and then your character stands still for a second, so you can’t dodge out. I ended up mashing dodge every time.
• Backstabs barely work. I landed only a handful all game. In the first game I was backstabbing like a pro, especially on slow bosses.
• Parrying is unreliable. The timing is really hard to read, whether you use a parry ability or a parry shield. The only time I mastered it was against the first real boss, where I had no choice and spent half an hour learning his timing. After that it rarely worked, so I gave up and stuck to dodging and blocking.
• Bosses are unbalanced. Some are huge damage sponges and others are laughably easy.

Together, those make the middle of the game feel like a tedious slog. It needs significant polish.

Enemy variety is the biggest letdown

This is where Code Vein II disappointed me most. For a huge open world spread across multiple timelines, there felt like only 30 or 40 types of enemies. I fought the same bosses again and again, and not just in end-game replays: in regular dungeons and out in the open world. One boss with six floating swords I fought at least five times.

For a game this size, that’s inexcusable, and it kills any interest in New Game Plus. Elden Ring works because it’s huge and its variety of places and enemies is staggering. Here, by the third or fourth time you fight a boss, you know its moves so well that it’s just boring. It feels like the game needed another six months to a year.

Three endings in one playthrough

Unlike games where you replay for each ending, you can get all three endings in one playthrough:

1. Beat the main final boss for the first ending.
2. Keep going into a new set of missions, save a companion, clear a new area and defeat the next final boss for the good ending.
3. Complete every hero’s time decision questline for the true ending.

I did all the side content, including NPC requests and relationship upgrades, before taking on the boss the first time, so the other two endings only took me a couple of hours. With so many games in my backlog, I really welcomed this. There’s also an Exploration Era, a slightly easier middle point in the timeline where you can roam and unlock the whole map with a select group of companions.

Verdict: it’s OK, but it should have been special

I may sound negative, but it’s not a complete slog. The first few hours, the last few hours and the characters and their stories kept me going, and I still enjoyed my 45-plus hours.

I can’t see myself playing New Game Plus, though. I’m leaving my save where it is, fully completed, ready for the DLC, and I’m curious to see what the patches fix. I love this series and I hope there’s a third game. Code Vein II is OK, but it isn’t as great or as special as it could have been.