Code Vein II
Review
Sword Art Offline
by Samuel Corey
reviewed on PC
From Weeb Dark Souls to Weeb Elden Ring
The original Code Vein made a name for itself by being a shameless knock-off of Dark Souls with a gothic anime style. The gameplay innovations it brought to the souls-like genre were minimal (though there were a couple of fun ideas), but the game did distinguish itself with its extremely detailed character creator, which allowed players to spend hours customizing their very own waifu or husbando. The character creator boasted such a huge array of options that you could play as virtually any anime character you had the patience to craft, and even more impressive, all but the most outlandish creations looked like they belonged in the game's world.
The character creator from the original game is back, and if anything, even more in-depth than before, to the point where you are adjusting the number of shines in your character's massive anime eyes. However, the gameplay has seen a significant overhaul. While Code Vein was anime Dark Souls, Code Vein 2 is very much trying to be anime Elden Ring. As such, you are placed in a massive open world, and after a brief spell on tutorial island, given a long list of objectives and told to follow your own priorities for them.
There is nothing wrong with changing direction from a crafted series of mostly linear levels to a go anywhere, do anything open world sandbox, provided you are able to make a compelling open world. However, as we have seen from the vast majority of open-world games, most just wind up being sparsely populated wastelands that only serve to add a tedious commute between the good bits. While Code Vein is not the worst example of this, it definitely falls into the category of a boring, empty world that you mostly interact with by speeding past across the landscape on your motorcycle.
It doesn't help that everything feels so dead. When you find a settlement with NPCs, everyone is just standing around in fixed places, saying their one line of stock dialogue, like this is a village in one of the NES Final Fantasy games. Just having a couple of guys walking around the camp and a couple of NPCs with involved dialogue trees would help to make it feel more lived in.
Non-Role Playing Game
As ambitious as knocking off Elden Ring is, I feel it is the wrong direction for the series to go in. Code Vein's greatest strength has always been its character creator, which allows players to carefully customize the game's protagonist. However, once the character has been made, they are little more than an aesthetic. In the original game, there was no opportunity to customize the player character's personality, as you made almost no decisions and were completely mute until after beating the final boss, when the game graciously let your character say one line in the climactic cut-scene.
This is a missed opportunity, as after spending so much time customizing their character's appearance, many players probably have some opinions about the things this character would do or say. A rudimentary moral system like the one in Mass Effect or even just the option to pick certain dialogue options while conversing with NPCs would go a long way towards accomplishing that goal. The player character wouldn't necessarily have to be fully voiced to accomplish this; the Gray Warden in Dragon Age: Origins was a mute after all, but it would help quite a bit.
It seems like Code Vein 2 realizes this and is taking some small steps in that direction, but these steps are so tiny and so half-hearted that at times it seems like it would be better if they hadn't bothered at all. For example, it's fairly common to be given a choice in dialogue options, where both options say functionally the same thing! While there are consequential choices to make in the game, they are few and far between (and mostly directly linked to which of the game's endings you will receive). Even worse, the game seems to think that it's building a relationship between the player character and the various NPCs they interact with, and will occasionally cut to the player character trying to give them meaningful looks, which only seems awkward because of how little personality the player character is allowed to have. There is only so much I can read into the awkward stare from a gormless mute!
The game needs to either make it's protagonist a character or it needs to keep them entirely uncharacterized. These half-measures are inherently unsatisfying.
It's Dangerous to Go Alone
The other way that the original Code Vein distinguished itself from the herd of Dark Souls clones was its companion system. Rather than summoning a helper for tricky bosses, you have a companion permanently assigned to you, though you can tell them to wait at camp if you get tired of them stealing your kills. In the original Code Vein, this system was comically broken, with your companion easily clearing most enemies in the levels and trivializing all but the hardest bosses.
This has been fixed for the sequel. You no longer need to worry about your companions taking all the glory, as they do significantly less damage than you and seldom seem to draw the attention of bosses or powerful enemies. Any damage they inflict on an enemy is on a timer as well, and will regenerate if the enemy isn't killed before the timer runs out, so it's no longer feasible to sit in the corner and let them solo the bosses al la Iron Tarkus.
This is a nice improvement, but it's not enough to save the overall game. If you want an anime souls-like, I think you would be far better served by checking on AI Limit. If you want an open-world souls-like, Elden Ring is far stronger than what's on offer here. I can only recommend Code Vein 2 if you are looking specifically for an open world anime souls-like. Even then, I'd suggest you wait for a sale because $70 is way too much for such an unremarkable game.
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7.0
fun score
Pros
Extremely in-depth character creator, Solid, if overly familiar, souls-like combat, Companions have been reworked for balance.
Cons
The open world feels static and dead, Mini-Bosses are recycled too often, Not enough enemy variety to support such a large world.
