Code Vein 2 Review – A Middling Souslike That Feels Ani-Meh

It’s been a long wait for fans of the anime -infused Soulslike. When the first Code Vein dropped, it carved out a niche by being unapologetically edgy and flashy, bringing a unique look to an increasingly saturated genre. It wasn’t as polished as FromSoftware’s bar-setting titles, but it had heart and a character creator that enabled players to bring their own anime heroes and heroines to life. Now, Code Vein 2 is here, promising refinements to the formula that sits over half a decade old. Bandai Namco doubles down on the fashion and the flashy combat, but it stumbles in ways that show its growth hasn’t kept up with the genre’s evolution over the past several years.

Code Vein 2 wants to be an open-world epic. It wants to be a time-travel tragedy. It wants to be a high-octane action game with motorcycles and scythes. But in trying to do it all, it trips over its own ambitious shoelaces. It is a game of decent highs and disappointing lows. Admittedly, the setup is actually pretty cool. You play as a Revenant Hunter in a world that has somehow gotten even worse than the dystopia we saw in 2019. The new threat, the Luna Rapacis, is corrupting revenants and turning them into Horrors. Thanks to a mysterious girl named Lou MagMell, you won’t just be fighting monsters; you will be traveling well into the past, too, exchanging those dreary post-apocalyptic greys for more vibrant greens. It’s too bad the promising story is told through heavy, exposition-dump cutscenes that drag on for way too long.

Fix the Past, Save the Future

Here’s the thing: if you loved the first game, you’re going to find a lot to like here. The core loop remains intact. You wake up in a post-apocalyptic ruin, you suck blood from monsters, and you swap “Blood Codes” on the fly to change your class. It’s still one of the most forgiving soulslikes on the market because it wants you to experiment. But the cracks start to show early. While the sequel looks sharper, thanks to the jump to a new engine, it feels like the developers spent more time on the physics of the flowing capes than on making the environments interesting to explore. There’s no greater reference point for this missed opportunity than the lacking dungeon designs.

The combat in Code Vein 2 is fast. It feels great to dodge a massive swing from a Lost enemy, counter with a relentless flurry and then use a giant ogre claw—this is one of the game’s equippable Jails, a piece of equipment that enables drain attacks—to demolish the staggered foe in spectacular fashion. The Blood Code system is even more expansive this time around. Blood Codes are swappable archetypes with different attributes, dictating characteristics like base defense and max Ichor. I spent hours messing with different builds, mixing and matching greatswords, telekinetic rune blades, a reaper scythe style Jail, blocking and parrying, and much more. Thanks to the game’s provision of an AI partner, I was able to play more carelessly in pursuit of experimentation than I normally would in this genre. Thanks for tanking all of those hits while I dialed in my build, Noah.

While these companions output respectable damage, able to fell many standard fodder, the damage they deal appears as a white chunk on the enemy’s health bar. Left untouched, that white area will regenerate unless the player starts dealing damage themselves. This is hardly noticeable on the basic hostiles since the AI companion can fully deplete their health through the white damage. This becomes more relevant when facing bosses. It forces the player to not take a passive position while their invincible partner puts in all the work. It certainly helps alleviate the annoyance of many bosses’ AoE attacks, allowing the player to pull back while the AI buddy keeps hacking away in the middle of it all. To balance this, boss attacks can remove a fair bit of health in a hit or two. Should the player fall, the companion will sacrifice themselves temporarily to resurrect the player. This skill goes into a cooldown before the character returns to the fight, leaving only the real-world player left to contend with the boss in their brief absence.

Flashy But Weightless

For the positives noted, the combat manages to fall flat in numerous area. First and foremost, the feedback is missing. In games like Elden Ring, when you hit an enemy, there is a crunch. A pause. A sense of resistance. In Code Vein 2, your weapon often passes through enemies like they are made of butter. You see the damage numbers fly up, you see the health bar go down, but the tactile satisfaction isn’t there. And that’s when the game isn’t leaving you scratching your head over odd hitboxes that leave attacks disconnected from their target. This is all to say, the main gameplay pillar is a mixed bag.

And then there is the enemy AI. The erratic behavior of enemy AI, either being insanely persistent in their onslaught or negating all challenge due to getting stuck on the environment geometry. . This wasn’t a one-time thing either. Enemies frequently leap on either side of the line, making a game that is wildly inconsistent in terms of difficulty and feels reminiscent of AI models from a couple console generations ago.

Let’s talk about the motorcycle. The marketing hyped up the Votorcycle as this game-changing traversal mechanic. It is fun for the first twenty minutes. You summon it, you zip across the grey wasteland, and you look cool doing it. But the open world isn’t really open. It’s a series of wide corridors connected by empty fields. You aren’t stumbling upon hidden catacombs or engrossing environmental storytelling (there’s none of that). You are just driving from Point A to Point B to trigger the next cutscene. The vehicle controls are floaty, too. It feels like you’re sliding on ice rather than driving a heavy machine. It feels like a feature added for the sake of marketing, not for gameplay depth.

Performance is the Real Villain

Here is where the overall package takes a major hit. I played this on PlayStation 5, and frankly, the optimization is rough. The game offers two modes: Performance (targeting 60fps at a dynamic 1440p) and Quality (targeting 30fps at 4K). I stuck to Performance mode because, in a game that demands parry timing, framerate is king. But Code Vein 2 rarely holds that target. It stutters constantly. It stutters when you enter a new area. It stutters when you pick up an item. It stutters when you perform a parry. During the final phase of a particular boss fight, the game chugged so hard it felt like slow motion. I died. Not because I missed a dodge, but because the inputs simply didn’t register through the chop.

There is also a significant amount of texture pop-in. You’ll walk into a room and see muddy, low-res textures on the walls that take two or three seconds to snap into focus. For a console generation that has given us visually seamless titles, this feels unpolished. It’s clear that moving to Unreal Engine 5 came with overheads the team wasn’t quite ready to manage on console hardware.

Ultimately, Code Vein 2 knows its audience. The character creator is world-class. I spent a great deal of time making my Revenant Hunter look perfect. The sheer amount of accessories, hair types, and accessories is staggering. If you want to play as a feminine goth with a giant hammer, or a cyber-punk vampire with a katana, the game says “yes.” Despite its shortcomings, there is a leather-strapped core begging for refinement,

Code Vein 2 Review Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Code Vein 2  was reviewed on PS5, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]