This is my review of Code Vein 2.

Information

Developed by: Shift Studios and Bandai Namco Studios
Published by: Bandai Namco
Type: Singleplayer, Souls-like RPG
Released on: 2026/01/30
Price: 70USD (for the Regular Edition)
Platforms: PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series
Played on PC

After the massive lore fuckup in God Eater 3 (not their fault, they didn’t make that one), it was clear that doing a clean slate for the next Code Vein would have to work well. And that is what they did.

Familiar yet Fresh

Many people want the same game again but different, because they could be playing the original if it was literally the same. So Code Vein 2 does something funny: It keeps most of all the established themes in Code Vein 1, but changes the lore and some other things to established itself instead.

You get the vampires, sorry, I meant revenants, humans, the decaying world, the ability to go toe-to-toe against enemies, the weapons, ‘ichor’, the crazy magic things, so on. The character creator is about the same as the previous, with a few more options, meaning that the connections are about the same as well. What it differs is related to the characters, their motivations and the lore explanations.

New to Code Vein 2 is the ability to travel back in time granted by two being, but only being used by one character, your companion Lou MagMell. Together with her, the Main Character will try to stop the Resurgence, an apocalyptic event from happening.

Also new to Code Vein 2 is a dense open-world with 5 major areas to explore in a place called ‘The Frontier’, being the MagMell Island where you start, to the bottom right of the map, then you go to the Sunken City, Corroded Scar and Undead Forest, and also a prison island called Insula Carcere to the far bottom left of the map.

With all that being said… If Code Vein 1 was Anime Dark Souls (a mix of all 3 games), Code Vein 2 is Anime Elden Ring.

More Accurately, It’s Both Things

The original vision of Dark Souls 2 was about time travel to the past to change the present. This bit is almost still there, with entering dreams that lead you to the past. Code Vein 2 goes all out with this, by making sure you can enter different eras of the locations in the map in different years when you travel to the Past.

There’s also the whole thing about Dark Souls 2 originally being open world, which is what Code Vein 2 is. Similarly, Dark Souls 2 had only a few connections to the first game, making it feel like an anthology series, but ultimately was part of the same world. Code Vein 2 went full on the anthology series bit, being exactly that in comparison to Code Vein 1. I’m glad to see the idea finally realized because it does actually make sense, and it feels good to play it.

However it does also feel like Elden Ring, with its dense open-world, with many biomes and ways to get into places. Additionally, fast travel is quick to any mistles you discover and while you don’t have Torrent, the horse, you have a cool bike as a replacement. One aspect that is better than Elden Ring for me is that the dungeons do not repeat themselves. That alone is amazing, even if kills variety.

What I do like is how the map can change depending on the time period visited, which is pretty cool.

A mix between Code Vein, Dark Souls 2 and Elden Ring is welcomed here and I feel that it makes sense to be this way.

Sensical Lore (Probably)

The biggest changes for Code Vein 2 are the lore connections, as described. Revenants are born not turned. Revenants Hunters exist and they are human. Revenants are long lived, Humans aren’t. The Resurgence is a thing that corrupts everyone, revenant or human. There are revenant family houses that have specific powers. You can go back in time for some reason.

Each of the companions have more well thought out backstories, motivations and other bits, so they don’t feel as much as a waste to play out. They are tragic figures in the present once you start the game and just like in Code Vein 1, you can help them and save them from their fate (partially).

Refusal to Play Janitor

One big thing that people wouldn’t like is the fact that it has no connection to Code Vein 1. And it makes sense when you look at that. By connecting it into God Eater they essentially wrote themselves into a corner. And after God Eater 3 came out and told the world is screwed either way (loooong story), revenants wouldn’t be able to topple the Aragami.

Which is why the decision was made and I’m a little torn on it. On one hand, we lost the possibility of improving the characters we had, give them more backstory, enhance the lore from the original. On the other hand, a clean slate allows a new set of characters that we could care about, new stories, new companions, new lore made to stand out.

Which is why they probably did it, they refused to play janitor (like how Tales of Berseria did for Tales of Zestiria) and fix all the lore problems that one game created.

Personally, I’d connect them with a throwaway line, by one of the characters, could be an NPC, something among the lines of…

“Hey, I heard that about a few centuries ago, there was an experiment where they tried to make artificial revenants, using a parasite or something like that. Dunno what happened, the Resurgence took all of our efforts into it.”

There, no need to play Janitor, leave it ambiguous enough to confirm that the characters from the first game might be still around but probably so far away that they can’t affect the second game. It would also connect them without actually doing so, directly. Everyone wins.

Unreal Performance

You know how it plays like, but not how it performs. It’s Dark Souls in this day and age, but it performs like a Unreal Engine 5 game. Lumen (hardware-agnostic raytracing) is always enabled no matter the setting, making this game being incredibly punishing on hardware of all kinds. There’s been reports of slowdowns, framepacing, unstable framerate and the like, all of that make the combat not really engaging.

I personally didn’t have many issues other than cutscenes being at 30 FPS for some reason and some random framedrops.

Easier Or Harder?

With the changes made to the design, lore and the like, it’s difficult to say if the game is easier or harder. Enemies can hit hard, there are some poison swamps (not that many but still) and generally the bosses are annoying.

However, you still have a companion with you, you can use the special attacks to cheese things, guns no longer use ichor (finally!) and everytime you defeat a boss, you get reset, so HP, heals and everything else return like you just went to a mistle. Are you gonna face a boss soon? There’s a guaranteed reset point next to it so you can fight it again, as many time as you want.

At the same time that it was made more convenient, with really good quality of life features, bosses hit hard and if you’re not following along, you’ll die quickly.

Conclusion

I guess Code Vein is now an anthology series? I suppose it works, but in the grand scheme of things, it probably will backfire against them. By not fixing the issues presented in both Code Vein 1 and the God Eater franchise, Code Vein 2 feels very disconnected, only held together because it has the theme established in the first game and the name. Otherwise they could have called this anything else.

However, I do like the game, it’s much better than Code Vein 1, the characters are more varied, their backstories are more developed, their fates are more dynamic, and the Souls-like RPG-ness remains. A lot of Quality of Life improvements makes Code Vein 2 possibly the most accessible Souls-like RPG out there.

However, its performance is abysmal, thanks to Unreal Engine 5 being the engine used. And I do understand that some might not like the fact that none of the previous characters return, which is a shame. Hopefully with Code Vein 3, we’ll get the best of both worlds.

Overall Score and Recommendation

Score: 8.5/10

Recommended? Yes, get it on sale (price too high at launch).