REVIEW – Code Vein II upgrades its visuals, combat feel, and locations by more than the usual sequel bump, but choppy pacing, too much “telling out loud,” and tonal whiplash keep it firmly in the “pretty good” lane instead of “must-play.”

 

The original Code Vein launched in 2019 and mashed together the then-booming soulslike formula with unapologetic anime style: a post-apocalypse, a bleak tone, and a setting where even the survivors don’t all escape “corruption” unscathed. The cast leaned hard into provocative designs and fan service, but the story still played it dark, and the world felt genuinely oppressive. Compared to that, Code Vein II is tied to its predecessor mostly by name – its plot stands largely on its own, and the overall vibe shifts noticeably toward something more fantasy-leaning.

 

 

Snowfields instead of rusty back alleys

 

Time travel sits at the center of the plot – not as window dressing, but as a direct objective: rewriting a future that’s already gone off the rails. The game opens on a snow-covered island you have to cross to reach a portal into the past. Coming from a first game that spent most of its time in brown-red industrial corridors, parking-garage-like zones, and tight alleyways, the wide, white-open fields feel like a breath of fresh air. On PlayStation 5, the environments frequently look good enough to make you stop moving: distant water shimmering, snow whipping across the ground, trees swaying in the wind – it’s easy to get distracted just taking it in.

Not long after, the game drops a sizeable chunk of story on you, then boots you into the past and switches to a semi-open-world structure: a large island to explore, with the main thread hovering in the background. This is where one of Code Vein II’s biggest problems shows up: the pacing often falls apart in a weird, uneven way. It repeatedly flips between long stretches of exposition and then leaving you alone for an hour or two to roam around with little of real narrative weight happening. It walks an awkward line between a more Western-style, slow-burn approach and the tighter, more focused rhythm you expect from JRPG storytelling – and in that in-between space, the whole thing can feel disjointed. Is it trying to be an open-world soulslike, or an anime JRPG? A lot of the time you just want to sprint through areas to hit the next story beat, but the narrative usually arrives as big info dumps rather than a gradual, natural reveal.

That push-and-pull creates a constant identity crisis: you can’t always tell what the game wants to be, and the overall flow ends up tripping over its own feet.

 

 

A faster blade, a cheaper punch

 

Combat, at least, is a clear step up from the first game. It’s still brutally punishing, with even basic enemies capable of deleting you in two or three hits – a regular reminder that there’s no coasting here. When things go your way, though, it feels great: a quick ambush, a clean kill before the enemy even reacts, and you get that sharp, satisfying payoff. The flip side is that it can also feel unfair, especially when an enemy sneaks in what seems like a random hit and erases a huge chunk of your health in an instant. Even so, the moment-to-moment fighting is noticeably snappier than the original’s slower, heavier swings, and the sequel leans more into agility and pressure than the careful, deliberate timing the first game often demanded.

The scenery upgrade comes with a trade-off. As mentioned, the graphics and environments are a massive leap forward, but what they represent doesn’t always fit the story. Code Vein was relentlessly ruined and dark; it could be repetitive, sure, but the repetition supported the post-apocalyptic tone. Here, plenty of locations look like vacation postcard material – sunny beaches, calm forests, “nice walk” energy. That creates an internal contradiction: it’s hard to feel the weight of an apocalypse when you’re standing on a beautiful shore or casually strolling through the woods.

 

 

Censorship, fan service, and an awkward middle ground

 

There’s one shift that deserves more than a shrug: the way Code Vein II handles fan service and censorship. For some players it won’t matter, but for others it’ll be an immediate deal-breaker, so it needs to be addressed. The first game felt more adult-coded across both story and presentation. The sequel, by contrast, carries a lower age rating, and you can see it in the character designs: more coverage, black shorts added under outfits, longer clothing layers, costume tweaks, and a much softer presence of the cheeky, ecchi-style vibe that used to contrast so effectively with the grim tone.

The strangest part is that the game still keeps plenty of overtly voluptuous characters in revealing outfits, which makes the whole thing feel less like a consistent creative choice and more like a rushed compromise. It’s as if it’s trying to pull back and keep the same energy at the same time – and together, it can look borderline absurd.

All that said, Code Vein II is still fun – it’s just carrying several issues that feel baked into its structure. The split between open-world wandering, a story that frequently takes a back seat, pacing swings, and tonal inconsistencies leaves the impression of a team trying to do too much at once, and ending up with something that doesn’t fully click. This is a solid game, not a mind-blower, and it really needed more urgency in its storytelling and less forced exploration slowing everything down.

-Gergely Herpai “BadSector”–

Our review copy was provided courtesy of GeekStore.hu.

Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Developer: Bandai Namco Studios
Genre: Action RPG (soulslike)
Release: January 29, 2026