While I would agree Code Vein is relatively easy, on par with the other Souls games, it should be noted that Code Vein is among the hardest souls games you can play. Code Vein was designed and meant to be played with a companion and even then, you can still get destroyed by enemies pretty quickly. Take away your companion, try to play through the entire game solo and you have exponentially ramped up the difficulty. This is even more true when considering some of the double-boss fights and the events that can occur that summon waves of enemies. If you’re looking to really challenge yourself, play Code Vein entirely solo.
I keep telling myself to stop buying games, but it looks like I can get this one for basically free thanks to some saved up Amazon points. The boob physics thing bothers me, as I have never been into the anime aesthetic, but I have always been into the Souls thing, and this review makes it sound like I could get some good mileage out of it.
I actually liked The Surge. I played a little of both Surges, but I seem to recall you had to find a machine to swap out your implants, right? It wasn’t nearly as nimble as Code Vein. But thanks for the reminder, Joe, because I did like the progression system that let you load yourself up like a computer based on available RAM. Very thematic character building in that game, although I don’t remember nearly as much variety as there is in Code Vein. I especially liked the way you could target specific parts of enemies to harvest specific types of components.
-Tom
Now THIS is what a review should be like. I’ll admit I love the anime thing and anything like freedom wars that gives me lots of visual customization but it was so sad to see people ignore this game. The grinding for a specific build in dark souls was one of the things that I found frustrating. I loved how at any moment I could completely make a new character without restarting. It kept me playing longer than any dark souls game because of that.
This game was garbage. A super weak wanna be and honestly from the uninspired level design, super repetitive combat and really poorly functioning AI, i would never choose this over not a single souls game lol even ds2 on the p3 was a lot better .
This game also lacks content big time.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m going to be removing it from my list of top ten games of 2020!
-Tom
Vein was great. I really liked it a lot. I really like the character that I built, with what is possibly the best character generation engine in the history of video games. And if the combat was just a tiny bit more precise, and if the difficulty was a a few yards higher, all the cool code and veil stuff would really have mattered. I think people who don’t play Souls games don’t realize how critical the difficulty level is to the balance of the game. If From’sDark Souls games were easier, of you could just cruise through them, no one would care. They would just be obscure action RPGs with a story that only a handful of people would have even realized was there.
Yeah, no. I think you may be thinking of a game other than code vein. The leveling systems in those two games are not terribly similar. The surge works a lot like dark souls. You collect Souls you Bank them or you don’t you level up by spending the points you pick up. Code vein doesn’t really put as much import on souls. You get souls, and you can level up, but that raises your attack power and not your defense. and that’s not even getting into the skill system, which is dominant over the game, or the veils. Surge works like any soulsy rpg. EXACTLY like any soulsy rpg. (Granted, in surge you get two legs instead of, say, pants and shoes or whatever it is In your given soulsy)
I like how the reviewer guy is like, ‘you gotta put time in to really see the good’ and the primary complaint I’m seeing is like I" turned this on played it for 5 minutes and turned it off cuz it sucked". And those of us who actually like video games, and understand how much freaking work goes into even a really simple one, are thinking 'yeah, you don’t seem to really like videogames, per se. if good games are only good in comparison to other good games… maybe try another hobby, one that you actually enjoy at levels other than absolute referential perfection." art appreciation might be right up your alley actually. Because what you do is you go to galleries and complain about how everything sucks except the stuff you’ve seen before.
Welcome to the forums new folks, between all the chat here and the review, I just downloaded the demo to give it a spin later tonight.
Yes, I find that an initial post of “If you don’t like Thing That I Like then you must not actually like video games” is an auspicious entry to the forums.
When joining a new forum, it’s important to establish dominance right away.
I liked the idea of the Souls games WAY more than I actually liked them. There’s an amazing system under there waiting to break out, but I felt it was always sabotaged by their obsession with obfuscating everything.
You have to go to a wiki to find out about hidden stats like poise and what they do. You have to go to a wiki to figure out how PvP works. You have to look up how to even find the locations or hidden items that will even let you PvP in the first place, or the stupid covenant system, which is a crime because it was one of the most fun approaches to PvP in a long while. But it was buried under Soulsfucation and everyone only played the most broken (but accessible) PvP covenant and everyone figured out you could just troll as a low level pyromancer with maxed out equipment.
Bloodborne might have been the most overrated game of last console generation. Everyone hailed it as SOUL reason (get it?) to own a PS4. I ran into the same obfuscation, and the same insistence on not giving you a map. I’m done with memorizing giant levels or drawing things out on paper. I’m tired of spending time figuring out where every new shortcut leads and where they’re all located. And on top of all that, you got a Souls first where the camera was actively hostile to you during boss fights, with framrates that dropped to Shadow of the Colossus levels if you didn’t have a PS4 Pro. I couldn’t even finish the game, and threw in the towel on the level with the explosive gatling gun sniper.
What? This was a hoary old Souls tradition by the time Bloodborne came out (and yes it was awful there, too).
It looks like there’s a weird line break in the review:
"The ingame fiction suggests codes are
DNA you get from other people."
I don’t remember it being as bad in Souls. The only terrible Souls camera moment I can remember is the Taurus demon it throws at you immediately after stepping through a mist door in that tiny area (with the 2 dog enemies) and it was all zoomed in to hell.
BB seemed like every fight the camera was either way too far out (Father Gascoigne) or way too far in (everything else). Most of the bosses were ethereal shadow creatures and the visual effect made the game take a huge frame hit.
BB probably has the worst camera because of the number of large bosses. Gascoigne is ironically maybe the only boss I can’t remember having any camera trouble with. It’s usually fast moving or flying bosses or large ones. It’s been long enough that I don’t remember too well individual camera woes, but I know all the games have had them, even Demon’s Souls.
Ninety or so minutes in and I’m definitely vibing with this one. I’ve gone without a companion, and that makes it feel a lot more like Dark Souls. I briefly traveled with one, and he was just doing tons of damage and taking all the bosses’ attention, so I turned them off, and I feel like that puts the game in a sweet spot for difficulty.
I went through the first chalice dungeon (or whatever they’re called) and really liked it. The minibosses were appropriately challenging, and there was one area where instead of a boss, it was three enemies - two small ones and one of the tall guys. As soon as you killed one, another one of the same type would spawn close by. I really had to play around with different gifts, codes, and weapons (and use the environment a little bit) to get past it because my melee fighter just couldn’t handle three dudes with different attack patterns at one time.
It’s gratifying in a different way from Dark Souls. In DS, there’s gratification in learning a fight and getting past it, but Code Vein has that plus the added gratification of having your creativity and different approaches rewarded as well.
Yes! Very well put!
-Tom