Code Vein 2 review: "This vampire take on Elden Ring almost works, but the dungeons themselves lack bite"

Code Vein 2 is the dullest game about time-traveling vampires I've ever played. A decent Soulslike has been stretched far too thin, resulting in a repetitive and bland open world adventure that severely lacks what made its stylish predecessor special.

For the uninitiated, Code Vein was essentially an anime take on Dark Souls, both in its art style and love of wailing melodrama. Beneath all the cartoon theatrics was a solid Soulslike and that continues in this sequel. Combat is all about dodge-rolling and well-timed strikes, if you die you lose all your leveling up currency and have once chance to get it back, and bosses are brutal brick walls that you'll spend hours smashing your head against. If you've played a Soulslike before, you've played this.

The main characters are 'revenants', immortal bloodsuckers who are vampires in all but name. They don't physically age, which makes them an odd choice for a time travel story. There's an upcoming apocalypse, you see, and the only way to stop it is to crack open the spherical tombs of five legendary heroes and slay them (well, obviously). But to break open those spheres, you'll first have to bond with the heroes a hundred years in the past. Then hop back into the present and finish them off.

So the plot is absolutely bananas. But that didn't put me off because I love time travel in games. The promise of getting to explore two distinct time periods is a great hook. Sadly, it's almost completely wasted. So little changes that I often had to check on the pause screen to see which time period I was in (again, they're meant to be a century apart). Scenery is mostly identical, and even the enemies are often standing in the exact same spots. Points for commitment, I suppose? A few key locations change for story beats but this feels like a massive missed opportunity.

A-poor-calypse

It's an ugly world to explore in either century. This is a dramatically worse-looking game than the original Code Vein, a generic ruined city with little of the first game's inspired art direction. Broken down buildings and abandoned cars don't have to be dull – The Last of Us 2 is one of the most beautiful games ever made – but this world is the wrong kind of lifeless. The most striking visual novelty here is often the amount of pop-in in the PS5 version.

But the biggest flaw has to be the dungeons. Code Vein 2 has you exploring water treatment plants, substations, and other tedious real-world locations I try so hard to avoid in real life. These are so similar to each other that I often got lost purely because I was mixing them up in my memory. Where's the supernatural twist on these locations? I replayed the first couple of dungeons in Code Vein, and they were both more interesting visually and mechanically than the majority of what you get in 2.

There's too much dull commuting (between this and Metroid Prime 4, being given a motorbike in an open world game is becoming a real red flag). But at least the rewards for exploring are worth it. Essential, really, if you want enough health upgrades to best its nastiest bosses. The map is just opaque enough that figuring out how to reach certain parts of it is a fun puzzle in itself. But something's gone seriously wrong with your dungeon crawler when I can enjoy tracking down a dungeon, then immediately wish I didn't have to go through the tedium of exploring that dungeon.

Even the most diligent eco-warrior would think this game recycles too much. The same enemies reappear constantly. Bosses aren't immune from this either, and they should be the main events in a Soulslike. Think back to all the times you walked through the fog gate in Dark Souls, excited to see what incredible new boss you were about to face. Now imagine how deflating it is to see an enemy you've fought a dozen times already, only now with a bigger health bar. The first time I fought a golden mech with a cat figurine living inside it was a surreal treat. Not so much a dozen battles with it later.

What saves this from being a complete disaster is the combat. You always have an NPC companion fighting with you. Handy for helping you take down enemies, even handier for being used as bait while you sneak up behind said enemy for a cheeky backstab. But in Code Vein these NPCs could die, leaving you to struggle against the encounters alone. Code Vein 2 wisely just makes your companion invincible, but not so powerful that they'll beat the bosses for you.

Resurrection has also been overhauled for the better. Die in combat and your companion will revive you, but temporarily disappear in the process. Die before they return and you perish properly. Oh and each time you die, the health you're resurrected with gets smaller and the wait for your companion to return gets much longer.

It encourages you to take risks and makes throwing yourself at a boss for a hail mary attack a valid strategy. I had some wonderfully tense moments where I was desperately dodge-rolling around the boss arena, begging my companion to come back and take this pummelling for me.

Each weapon can be assigned a selection of special attacks and some of these are absolutely game-changing. Like the one which lets you lob your weapon and have it spin in place like an extra-sharp death tornado. Or my personal favorite, that sends two swords orbiting your opponent, occasionally taking breaks from spinning around them to stab them in the face. Lovely.

Bloody Clever

Naturally, such over-the-top treats don't come free. To regenerate the currency for using them, you'll have to steal blood from your foe. You have a secondary attack, called a 'jail', which saps blood out of enemies. With each hit you're inflicting more wounds on their body, and the more wounds you've inflicted first, the more blood a successful jail strike will withdraw.

It gives combat a furious momentum where you're often rewarded for being constantly on the attack. Hanging back is an option, of course, but you'll only be able to lob so many cheap fireball strikes or sword tornados from afar before you have no choice but to get up close and personal so you bag yourself some blood.

Against the faster enemies this can be an absolute nightmare, but that's not a complaint. I enjoyed swapping out jails between boss attempts, trying to find the best fit. A set of spikes that I can make shoot out of the floor from afar, or a twin-headed wolf whose ferocious jaws rip blood out of bodies? Decisions, decisions…

There's a decent variety of jails and tons of special attacks to be discovered if you do commit to exploring. The problem is that you'll almost definitely get tired of fighting Code Vein 2's repetitive bestiary with them. If you want fresh challenges to face, you'll have to go off the critical path.

There's lots of side content and extra missions to get alternate endings. I've been playing for fifty hours and still haven't covered all of it. But it rations out the good stuff, like new bosses and plot revelations, behind yet more egregious padding. One side quest has a fun story pay off, but not fun enough for that quest to justify fighting the exact same boss four times in a row. Code Vein 2 ends up being a cautionary tale about the consequences of going open world and losing too much of what made your game enjoyable in the process.

Looking for more action? Our games like Dark Souls list should help!