Code Vein

 

Anime Dark Souls?!

Release: 2019

Developer/Publisher: Bandai Namco

Genre: Action RPG

Gameplay Stats: ~35 hours, 36/43 achievements

Alrighty! All I knew going into this game was that it was supposed to be like anime Dark Souls. We're in a bit of a drought of new Souls content right now, so I decided to give it a try! The timing may have been because of the Demon's Souls remaster for the PS5. I'm so impressionable apparently.

Visuals: This game looks okay. I'm not sure if it was my ever-aging rig or if it was something about the style, but I wasn't impressed by the presentation here. It's trying to be so edgy, but it kind of falls flat in my opinion. That may not be entirely the fault of the visuals however. The bosses are largely humanoids in heavy armor, but that's Dark Souls baby! The enemies here are re-used to an absurd degree. You are literally fighting the same looking enemies at the end of the game that you are in the first level and they were in every single level in between. There are some reskins to help match some of the scenery, but it seemed like minimal effort. Additionally, the maps are pretty uninspired. The game takes place in caves, a ruined city, a mountain, and a ruined cathedral, but about 70% of the game is just the ruined city. The plot has a reason for this, but I can't help but feel like the developers did they so that they had to make fewer assets. I should also touch on the animation... Everything presented is fluid, but none of it conveys any weight.

Audio: The music is really strong here! Arguably my favorite part of the whole experience. There's a mix of like some punk/metal and some monastic chanting tracks that were really nice. The sound effects of the game got really same-y over the course of the game, but that may have been because they didn't fit very well with the visuals. I can't put my finger on anything in particular that was wrong with them, so it must have just been that they were out of place. The voice acting of this game wasn't bad! I think the script was a bit melodramatic, but the voice actors did a solid job, at least for the English version.

Plot: Oh man, where do I start? The whole story here is a series of macguffins that really don't make a whole lot of coherent sense. You and some other revenants (read: vampires) have to journey across the land to find blood beads or you'll go feral. And then you need to follow the path of a dead queen. And then you save the world/vampires! But nothing seems to have consequence. In particular, I really hated that the blood thing wasn't really touched upon as impacting you or your friends throughout the story. There was the potential for an interesting mechanic or story beat here, but they didn't seize the opportunity.

Gameplay: My opinion of the gameplay here really changed over the course of the experience. I thought it started out much in the vein of Dark Souls, being a fairly satisfying action game, but the game revealed itself to be more of an RPG as time went on. What's the difference here? In Dark Souls you can beat the game without leveling if you are mechanically good enough. I literally don't think that would be possible with Code Vein. Enemies would take small fractions of damage if you hadn't leveled up enough and then once you grind a small amount they start taking normal damage again. My issue here is that the appropriate level was hidden from the player. I think if a level is expected it should be communicated with the player. I was under leveled for quite some time because I was spending currency elsewhere. I got kind of stumped and leveled up a few times and I was right back to making progress. This game has different classes that each have skills (active and passive) associated with them that you can master and use with other classes. It took me a bit to make the connection since I hadn't seen it in an action game, but it's quite like the Job Abilities from Final Fantasy Tactics. I liked this a lot actually! The game is set up to be a series of skirmishes instead of enemies spread out over a map. Luckily, you have an NPC companion for the whole game. The companion isn't programmed particularly well, but they are leaps and bounds stronger than the player character so it doesn't matter too much.

Bonus Rant? So, my opinion really soured of this game over time and it took me a bit to put my finger on exactly why. I really think that part of it was that the game seemed to learn what Dark Souls was from Dark Souls 2, undoubtedly the worst of the series. Great huge, sprawling levels where you sometimes have to run for a minute to be able to do anything. The enemies are placed in a way such that there are commonly ambushes, which makes the world feel considerably less lived in. The enemies are never doing anything before you get there apart from standing or hanging just out of view to better ambush the player. It kind of ruins the immersion in a weird way. The more I played the more I realized that it was the combat that soured me. I thought it was very Dark Souls at the beginning, but the more I played the more I realized that it was straight out of a Tales game. You have to wail on the enemy to overcome them and they are very rarely stunned. An issue that exacerbates this is that you can't animation cancel to dodge mid-attack, the dodge queues which is often pointless because you will be hit and likely stunned in the mean time. I think this game and Lords of the Fallen learned opposite lessons from Dark Souls, but if you were to average them together you would get something akin to Dark Souls itself.

How did I feel about this game? Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. I'm an armchair quarterback here, but I had several ideas for how to improve the plot or gameplay over the course of my playthrough. The fact that I was thinking about that instead of playing the game speaks volumes I think. I seem to have a hot take here because the game reviewed very well and even Steam has the reviews as Very Positive. Maybe I was expecting too much with the Dark Souls comparison right out of the game? But if you didn't know Dark Souls, Code Vein probably wouldn't appeal to you. Ultimately I'm not sure who this game is for. It was fine, but I don't think it was memorable or excelled in any way. [6/10]