Code Vein II review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Back in 2019, Bandai Namco released Code Vein. Seemingly inspired by the Dark Souls trilogy, of which they publish, Code Vein was an edgy vampire-themed anime Souls-like with a unique take on character progression and more of a focus on a cohesive story. Following the release of Code Vein, Bandai announced a second game, Code Vein II, during the Summer Games Fest in 2025. I only just recently learned that these games are set in the same universe as another series of Bandai’s: God Eater. Code Vein II released on January 30th, 2026, and while it does have a “II” in the name, it’s more akin to a Final Fantasy numbered sequel than a real sequel.

Code Vein II follows a completely new cast of characters, unrelated story, and a whole new world to explore. If you’ve not played the first game, that’s totally fine for this, so don’t feel pressured to play the prior game before jumping into Code Vein II. It keeps a lot of the same systems, such as the Blood Codes, the different pseudo-transformation abilities, and the original combat style, albeit with some tune-ups. If you’ve already played the first game, you should find yourself right at home here in the second.

Evolving upon the first game, you’ll notice right away that instead of just blood powers, there appears to just outright be magic in Code Vein II. You could make the argument that the blood powers and whatnot the revenants had in Code Vein I were also magic, but this is explicitly time travel. I’m not a lore expert so I don’t really grasp what that means, but it’s not something I missed. The time travel does open up some interesting mechanics though, albeit it doesn’t seem like it goes into the depths I originally believed at the start of the game. When you first enter the past and complete the tutorial-ish segment there, you’re brought back to the present against your will and given two choices. The figurehead of your organization tells you that you shouldn’t change the past and to meet her at the base of operations, but you’re given another choice: to go back in time and stop the deaths of people you just spent the last couple hours meeting and getting to know. Out of curiosity, I decided to go back in time. I was met with what I assume to be an optional boss fight and party member acquisition, changing the future when I returned. Characters were alive that weren’t before, as well as changing the overall number of people around in the base area. Several hours into the game later and that never happened again. It really does just introduce a cool optional path and then completely abandon it in favor of the past only being used for plot progression.

The story is hit or miss, it’s got its highs but a fair bit of lows. Story beats just kinda get thrown at you suddenly with no real build up, especially one of the first “past” major encounters. They try to weave bits together with the memory sequences from the first game, but it’s still just a lot of NPC background story that doesn’t really seem to make you care about any of it. The characters themselves are alright, they’ve got some good personality to each of them, but they don’t blend particularly well together or into the overall story.

Code Vein II’s biggest moment of “Ahh okay I get what this is” was the world. You can pinpoint which FromSoft game released or was massive around the time of each Code Vein’s presumed development start, which really drives home what Code Vein II is directly inspired by. The first game was released in 2019, 3 years after Dark Souls III, whereas Code Vein II was released in 2026, a little over 3 years after Elden Ring. Going from the more “level” based structure of the first game to the open world system of Code Vein II makes it a little more obvious what Code Vein is heavily influenced by. It’s a little unfortunate, because it often has you directly comparing this game to Elden Ring, making it really hard for it to stand on its own legs.  This isn’t entirely unfair however, because Bandai publishes Elden Ring and obviously makes Code Vein in house. It has its own little sporadic overworld dungeons sometimes with solid rewards, a mount to get around faster, strong “miniboss” enemies scattered throughout randomly, etc. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in theory, because it’s effectively just the formula for open world games. It does become a problem, however, as you discover and interact with these things and realize it’s just a few steps down from the comparison. The quality of these things just don’t seem all that fantastic.

The miniboss enemies are way too frequent to the point that they’re just an annoying roadblock, the world’s layout is spotty and inconsistent leading to a lack of sensible cities and towns and the like, and the checkpoints for quickly teleporting around the map are far and between it seems like, even amidst a lot of exploration. This leads to a generally boring map with a tedious exploration. I’m not really sure if this could be fixed with updates either, given the map issues aren’t easily mended.

As is tradition with modern releases, especially if you’re a PC player, performance is a must in the review process and discussion. Code Vein II runs on Unreal Engine 5 and as expected it brings all sorts of performance problems we’ve come to be familiar with by this point. Stuttering, hitches in rendering, you name it. It doesn’t seem to run very well, struggling to maintain a solid framerate on high settings on a PC more than capable of running it. I can’t speak on the console version(s) of Code Vein II, but the PC port is not fantastic. I imagine performance will get better with time if they go that route, but as it stands it’s not as good as it should be.

All-in-all, I don’t think Code Vein II is bad. It’s mostly an improvement over some of the stiffness and art direction of the first game, bringing new features, weapons, and jails for players to build their characters around. The music is still great, albeit more orchestral than the grunge of the first game’s collaboration with VAMPS. The biggest problem that this franchise (is it a franchise yet?) struggles with seems to be chasing the Souls-Ring feel but not nailing it as much as I’d have hoped for the second entry. If you liked the first game, you’ll absolutely enjoy Code Vein II, but costing $70 in a market with other similar titles is a tough ask for people looking to get into Code Vein. Code Vein II isn’t a bad game, it’s rather far from it, but it falls short where it needs to really hit hard.

Note: Bandai Namco provided us with a PC code for review purposes.

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