However, Code Vein tries to shake things up by adding skills and classes in a different way - unique for these types of games. Yes, you have a good number of weapon types, a stamina bar, the equivalent of a bonfire that respawns enemies and lets you level up your character, Haze that works exactly the same as Souls do (as currency and experience), backstabs, lock-on, online multiplayer and more similarities. Setting aside its writing and characterization, Code Vein tries to change the Dark Souls formula with quite a few gameplay differences. The worst case is your companion Io, an amnesiac girl who spends most of the game acting infantilized as many anime women do, with breast physics so ridiculous that even the wind in the intro cutscene in the game can move them. Most of them have designs that would make other anime games seem prude in comparison, with even female enemies and bosses having breast physics that make no sense. Most women in Code Vein are either being protected or being rescued by men. Simply gesturing at things like abuse, slavery or human experiments isn’t enough if a game is not willing to engage with those themes in the meaningful ways they deserve.īut if I’m going to talk about themes that deserved better, I have to mention the game’s treatment of women, which leaves a lot to be desired. This is how you get the backstory of your crew and some other key characters, but while these scenes are interesting visually (using silhouettes and only a few colors), the content is bland and mostly tries to make you care for its characters by way of them all having tragic stories. When one of them dies and comes back, a Revenant leaves behind a vestige with a memory that they forget, and your character is the only one capable of restoring them. One of the powers your character has is the ability to access memories lost by Revenants. Soulslike tend to have silent protagonists and it works for them, but if Code Vein wants its story and character interactions to be one of its main draws then having a silent protagonist ends up being a huge misstep. Not all characters in the game are particularly interesting, but all of them have more going on than the protagonist who is somehow a friend loved by everyone and the most important person in the universe despite being only capable of grunting in combat and has zero personality. As such, you are recruited by a crew of Revenants that are investigating a way to save your kind, but since your character is a silent protagonist, you end up being just a glorified tool to advance the plot. Your character, for reasons that are barely explained, has many different powers that just happen to be what is needed to try and cure Revenants once and for all. Instead, the main plotline ends up a very generic “save the world, chosen one” type of story. It’s a potentially interesting setting for a post-apocalyptic story on paper, but it remains largely shallow and never really engages in-depth with the many subjects that the plot plays around with. Rare fruits called blood beads have started sprouting that can serve as a replacement for human blood, but these too tend to be regulated by the government. Few humans remain, and under the control of the government, they are forced to donate blood. Years after the defeat of the Queen, the city where the Revenants live is surrounded by a mist that prevents them from escaping. A Revenant goes into a frenzy after spending a long time without consuming human blood, and if that happens, they can become monstrous creatures known as the Lost. Revenants were created using a parasite in order to fight a mysterious Queen, another Revenant that frenzied after an event known as The Great Collapse. Your character is a Revenant, a being that once was human but now can’t die as long as their heart is unharmed. To separate itself from its influence even further, Code Vein also attempts to put a heavy emphasis on its narrative, though this ends up being one of the game’s weakest points. Just one look at the game, especially its character designs, is enough to see that Code Vein is going for a very unique gothic style of anime in order to try and bring its own flavor to the Dark Souls formula. That description, seemingly superficial and not exactly very descriptive, ends up being an apt way to summarize what Code Vein is. Developed by the team behind the God Eater series, Code Vein has been casually dubbed since its announcement as “anime Dark Souls”.
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