Vampires, anime, time travel — what’s not to love? If Code Vein was an anime vampire love letter to Dark Souls, Code Vein II is the same for Elden Ring. It’s a bigger open world, with lots of new systems to sink your teeth into, and it tells a dark, bombastic story about vampires surviving the post-post-apocalypse.
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Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads
Code Vein II hangs its hat on a pretty wild conceit — we’re in a post-post-apocalypse. The idea is that you need to travel back in time to when the world was only regularly screwed, to save it from being double-screwed in the present day. We aren’t trying to find our way back to happy days and sunshine, just to stop the second apocalypse from swallowing the world.
This throughline really kept me going in the story. In each chapter, you find the resting place of a great hero, then travel back in time to when they were at the height of their power. You get to know them and help them solve a couple of huge challenges in their era.
Once you’ve gathered the intel you need to unlock their final conflict, back in the present, you have to battle the corrupted, monstrous versions of the NPCs you’ve just spent hours getting to know. I loved the conflict at the centre of this — meeting a new hero, getting to know them and hearing their struggles, then ultimately having to destroy them to forward your own objective.
Being a time-travel story, there are even some big moments where you can change the past to impact the present, as well as multiple endings depending on the decisions you make.
Sun’s Out, Guns Out
You’ll spend a lot of time fighting things in Code Vein II, so the combat had better be good. To start, the weapon selection is really great and expanded compared to the original. Through your adventure, you’ll have access to swords, bigger swords, multiple swords, floating swords, bayonets (swords on guns), as well as many other instruments of death. What is a hammer, if not a big, blunt sword?
Combat is a massive part of the story. Almost every interaction is solved in either a melodramatic anime cutscene, at the end of a sword, or both. Unfortunately, combat didn’t grab me as much as the open world and the time-travelling story. Though the weapon selection is great, I felt it was inconsistent. Some weapons would do wild amounts of damage, while others felt ineffective against anything but the smallest enemies.
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There’s a downside to the bombastic anime character and enemy designs as well, because an enemy with multiple arms and a silhouette like a Rorschach test can be really difficult to read at a glance. Add that to the fact that getting knocked down gives you a brief invulnerability window, but that is shorter than the window in which you can’t move. So there were multiple times I’d get knocked down, and then knocked down again, before I’d regained control.
The combat is mostly tough but fair, aside from the occasional stun-lock. There are heaps of options available to you. At times, it can seem like there are a few too many options available. For me, this meant picking one path to take my hero down and sticking to it. I focused on the bayonet as my weapon class, so a rifle with ranged shots, and some up-close melee. Once I unlocked a second weapon slot, having the versatility to switch between that and a sword was great.
So yes, there are certainly some rough edges. But for fans of bombastic anime vampires and high-difficulty fights, I still think there’s a lot to like here.
A Broken World
The world of Code Vein II is post-post-apocalypse, which means I spent time tearing down crumbling highways between destroyed buildings and flooded avenues. There are a scant few survivors still eking out an existence in this world, huddled in isolated settlements and desperately keeping the horrors at bay.
The world itself is a huge part of the story, and the characters spend much of their time just trying to survive. It really surprised me how beautiful it is. There are sweeping roads that carve between dilapidated buildings, destroyed structures long since reclaimed by nature, and a fair share of horrifying monster lairs.
My one gripe is that there isn’t often much difference between the post-post-apocalypse and the regular post-apocalypse.
I just wish there were a bit more to do in the open world. Early on, you unlock a suitably gothic motorcycle for jetting around. This makes travel significantly easier, but outside of stopping to fight random enemies or visiting a mysterious shopkeeper in a crumbling railyard, there isn’t a whole lot to do.
Getting to know each hero is a big part of the story.
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It’s Dangerous To Go Alone
Anyone who played the original Code Vein will remember that you could dive into the adventure with a co-op partner. Unfortunately, that’s one big feature missing this time around. You aren’t able to have a real-world friend join your anime vampire shenanigans.
Instead, you have a constant AI companion that follows you through the dilapidated world. These are, of course, the eventual big bad bosses you’ll have to defeat. But for the time being, they’re combatants who dive into each dangerous boss fight with you. And the cherry on top is that they’re actually very useful.
Each companion has their own weapons and abilities, and spending longer with them unlocks new Blood Codes for your hero. Blood Codes are essentially stat lines that help you lean into your character build — kind of like classes in a traditional RPG.
For example, Josee is the greatsword-wielding wild child. She deals big, heavy hits and draws enemy aggro very well. Spending time with her unlocks a Blood Code that boosts strength and vitality, as well as a passive that recovers your Ichor (spent on abilities) while fighting. If you think of Blood Codes like classes, it’s a very cool system — unlocking new ones as you progress.
The AI companion can also meld into your body for a solo experience, giving you a buff to your stats. But with my playstyle, having them split enemy attention was far more useful, particularly in boss fights.
The world plays a huge part in the story — so you’d better save it.
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Should you buy Code Vein II?
If you enjoyed Code Vein, this is a refinement of that formula in many ways. Code Vein II offers a larger world, with more abilities, weapons and systems built in. That can be overbearing at times — sometimes I felt like there were one too many things to juggle in a single fight. Likewise, there is a cool story here, if you don’t mind your fair share of melodrama.
But if you like your RPGs on the more casual side, the difficulty in Code Vein II could turn you away. Step with caution, vampires don’t hold back.
CODE VEIN II is out now on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S from around $99.95 AUD.
Quest Daily scores Code Vein II:
8/10
Quest Daily was provided a copy of Code Vein II by the publisher.
