Code Vein 2 Review: A Talentless Elden Ring Clone with a Heap of Problems

The first Code Vein was remembered as the most accessible entry point into the world of Soulslikes: unobtrusive combat, linear levels, and anime aesthetics created comfortable conditions for getting acquainted with the genre. The developers seemed to be saying, "Want to try Dark Souls but afraid of the difficulty? Start with us." In most cases, players praised Code Vein for its accessibility and engaging story, which, by the way, FromSoftware couldn’t always boast due to its peculiar storytelling methods.

Now, inspired by the scale of Elden Ring, the studio has decided to step out of its comfort zone. But while many can mimic the atmosphere of the first Dark Souls, repeating the triumphant success of Elden Ring’s open world is a challenge of a completely different level. Did the developers manage to pull off this trick in the second part and create the most comfortable version of one of the best games in the Soulslike genre? Let's find out.

The release of Elden Ring in 2022 was a turning point for the genre — Soulslikes suddenly became so mainstream that in the following years, we saw more of them than representatives of other genres. Just count how many racing games, fighting games, and strategies have come out in the last four years, and it becomes immediately clear what a "genre famine" we actually live in. The problem is that most Soulslikes from third-party studios are unable to offer anything original and most often are frame-by-frame copies of FromSoftware projects.

What’s even more telling is this: most developers didn’t even try to replicate Elden Ring’s plot, considering its open world too complex from a game design perspective. That's why we were surprised when we learned that Bandai Namco (the same one that published Elden Ring) commissioned its own internal studio to create a direct alternative to the best game of 2022 — while betting on even greater accessibility and a genuinely low entry threshold.

The first gameplay hours of Code Vein 2 are undeniably impressive in scale. There’s a story involving time travel, an open world that literally changes depending on the chosen era, multifaceted characters, and an art style for the environment that the developers blatantly copied from the oft-mentioned Elden Ring. But the deeper we delved into the game, the more disappointment grew.

What initially seemed like a complex and intriguing story turned out to be nothing more than talentless drivel. The developers came up with a whole array of potentially interesting characters who could have been compellingly developed throughout the story, but in reality, they remained just talking heads — without personalities, charisma, or any inner depth. Moreover, after just a couple of hours, Code Vein 2 seems to forget it ever had any kind of story at all: the narrative adventure suddenly turns into monotonous running through labyrinths, where all that’s left of the story is endless mob-clearing and alternating bosses.

The first game once stood out specifically thanks to its story and characters — this was the exception that allowed Code Vein to distinguish itself among countless FromSoftware clones. And if the story used to be its main trump card, the second installment not only fails to captivate with its narrative, but outright repels with its chosen storytelling style. Due to endless jumps between time periods, it’s simply impossible to grasp what’s going on: you barely have time to understand where you are and why before you’re thrown into a new era.

The dialogues are so primitive and linear that it’s impossible to take the story seriously — it falls apart at the first attempt to engage with it. Bandai Namco has delivered a generic script for the sequel, which not only makes you want to skip cutscenes, but also completely kills any desire to explore Code Vein 2’s content. Atmosphere, lore, setting—all of it has turned into tasteless anime nonsense, the kind we’re used to seeing in Chinese gacha games, and certainly not what you’d expect from a full-fledged Soulslike sequel, where the story was once the foundation.

Throughout the playthrough, it felt like Code Vein 2 was created in a rush. The game, undeniably, has some decent moments related to the characters: for example, their backstories and small side plots that at least try to make you empathize and connect with their personalities. But these moments are so rare that you forget about them because of the truly poor main plot, which feels hastily written. If you’re a fan of the first game or at least got vivid emotions from its story, it’s better to steer clear of the sequel.

The main and key innovation of Code Vein 2 is its open world. But in reality, it turned out to be a complete sham. The locations here are still the same corridors, just a bit wider compared to the previous game. You’re given a vast arena, surrounded on all sides by impassable mountains or invisible barriers, and you can only enter through strictly designated passages. New maps unlock exclusively through the story, so you won’t be able to set out on your own adventure like in Elden Ring.

Moreover, the supposedly expansive locations that are meant to create the illusion of an open world are so empty that even the infamous desert from Metroid Prime 4: Beyond would seem like a bustling metropolis in comparison. The developers, seemingly aware of the issue, give you a motorcycle so you can quickly cross the junk-strewn maps on your way to the next boss or regular enemy. And no, riding it is not fun at all. The motorcycle has no physics whatsoever, and invisible walls stop any attempt to take shortcuts or speed up progress, forcing you to mindlessly hold down the gas as your character mechanically covers miles of emptiness.

The local pseudo-open landscapes are not impressive at all. Code Vein 2 completely lacks its own identity or any real style—the environment is a faceless blend of Elden Ring art with a pretense of realism, inhabited by awkward anime characters who look like they’ve fallen out of another dimension. Exploring this world is simply pointless. While Elden Ring constantly offered players locked doors, puzzles, secrets, and unique places with generous rewards, Code Vein 2 can’t even provide a measly supply crate for venturing into a hidden corner of the map. All remotely valuable supplies, weapon upgrade materials, and stat bonuses are given strictly on linear story levels, so there’s no reason to waste time endlessly circling the empty “open world” on your motorcycle. The developers understand this themselves: all key locations are neatly marked in the quest log, so you don’t have to worry about missing anything important if you decide to stray from the main story to explore the world.

The combat system in Code Vein 2 somehow managed to become even simpler than in the first game. You’d think it couldn’t get any easier, but here we are. The game feels more dynamic and fast-paced, but this very speed makes controlling the character boring. After playing No Rest for the Wicked, where every hit feels impactful thanks to physics and well-implemented inertia, it’s hard to take Code Vein 2 seriously. Build variety, as in the prequel, still offers engaging and diverse combinations, but what’s the point if every fight devolves into mindless button-mashing? We didn’t even bother: by the third hour, we slapped some overpowered perks on our weapon and realized we could kill any boss without learning their tactics or movesets. Any depth the combat system might have had is shattered by total imbalance and the lack of any need to adapt to your opponents.

On top of that, the game features companions who make the already easy playthrough even simpler. In the sequel, they no longer have their own health bars, so you don’t need to monitor their status or spend resources healing them in critical moments. Sure, you can’t just stand aside and watch as your allies clear the map of mobs by themselves—their damage is temporary and quickly resets unless you follow up with your own attacks — but still, having immortal companions gives you a massive advantage. They distract enemies and bosses, letting you step out of the fight at any time, catch your breath, and calmly heal up. Because of this, Code Vein 2 feels even more casual and accessible compared to the first game. Genre veterans seeking hardcore challenges are likely to be disappointed, while newcomers just getting into Soulslikes will feel right at home.

Speaking of bosses and enemies in Code Vein 2, their variety is catastrophically low. There are only a handful of standard enemy types, and their appearance only occasionally changes depending on the region. Even then, these changes are purely cosmetic and have no real impact. Enemy movements and animations are so clunky and predictable that you could anticipate their every move with your eyes closed — there’s no surprise, no need to adapt.

As for bosses, most of them are classic copy-pastes from FromSoftware games. Sure, the main story antagonists have some unique identity and are memorable, but the rest are just regular mobs with a separate health bar slapped on and called bosses. It says a lot that after you beat these “bosses” for the first time, they start spawning on the map as standard enemies, completely destroying any sense of significance or epicness from defeating them.

Boss fights are, for the most part, very easy, but sometimes the game throws encounters at you that are simply unfair due to poor game design. There are broken timings, where the enemy stops taking damage because you happened to hit each other at the same time — the game seems to freeze in confusion and just nullifies your attack. The hitboxes are terrible: sometimes smaller than the boss model, other times much larger than your character. You can clearly see your weapon hitting the enemy, but the hit registration system ignores it. Meanwhile, you’ll regularly take damage from boss attacks that clearly miss your character. And, of course, there’s the classic issue—a wonky camera that loses all sense of perspective as soon as a boss corners you. Suddenly, you’re fighting the geometry of the arena instead of the enemy, struggling to see anything at all.

Despite the previously mentioned variety in build-crafting, progression itself is straightforward. Instead of upgrading individual stats, you select "Blood Codes" — ready-made, pre-balanced builds created by the developers, each with preset stats and a set of passive abilities. As you progress through the story, you’ll meet characters who give you new Blood Codes, potentially useful for future boss fights or especially tough enemies. The more you use a specific code, the stronger it becomes, but it’s important to decide in advance which weapon you plan to stick with, as passive skills are directly tied to the effectiveness of certain equipment types.

In addition to Blood Codes, Code Vein 2 features "Weapon Forms" — a direct analogue to Ashes of War from Elden Ring — as well as separate forms that function as active abilities, consuming mana when used. Overall, the sequel offers a whole heap of systems that you can and should use to fine-tune your build, but honestly, we didn’t pay much attention to them. And really, why bother? The game is so easy that once we found a universal strategy that worked against any enemy, the need to swap out Blood Codes or switch tactics simply disappeared. As a result, the combat system leaves a mixed impression. On the one hand, it provides plenty of interesting opportunities to unlock your character’s potential; on the other, it completely deprives the player of challenges and trials that would motivate experimentation with builds.

After the first ten hours, Code Vein 2 turns into monotonous and boring routine. All the locations look the same, the enemies never change, and the battles are simple. The gameplay devolves into mindless running around maps, listening to pointless dialogues that don’t engage or stick in your memory, and endlessly mashing buttons against mobs that stopped being a threat long ago. And so it goes, all the way to the finale. Occasionally, you’ll get a boss fight to break up the monotony, but even those start repeating with alarming frequency, draining away the last drops of interest.

It feels like the developers didn’t have enough content or coherent ideas for a large-scale open-world project. They were forced to resort to blatant copy-pasting, just so the game wouldn’t be finished in three hours. But the irony is, there’s really only about three hours’ worth of quality, unique content here.

Even the side quests are tasteless, built around fighting recycled bosses. Although, compared to the miserable main story, it’s these repetitive tasks that actually offer some lore and character development. Primitive, clumsy, but at least they try to tell you something interesting about the world and its inhabitants. Looking at this, you can’t help but think the developers should have focused all their efforts on fleshing out these side quests and secondary stories, instead of wasting time and resources on the open world.

The first Code Vein had plenty of interesting moments and genuinely good ideas that you’d want to see developed in a proper sequel. But instead of a natural evolution, we got one of the worst Soulslikes in the industry today. It’s a dull, cloying, repetitive, and downright ugly game (more on that later) that just isn’t worth your time.

From a visual standpoint, Code Vein 2 is an outright ugly mess. Dull locations greet the player with emptiness — there’s neither interesting content nor even minimal detail to catch the eye.

The dungeons look like a jumble of empty boxes and endless corridors. Meanwhile, the supposedly realistic backdrops, which are meant to create depth and atmosphere, sit awkwardly next to low-poly character models and blatantly outdated decorations that don’t fit the scene at all. All of this is rendered with terrible lighting: shadows are either completely absent or float in the air, disconnected from any light source. The funniest part? The game doesn’t run on some ancient, homemade engine, but on Unreal Engine 5, which, in the hands of solo developers, can produce visuals on a completely different level.

Character design in Code Vein 2 suffers from the same problems as the environment — it’s just bland and ridiculous. After the interesting, memorable heroes of the first game, who had distinctive style and recognizable looks, the newcomers in the sequel are painful to look at. Not only do they visually clash with the environment, but their proportions are a real mess. There are already too many anime-styled games coming out lately, and compared to them, Code Vein 2 looks like a total flop.

Optimization in Code Vein 2 is perhaps the main reason for the flood of hate the game received after release. Not only is the project visually unimpressive, but it also lags even on top-tier hardware. Frame rates fluctuate unpredictably, with no clear link to scene complexity: you might be standing in an empty corridor and see drops, or be in the middle of a chaotic battle with a dozen enemies and get over 120 FPS. If it weren’t for work obligations, we would have just deleted the game or shelved it until patches (hopefully) fix the performance. Lags, stutters, and micro-freezes during boss fights were even more infuriating than the shameless asset copy-pasting and recycled content.

It’s no better on consoles. The image is blurry, details and textures smear even at maximum zoom. In cutscenes, textures and models literally load before your eyes. Even in dedicated performance mode, the frame rate drops so low that fighting enemies becomes impossible.

Code Vein 2 is a boring, ugly, and uninspired sequel to a decent Soulslike. The developers dreamed of Elden Ring’s laurels, aiming for scale and an open world, but ended up with a disaster. A bad story campaign, repetitive bosses, an empty open world, hideous visuals, atrocious optimization, and a poorly implemented combat system — the game doesn’t meet modern standards and has nothing to boast about except the unrealistically huge busts of its female characters.