As much as I really tried to enjoy it, Code Vein is one of the most average games I've played in a while. I see how it felt lacking even back when the best point of comparison was Dark Souls, but now the present-day "soulslike" genre is home to things like Elden Ring and Lies of P, and of course we even had Sekiro in the same year as Code Vein's release. In a landscape like this, Code Vein just doesn't compare, and the differences are stark.
I've got some pretty dissatisfied opinions on this little game, but I'll start us out on a happier note here.
Enjoy them while they still haven't been overshadowed:


The companions are definitely among the first things I think about when I try to remember Code Vein. I still had some frustrations with some of their writing, as well as the balancing between the companions, but I think the little bit of crustiness is better than if they did nothing in this regard and made it a purely solo experience.
Maybe my thoughts on this might change over time. But as it stands, I'm looking around for another soulslike that lets me have an AI friend that I can take everywhere, and I'm not seeing anything. And if nobody else is doing it, nobody else can be better at it, so it's looking like this is the best you're gonna get if you want a soulslike action game with AI companions.
In short: companions are pretty cool.

The combat, as well, is borderline good. The special abilities you acquire will get to feel pretty formulaic after a while (a sad theme), but their addition mixes up the combat by enough that I had a decent amount of fun some of the time. It is basically just Dark Souls with some tweaks, I know, but I like the tweaks, and I think the combat of Code Vein is one of its strongest points—such that it is.

The character design and customization is pretty good, as well—definitely one of Code Vein's more outstanding qualities. I can see how people might consider a lot of it juvenile and regressive, and, you know, maybe it is. There were definitely some excessive designs sprinkled throughout the game, but I got to make a cute custom waifu, and I'd say I liked the game better for it.

And wowie these sure are some nice things. Comparing these merits against its peers, it's still pretty competent. The combat being good might be an expectation that most people take for granted, but the companions are still something you don't really see elsewhere, and I can't really make an Elden Ring character that doesn't look slightly off in some way, so it's even got two over on the genre's titan.

But the game isn't all merits. Unfortunately, all of these good little things eventually blur into the background as the game continues and the cracks in its design widen. What starts with promise sours, and by the time I finally beat the last boss, all I could remember coming away from the game were the things I didn't like about it.
And that takes us here.


"Plot development?" asks a writer for Code Vein. "Is that when you tie someone to a chair and talk paragraphs at them for ten minutes?"

The story honestly might be good, but the whole thing's presented in such an obtrusive way that I just started skipping through the cutscenes and dialogue after a while.
For reference, let's think about the Memory Den from Fallout 4. Did you like being taken away from all of your game's gameplay, and made to slowly walk your character through the backstory of some NPC?
If you did, I've got some great news for you, friend: like 60% of the game's plot and lore is divided up into little sequences just like this.
And if you don't like it? Well, you can save yourself a lot of time and boredom by pressing the menu button twice. You can thank me when you've got a backlog of like six Vestiges to restore.
But the gameplay's at least gonna be good, right?
Well, there's actually something of an issue there.

(What's an action game without something to fight, places to fight in, and things to swing around at people?)

The enemy design is very dull and repetitive. The enemies you fight in the first stage are still present, with the exact same moveset, all the way into the last stage, just stat-boosted to be in line with your character's expected level.
Here are your enemies, just off the top of my head:
You've got the generic fodder guys that look kind of like plants, the obligatory evil enemy dogs, big round ladies, tall leggy ladies...
And that's most of it. There's more enemy variety, in the snow and desert levels, for example. But on the whole, what I've mentioned above is the meat of what you're fighting throughout the whole game. Most of their movesets never change, and most of them (leggy girls especially) only feel less and less fitting with the levels they're in as the game progresses.
And the levels... oh boy.

I guess.

The level design has to be the worst part of the game. I didn't realize how spoiled I was to organic level and world designs, but Code Vein sure showed me what the other side of the coin looks like, and to be glad that we have better.
The best way I can describe it is if every level was a cave or dungeon in Skyrim. Everything winds around in a way to try and disorient you and make you feel like you're actually exploring quite a lot, even though you're actually just progressing through a big, wiggly, linear path with some short dead-ending sidepaths here and there.
Eventually it might loop back around to your checkpoint with some Dark Souls-style shortcut—either a ladder you kick down, or an elevator, a door that only opens from one side... you get the picture. But none of it feels organic or like a real world in the least. You're just following a line to its end, and all the enemies are only obstacles—they're not actually living in or engaging with any kind of world, here, they only exist to jump out at you and drop experience on death.


The weapon design is similarly mediocre. To my memory, you have guns, one-handed swords, two-handed swords, big ol' hammers, and polearms, and this is all of your weapon variety.
There's also no such thing as horizontal balancing in Code Vein. The things you get early into the game are always going to be measurably worse than the things you get later on, and some weapon classes are just numerically better than others.
For example, maybe you're attached to the one-handed sword you've been using all game. Well, this new machete's just like your favorite sword, only it objectively does more damage and you're just being stubborn if you don't pivot.
Or do you dislike a class of weapons? Don't want your character casually swinging around a comically large heap of metal, huh? Well this ugly new greatsword has a 1-to-1 facsimile for every part of your one-handed moveset, but it does twice as much damage, breaks poise like your dexterity never has, and even makes you take less knockback. You'd best let go of how you want to play the game, bud, because you're crippling yourself if you don't pivot.
This is all to say that the balancing of Code Vein's weapons is very frustrating once you take a moment to actually look at how the numbers compare. I usually like dex builds. My Dark Souls go-to's are curved swords, rapiers, claws, all of that sneaky little dex-baby stuff—but here, in Code Vein, I actually felt forced into giving up what little variety I had and submitting to the game's dominant strategy of stupidly big swords.

So by this point, you might be wondering: Can it all be bad? And the answer's no, of course not. The game's not all bad. There are some redeeming qualities—just not as many as its damning qualities, I'm afraid.

Would I consider the game worth the time?
Maybe, but probably not. If I had to say either "yes" or "no," I'm sorry to say it's a no.

i did NOT hate the cathedral y'all just have a skill issue :)

This game has some potential ,but it is ruined by awful map design, too much time wasted on running back and forth.