Wow, it's a new blog where I complain about things, yeehaw. There was actually supposed to be one I was making about Hollow Knight because I fucking hate Hollow Knight, but I never finished it and haven't played the game in a while so I probably won't. You know what I paid for though and immediately regretted? Code Vein, aka shitty anime weeb Darksouls.

People tend to compare Code Vein to Darksouls since the game wants to be a souls-like. Unfortunately, I haven't played much Darksouls, I have played Bloodborne though. I'm not entirely sure how apparent I've made my love for Bloodborne on here, I don't think I've talked much about it. My love for Bloodborne is about on par with Doom though and I do know that I've made t h a t very very apparent. So there's at least one FromSoftware game I know exceptionally well so when I need specific comparisons, I'm going to use Bloodborne rather than Darksouls.

First things first, Code Veins control layout sucks ass, and whoever decided to map the controls that way deserves an ice pick to the frontal lobe. It's partially like Bloodborne or Darksouls, parry with L2, Lockon is R3, Roll is circle. But then some jackass decided "Haha what if your normal attacks were square and triangle" that's horrible. You can at least remap the controls how you want. It's just tedious because if you have certain controls already mapped to a button sometimes it just won't let you change them unless you specifically move that control first. Some buttons you also just, aren't allowed to change at all. You can at least get your attacks put on R1 and R2 which is all I wanted.
This is the first game I think I have ever actually remapped the controls to my liking because the defaults were just that nonsensically confusing and awful to me. To be fair that's a nitpick but this is my blog and I complain about what I wish.

The game's leveling is also similar to Bloodborne or Darksouls except, you don't pick your own stats so I don't know why it even has leveling that way. You literally just scroll left to level up and it increases your health and stamina or something. That's all that changes. You can't increase stats other than that.
In fact, I'm not even sure how the stats work. I think they're dependent on what Bloodveil or Blood Code you use but even then I'm really not sure what changes between what, what letter grades actually mean for stats. The game does not explain it and unlike in Bloodborne I haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what does what.
For example, with the Bloodveils I have two different ones and they do like different effects for parrying. I have no clue if that makes the parrying work different or if it's cosmetic. I also can't figure out why one suddenly makes the weight of my weapon 126/120 when the other one is 120/120. It's the same weapon, why does the weight suddenly change.
It just feels overcomplicated and confusing and the game doesn't explain any of it. All the tutorial tells you is about some of the different default Blood Codes you can pick and how to use your special attacks.

Code Vein's combat is uh, it's something alright, and by something I mean R1 spam to win. It's not at all difficult, I've never even used my special attacks. It's similar to Darksouls or Bloodborne in about appearance only. It's not as difficult, enemies aren't nearly as dangerous and given how easy it is to level up you're not really worried about taking damage at all. I think I died maybe once before the first boss to a big guy I pissed off because he did a weird AOE stomp attack that I couldn't get away from.
The game also likes to shove AI partners on you, and it's not like summons or anything, they're just there with you. Always. They make the already easy combat completely trivial, you can easily sit back and let them do most of the fighting outside of bosses and you are golden. Also, the AI partners never shut the fuck up. Ever.
While general combat is easy as fuck, trying to get backstabs for whatever reason is finicky as all hell. Apparently, either hitboxes are wonky or the game just arbitrarily decides "no. I don't think you w i l l backstab" because I can be in the same spot, the same distance from an enemy's back and sometimes I backstab and other times I do a regular attack. Parrying also seems wonky and finicky but that could also just be because I've never been good at parrying in Bloodborne or Darksouls.
Maybe the combat will get more difficult, to be fair I've only fought the first boss so far but it really doesn't seem promising.

Speaking of Bosses, the first boss is dumb. He's not necessarily difficult, although he killed me 3 times. It's more an issue of hope you see his weird red AOE telegraph before he does it. Unfortunately half the time you can't or won't see it because he's huge, you have to get up close to hit him and the telegraph for that attack is that you have a split second to see him smash a red thing in his hand and gtfo before you are flung across the stage because r e d.
Like I've had problems with Bloodborne bosses, don't get me wrong, but normally they're telegraphed well enough that you will see the attack they're about to do. Even if it is an AOE. Even if the Boss is huge as well, because they don't make the telegraph for said AOE literally just the boss smashes a tiny thing in his hand. For example, Ludwig in the Old Hunters DLC does an AOE with his sword during his second phase and even if you're right up on him you can still see it because the telegraphing for him about to do it is 1.)he stops 2.)He lifts his sword up for a solid few seconds 3.)Explodes 4.)Then draws his sword back behind him to do a slash and finally slams the sword onto the ground to do a death laser. It's well-telegraphed and for good reason, because it can do a massive fuckton of damage.

The game's environments are also just boring and uninteresting. There is no ambiance or anything to add atmosphere. Like the first area is just, a cave. That's it. There aren't any ambient sounds, the enemies don't make any sounds unless you aggro them it's just quiet. Like Bloodborne is quiet too but there's ambiance. When you first get into Central Yharnam you can hear people in the house coughing, crying, laughing, etc. You can hear enemies patrolling around either via their voice lines or the sounds of axes being dragged and footsteps on the ground. You can hear the giant trolls groaning and moaning, the pig in the sewers making pig sounds, etc. Hell even going up the ladder to the first lamp you hear the Cleric Beast scream. There's ambiance and it makes the area more spooky and intimidating, especially when you're first playing and have no idea what you'll run into.

Code Vein's aesthetics also just clash with each other I feel, it's a Souls-like and they're normally intimidating. The game's environments are like a cave full of monsters, a wrecked city, stuff like that which should be intimidating. Then you just have Anime girl and Anime boy in edgy outfits. It just clashes and sort of makes everything feel weird and goofy rather than y'know intimidating or spooky or anything.

Overall so far, this game just feels like somebody wanted to make Darksouls, but didn't understand what makes Darksouls fun in the first place. It's instead a boring mess that overcomplicates random aspects, barely touches on others, and just leaves the game feeling unfun.
It most certainly is not worth the 60 dollar price tag it has on the PlayStation store, hell I got it on sale for 20 and I'm still disappointed I spent that much on it.

---

Edit
I've played the game some more since I first wrote this so I'm going to tack on some addendums instead of fully rewriting the post.

Firstly the game is honestly more fun doing co-op with real friends as opposed to playing solo with just the AI. Mostly because playing with friends can just turn the game into a hack n slash as opposed to a boring Darksouls-y slog. Also if you're in a voice call with friends you can make fun of whats going on or talk about it in general. That's not really something that affects gameplay but it'd made the game slightly more tolerable.

Secondly the games pace is atrocious. Within about 2 hours my friend and I had cleared two areas and defeated two bosses. Thats including our multiple attempts at the bosses and having to fight the same boss between both of our games. The game barely promotes exploring. You c a n explore but when you can easily reach a boss arena just by going straight through the level why would you? I do it out of habit, but so far in the game there's been no progression reasons to actually go off the beaten path to get anywhere.

Speaking of bosses by the way, they've all been poorly telegraphed so far. They all just kind of do shit. It just happens, there's no lead up or obvious warning of "HEY the butterfly bitch is about to fucking spin better back up" it just happens. I think at most that boss in particular has one attack where she zig zags over the stage thats acceptably telegraphed.
Not that it really matters when hit boxes are fucked to all hell. Half the time you can properly be behind an enemy to do a backstab and the game just won't, you can be hit by things that just shouldn't hit you and the boss AI seems to love ignoring most if not all the allies you have in the arena that aren't the host. 99% of the time even if whoevers with you is beating on the boss it'll still want to go after you if you're the host.

Third of all, healing is worthless in this game co-op or otherwise. Sure healing shouldn't automatically heal you all the way, but with the way the game limits your healing items you pretty much waste it all after you've been hit once. I know they limited it because "Well Estus is limited in Darksouls" but what I've seen of a friend of mine playing Darksouls, Estus y'know actually heals you significantly enough that you don't have to chug it all because like one enemy hit you twice. You can't even get out of the danger zone once you're in it with your healing items unless you chug like most of it in Code Vein because immediately afterwards you get hit, especially during bosses where they seem to love specifically targeting you as you try to heal. That's really poor design considering so far I'm limited to healing myself 4 times, my friend is limited to 3 and during Co-op you have a grand old 2 chances to heal yourself. You can get some items that also let you heal yourself but aren't the one that regenerates upon death or resting at mistle but I haven't found any since the first area soooo.
Hell even as an example with Bloodborne, your Blood vials aren't limited and you can carry up to 20 on you at a time and get like a stockpile of up to 600 in the storage, once you run out you're out until you find more on enemies or buy them. Yet they still heal you more than Code Vein could ever wish to. I feel like the only reason Code Vein's healing items are so dogshit are because the actual games combat is laughably not hard so to artificially 'make it harder' they made your healing items suck ass. Really though that just makes the game tedious.

Another mostly just annoyance more than anything is that anytime you rest at a mistle, which is basically just Code Vein's equivalent to a Bonfire, there's a loading screen. Which is understandable considering resting at it resets the area and enemies. But they don't hide the loading screen. Normally the loading screen takes longer than whatever you even had to do at the mistle in the first place. I know in Darksouls there's like a hidden loading screen when you use a bonfire because the screen goes all foggy, or atleast I assume its some form of a loading screen, but even with that you still get the menu prompt while that happens.
You also can't quit out of Code Vein without resting at a mistle because I guess they were incapable of just putting that in the menu instead. So you have to sit through a loading screen just to quit the game.

All in all my opinion really hasn't changed and Code Vein genuinely is just shitty and bad Darksouls but for weebs. Hell I've heard there's an area I haven't gotten to yet thats just Anor Londo but shit and bad. While I was scrolling through a list of bosses as well to try and get an idea of how long the game would be I found one the legitimately by the look of the boss enemies, seems like it'll just be a rip off of the fight with Ornstein and Smough. I'm judging that by appearance though, I haven't gotten to that boss yet and also I've never fought Ornstein and Smough I just vaguely know what they look like.