Code Vein

Souls-like, as a separate genre, has existed for eight years. The success of Dark Souls was phenomenal, in the first month more than 1,5 million copies were sold worldwide only on the consoles, and when the game was released on the PC, the sales were even higher. In general Dark Souls is a spiritual successor of the previous game from soft, which was not as popular as DS, Demon’s Souls.

In a nutshell to describe the gameplay of Dark Souls I can’t think of a better word than survival. In this game we have to die all the time, lots of dying, way too much dying! But it’s not because the game has bad controls, or a huge number of bugs, no, on the contrary, the first DC was pretty well made game. The point is that the gameplay itself is built to test the player’s mettle by challenging him. The gist itself is this: We must run to the end of a very winding location, and defeat a boss. And if even the description of the gameplay itself sounds very simple, in fact everything is much different. In fact, the game of this genre does not forgive the mistakes made by inexperienced players, and severely punish them for them … death, loss of souls (which are needed to level up), well, the loss of time players spent on the passage of the location, because as soon as they regenerate, then begin their race with the last safe zone. For the player create conditions in which he will be constantly in danger, and only rare fires will give him a rest. In fact, at least the game is fair enough to the player, for example: if you died, but managed to open a shortcut, then you can get to the place where you were killed faster. Also, if after the first death, you are not killed again, you can run to the place where you were killed, and pick up precious souls. Also, the Souls series is famous for its lore and soundtrack.

If I won’t get into details of the lore, believe me, it’s too deep there, then I can say a few words about the soundtrack.The soundtrack is a heavy orchestra, which is designed to pressure the player, and so oppressive enough atmosphere.

Overall Dark Souls had a huge impact on the gaming industry, and showed that not only casual games can be in demand. And it is funny, that to this day, some studios are trying to repeat the success of Dark Souls. And frankly, some of them are quite successful, remember that mix of Souls-Like and Diabloida from Team Ninja. One of those who tried to create a game similar to Dark Souls was my favorite bandai namco who are the publishers of one of my favorite game series God Eater.

Code Vein is pure Souls-like, only times more casual. All the basic gameplay mechanics are carefully copied from DC, but with its own nuances. The first thing you can say about the combat system CV is that it is at times more dynamic series of souls, and this has its reasons (the connection of the game with the God Eater universe, well, its developers), as an example may serve as a banal roll, which in this game can be replaced by a jerk (from God Eater), well, and the presence of a separate menu for spells, and swinging a sword a little clumsy. But so, in general, the game is a complete, places unfortunate copy of Dark Souls.

Oh, and a little bit more about the multiplayer. In general, to play with another player, in the Souls series, we need to find a certain artifact called humanity\coal, and use it to restore the human form, and only after that, we can summon players to ourselves. And if you still have a white chalk, then you can already be summoned to another player. But it’s different in code wane. Here we don’t need any humanity or crayon. You just call a player for yourself, or just send a signal that you’re ready to help and wait until they call you.

The main trick of Code Vein is the plot… well, actually it should have been if the plot was good, but as it turned out quite passable. If you’ve played any of the God Eater games, you’ll be bored to follow the story. Although, despite the boringness of the plot, the characters here are quite well written… if you run around the locations and collect fragments of memories. In fact, something remotely reminiscent of S-linki from Persona was added to the game to reveal the characters, and to my mind, those shards reveal most of the characters quite well.

On a separate note, I’ll highlight the character editor, which is just perfect. Here, just like in Black Desert, you can create your own wyfu).

Overall, when it comes to code wane, the game itself, has no cultural value to the community. There’s almost nothing in it to make it stand out from the competition, which makes it feel like a passing game. But, as a fan of the franchise the game belongs to, I’m quite happy with the product. And if you’re wondering what I’m so happy about this game, I recommend watching the video attached to this post.