Code Vein (PC) - Review

Code Vein got eyes on it originally for looking like Anime Dark Souls. This is not really that far off, to be honest, but at the same time Code Vein does more than enough to establish its own identity while using the core Dark Souls game-play formula, and keeps itself from feeling like it's either derivative or a knock-off.

The idea of Code Vein is the area you live in is sealed off by a Red Mist no one can cross, and most people who live here are the Revenants, near-immortal soldiers created to fight. Needing either blood or the ever-shortening supply of Blood Beads, if a Revenant gives into their hunger they go berserk and transform into the Lost.Each time a Revenant dies they revive, though some of their memories are lost. They are only destroyed for good when their heart is destroyed.

The game starts off being about finding a fresh source of Blood Beads, but pretty quickly escalates to events revolving around The Queen, probably the most powerful Revenant that ever went berserk, and the relics she left behind after she was defeated.

Each character has their only story arc that relates to the ongoing plot at large, and for they all manage to remain pretty interesting. You have Mia wanting revenge on the Hunter, a Revenant who has become known for killing other Revenants, for killing her brother, Loius and his research into the nature of the Blood Beads and his goals of finding the source of the Blood Beads, Yakumo having been part of the original experimental group of people who eventually became the first Revenants, and a couple more I'll avoid spoiling for the time. The story of Each character is related to the events at large in some way.

Where things get interesting is your character is able to restore memories of people who have lost them, as well as take on other peoples Blood Codes, allowing you to make use of a large variety of abilities rather than being limited to whatever you started as being a revenant. This works both as the reasoning behind your own importance to the story at large, as well as working as the games in-story way of explaining your ability to customize your character,which I'll get to in a minute.

I would like to point out that while the characters of the game are all pretty well made and likable, and I like how they are all used pretty wonderfully to expand upon the lore and plot, the characters themselves aren't really all that memorable. This is kind of where the game begins to falter a bit considering how much more emphasis this game puts on building a more straight-forward story and giving each character as much screen time as they do. About the only character that does a good job at leaving much of an impression is Mido, one of the antagonists that show up a bit later in the game.

It does take a while, but once the Relics enter into the narrative, the story does start to get interesting as you begin to learn why the world is the way it is. The Provisional Government Silva, the actions of the Hunter, and your ability to take on other blood codes all become very well fleshed out and explained, and even the villain is given a fascinating goal in the context of this world.While the actual characters overall could use a bit more depth, there is a good, if not slow moving, plot that's worthwhile.This is all backed up by some pretty fantastic art design and music. While there are a fair few enemies that are just re-skins of older enemies, the designs themselves are all solid and look appropriately creepy or absurd considering the tone of the game. There are also some really unique looking bosses, such as the Ribcage, that do a lot to help the overall design stand out. Code Vein ends up with a rather appealing aesthetic.

The combat of the game is, at its core, rather standard for the genre. And action RPG with dodging, back-stabs, magic, anything you've come to expect. You can set up to eight active abilities.While I play on PC, I do use a PS4 controller, and to activate abilities you hold down the Right Trigger, then hit one of the buttons to activate whatever ability you set there. The four face buttons (Cross, Triangle, Circle, Square), and the four D-Pad arrows all activate an ability. Handles very smoothly, and gives you a lot of options for how you want to build the character your making. Passives add a bit to the typical souls' formula, and the game does a great job with passive abilities. To use certain abilities, you need your character's stats to be at a certain rating. Your base rating is determined by your class and can be adjusted by passives that boost stats. You have up to four slots for this. This enables you to use heavier equipment, or equip certain spells or weapon abilities your current class doesn't have the proper stats normally to equip. The way I ended up playing was a high magic class using my passives to allow me to use two different elemental swords I picked up I couldn't use otherwise and give me the weight capacity to use them effectively. I did that as well as keep my casting stats up to maximize my spell damage and would play the game by diving in and quickly peppering enemies doing decent damage while building Ichor,and then dodging out and doing some big damage with a number of fast casting spells.

Aside from stat buffs, you can also obtain passive abilities that give you bonuses whenever you are focused, increase the amount you can heal with each use of healing at the cost of how many times you can heal (Very useful in boss fights that don't give you many opportunities to heal yourself), among others. There is nothing to extravagant in the passives, and all things you would expect in such a system, but it does a fair bit to the customization of a Souls-Like game that is much appreciated.

It really is the fun you can have with active abilities, and there are some great ones that allow for some fun and unique game-play. I ended up not using it as it didn't match my play style, but something that was a bit fun when I experimented with it was an active that causes you to drop a small bomb of sorts when you successfully dodge an attack. This could be great if you want to play a character whose quick and constantly up in your foes face. One casting can cause quite a bit of damage to rack up. I won't go into all abilities, but there are a lot of options here that make the game fun to experiment with.

Two unique mechanics to bring up in combat are Focus and Ichor. Starting with Focus, taking damage our dodging attacks builds your focus gauge, which grants you the following bonuses when focused:Your Stamina replenishes, you become harder to stagger, it's easier to stagger enemies, and you can knock most foes into the air allowing you to chain a few attacks on them. All this as well as any passives that grant you bonuses while focused. It's a fine system, and you need to be careful as Enemies can also become focuses, but due to my play-style, I didn't make much use of it due to how quickly I pull from melee combat to start up the magic. For other play-styles, though Focus can become a fun and integral part of your game-play. Ichor is the one I really paid attention to, as it is what you use to cast magic. Your base Ichor is determined by class, and you can recover up to your maximum by striking enemies or using items. It works as an MP system that recovers by hitting enemies. An interesting thing about how the system works is the ability to temporarily increase your max. You can do a charged attack, the nature of which changes based on the Blood Veil (The games armor)you have equipped, and striking an enemy increases your max Ichor by two. The same happens with a succulence back-stab. However, when you rest at a Mistletoe the Ichor resets back to the base amount.

A thing to note, in addition to resting at Mistletoe to recover HP, respawn enemies, or teleport to other locations, this is also where you go to level up. And when you die in this game, you drop all your Haze which you use for shopping and leveling. Having a higher Ichor count is definitely a bonus that makes you more powerful in combat, but you have a risk of losing your Haze should you slip up and die before using it. It's an interesting dynamic to add to the game.

That aside, while the combat is fast and fun, the challenge is a bit uneven in the game. It doesn't really hold a steady challenge throughout, and instead is mostly fairly simple and easy with sudden spikes in difficulty. I had very little issue progressing through the game until the Cathedral and an enemy invasion which kicked my ass,followed by the game's most difficult boss with the Ribcage. After that, the difficulty largely disappears for a good chunk before suddenly spiking up again. It's a very uneven feeling experience.

Now given I played this on PC, I kept track of my FPS throughout the game, and I maintained a solid 60FPS throughout, dropping only as low as 52 during gameplay for a few moments, and that was not common. The following are my PC specs:

**Ryzen 5 3rd Gen 3600 (3.60GHz) (6 cores, 12 threads)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB

16GB DDR4 3200MHz RGB

1TB SSD

AMD B450 (Motherboard)**

In the end, Code Vein is a fantastic game and does a great job with the Souls formula of game-play. It's not as open as Souls is in terms of exploration and favors a more focused story and game-play progression, but that isn't inherently a bad thing. The things it adds are very well implemented, and the mechanics are well designed and executed and done in a way to give Code Vein its own identity.Whether or not you have picked up a souls game before, Code Vein is worth checking out.