The pre-order page is up on Steam, so that must mean they really mean it this time. The game really will come out this year, on Sept 26th.
As a SoulsBorne & -like fanatic, playing the recent Network Test of this has lessened my anticipation for the game unfortunately.
The greatest challenge for me was not the opponents- who are push-overs compared to even the early stages most Souls-likes- but the screen cluttered with HUD elements, too-long enemy death animations & also in most interior areas, the AI companion following you obscures your over-the-shoulder POV- particularly if they’re equipping a large weapon. To me, the character models look larger than or the camera is closer to them than most Souls-likes.
There are things that can be done to mitigate all of these issues- eg. have the option for smaller HUD elements for larger displays & move them closer to the margins, or remove what you don’t need; and make your AI companion transparent when in proximity or include the option to move the camera POV further behind- and dare I say, higher difficulty settings ! :P
But I’m not confident these will considered or implemented even after launch… no option was given for this kind of feedback in Bandi Namco’s follow-up survey. I won’t be getting this on release now, but may revisit it on sale later.
Also, the Blood Codes (interchangable classes) seemed pretty extraneous in the Beta. There was no reason for me to change my class to overcome any obstacle- because the opponents were push-overs- though I imagine that some further levels in the full game may call for that.
This showed up as “Code Vein - Trial version” under the Summer Games Spotlight on Xbox. It’s only 8.59GB. Downloading tonight, I might get to play it tomorrow.
Out now. Anyone playing? There’s no Steam reviews yet.
Most reviews seem to be pretty tepid on the game:
Chill Dark Souls is everything I want from a Souls-like. ;)
…and I bought it. Downloading now. What can I say? I have a soft spot for anime and Dark Souls and I always wanted a Dark Souls-like game that is more varied and approachable (and less tense). And I enjoyed the first God Eater, so there’s that.
Impressions soon.
Weird trailer where they show like 5 seconds of combat.
So… how was it @rhamorim? Everything you hoped for in an anime/souls game? I am eyeballing this one during the winter sale…
I’m about 30 hours in and I enjoyed almost every single minute throughout. It is very much Dark Souls mixed with God Eater and a lot more approachable (in terms of difficulty) than any Souls, while still being potentially as hard as you want it to be.
Combat is enjoyable and has lots of options in terms of builds and whatnot. Story is cool, characters too. Level design is not as good as in Dark Souls, but what is? I don’t think it’s bad at all - it’s TONS better than God Eater, for instance - but if level design was your favorite part of Dark Souls, there’s a chance you might not enjoy this as much.
Right now I’m stuck on Code Vein’s version of Ornstein and Smough, in what is likely the most difficult boss fight in the entire game (and a lot closer to the end of the game, too), but I’ll get past it eventually. So there.
Nice! That’s good enough for me =) I will have to give this a spin.
This game is damn fun!
After hearing all the criticism about how easy it is, I was pleasantly surprised by the challenge. Just like a number of souls and souls-alikes, the player has a lot of control over its difficulty. Build diversity is where it truly excels. The anime stuff kicks my aesthetic sense right between the legs, however. ymmv (what I say after a delicious, extra spicy meal).
It is!
I’m stuck at the boss after “Ornstein & Smough” now, but with Monster Hunter World: Iceborne out, it will be a while until I return to Code Vein. I will return, though. I really like the game.
Yesterday, Gamestop had this for $10 in their black friday sale, but when I checked online, the new copy of the game was not available, but you buy the used version for $9 instead. That annoyed me greatly. So I’ll wait a bit more until it hits that price point digitally I guess.
I recently talked about picking up Code Vein on sale over in the black friday damage thread, and also talked a little about playing the beginning of it in the weekend gaming thread. This is sort of a general reply to those people that were also on the fence about buying the game.
I’ve put maybe five or six hours into the game as of right now. Initially I was bouncing off the game pretty hard for the first couple hours because the controls felt a little jittery/janky, the passages were all narrow with lots of ledges that could kill you when you’re dodging/rolling, and it felt like there was no weight (or OOOMPH) at all behind my attacks. Most of the monsters died after a single hit with my large hammer weapon, and the class & spell/skill system felt a little convoluted. But after a couple hours I made it past all the very early trash mobs, reached a new home base of sorts, and the game started to feel a whole lot better.
I’d say the main turning point for me was when I hit a serious roadblock early on, in the form of the first major boss, the Butterfly of Delirium.
(Trivia: She has a giant toothy tentacle creature that lives in her butt.)
My first couple attempts on the boss ended in failure, but then I went back and upgraded my gear and quickly returned and found myself… dying several more times. So I did a better job preparing for my next go-round with her. The first thing I did was start paying a lot better attention to my gear, class, and skills. Up until this point I’d just been using the default gear, class, and skills. Sure, I had upgraded everything as much as I could, but I was playing strictly melee and getting obliterated for it from her rapid attacks and constant bursts of AE poison. So I decided to change everything up, but in order to afford the changes it meant I’d have to go back out and explore/fight through trash mobs in order to change anything. And that’s what I did.
After going back out into the field I found a couple different directions to explore in the game world that I hadn’t seen before. One was called “The Pit”, tons of experience and upgrade components there. The other were a set of unlocked battle maps called The Depths, accessible through a guy that hangs out at the home base. Lots of experience and upgrade components there, too.
I looked at all the gear I had (weapons, skills, and Blood Veils (a sort of armor)), and tried to create the best range attack character I could. I upgraded my rifle as much as I could with the components available in these areas, chose some heavy hitting spells (like fire balls), and noted that because the biggest Fireball spell benefits from my Dark Magic skill (or whatever it’s called), I chose the Blood Veil with the highest poison resist and highest Dark Magic stat buff, then I upgraded the veil as much as I could too. By the time I returned to her my gear was as good as it was going to get for now, and I had levelled up a couple more times in the interim, finally approaching her around level 26 or so. This time she died on my first new attempt (but just barely), it was still a super tough fight because I still wasn’t totally used to managing my “mana” levels and using range attacks and weapons just yet, but I pulled it off.
After beating her a big new area opened up and I’ve been exploring that ever since.
Now that the game is pushing back, and now that I’ve taken the time to use the right gear with the right skills and synergies I’m doing a lot better and the game is feeling a lot more strategic that it first felt early on. Preparation is certainly key here, and if you don’t like being forced to learn a fight through trial and error this will probably not be a good fit for you.
You’re gonna be running back and forth through the same areas a lot as you explore, return to the “campfire” heal up (and repopulate monsters), and explore some more, and the world won’t have nearly the atmosphere of Dark Souls 1 or 3, but I’m finally at the point where I’m starting to appreciate how good the game can be after its initial (for me) bad impression.
Oh, and I play on the Xbox One, no idea how this plays with a KB/Mouse set up.
Thanks for the impressions! I waffled on that from the GameStop Black Friday $10 sale, but didn’t want to pay shipping and didn’t see anything else I wanted to grab from them, so I decided to wait for it to hit that price digitally somewhere.
I picked this up in Microsoft’s black friday sale for $20 or so. Waifu Souls indeed.
I’m still getting my bearings but this seems like easy Dark Souls with epic boobs. Is there any depth to the character builds I need to worry about or should I just play? For example, is there any reason not to level up every time I’m at the bonfire? I know in Souls games you want to plan your build carefully, but in this game there are no stats to allocate. It’s all dictated by your character class (blood code?) Which you can swap whenever you want.
I don’t know all the right answers, but I’ve defeated 3 major bosses so far (not counting that initial Oliver fight at the end of the extended tutorial map) and I only tend to swap gifts, gear, and passives when I’m trying to overcome a boss. Builds seem to matter a lot more as I go along, and I suspect they’ll be crucial in the (many?) NG+++ modes there are supposed to be.
As for leveling up, I read somewhere that the more you level up the harder it is to turn your Gifts into inheritable gifts that can be used in other classes/blood codes, simple because exp slows down when you outlevel the creatures available to you, but I don’t know what else to spend my experience/souls on so I just level up anyway because I don’t like carrying around any more than I have to. I’m currently 43 or so and have a ton of consumable Haze shards that I can use if I need the points for upgrades etc.
Right now I’m on a mission to find Queen’s Steel, as I only have 1 so far and I can’t upgrade my equipment past +3 till I find more.
I’m just walking along, minding my own business, when suddenly I start getting Dark Souls PTSD flashbacks after stumbling into this place for the first time:
Cathedral of Sacred Blood:
I’m just about done with the Cathedral. I murdered the final boss of the map this morning, and only have a few secrets left to find, based on my map completion rating of 87%.
That boss though, the Successor of the Ribcage, what a death run. It probably took me ten attempts to figure it out, after trying and failing to take it down with various range attack builds. Not the way to tackle that one, I’ll tell ya.