Code Vein

The pitch

Code Vein is Bandai Namco's anime-styled souls-like: you play a Revenant in a post-apocalyptic world, building a heavily customised vampire character and pairing with an AI or human "Buddy" partner through combat-focused dungeon crawls. It leans hard into anime aesthetics and character customisation depth rather than trying to be a straight Dark Souls clone.

The character creator earns its reputation

Across both positive and negative reviews, the character creation system is treated as a genuine highlight rather than a footnote. "There are no parameter 'points' for you to distribute as you level up... [the build system genuinely shines]," reads one detailed 570-vote review. Reviewers who are otherwise lukewarm on the rest of the game still single this system out specifically — it's one of the few elements this corpus doesn't meaningfully dispute.

An accessible souls-like, by design

Several reviewers frame the more forgiving difficulty as a deliberate, reasonable choice rather than a failure to be "real" Dark Souls. "I'm writing this as a Dark Souls veteran (1000+ hours) who doesn't really care for Anime. First off — is this Anime Souls? Absolutely. But is it a bad ripoff? Absolutely [not]," reads a 683-vote review. Another recommends it specifically as a softer on-ramp: "Are you looking for an easier Dark Souls?" Whether that's a selling point or a letdown depends entirely on what a buyer wants from the genre.

The co-op problem

The most specific, serious complaint in this corpus concerns online play. "Important info for anybody buying this for coop: only the host gets story progression and you cannot use save points during online play. Item pickups are not shared between [players]," reads a detailed 114-vote review. Others report discovering this limitation only after buying the game specifically to play with a partner: "This game was bought with the intention of multiplayer with my husband. Learning that multiplayer [doesn't work as expected]..." reads a 187-vote review from October 2025 — evidence this isn't a launch-era issue that's since been resolved, but a design limitation reviewers are still encountering years later. Combined mentions of co-op and its variants appear in nearly half of the 100 most-helpful negative reviews.

Combat feel and level design

Beyond the co-op issue, the most common gameplay criticism concerns combat feedback: "There's a huge disconnect between your weapons and enemy reaction and feedback," reads one review, a complaint echoed across others describing hits that don't feel impactful. Level design draws similar frustration — "running through bland, samey labyrinths and slaloming corridors over and over" is a common framing, with several reviewers describing environments that start strong and become repetitive across the game's length.

Where sentiment sits now

Recent English review sentiment — the 100 most recent reviews, spanning mid-July to August 2026 — runs 71% positive, notably below the 86.1% lifetime score. That gap is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as noise; it suggests whatever satisfied the bulk of this game's original audience is landing less consistently with more recent buyers, and the co-op complaints appearing as recently as October 2025 are a plausible contributor. Achievement data shows a typical shape for the genre: median completion across 43 achievements is 27.3%, consistent with a demanding but genuinely playable-through game.

Verdict

Code Vein delivers exactly what it promises to the audience it's built for — deep character customisation, an accessible souls-like combat system, and an unapologetic anime-vampire aesthetic — and does the character creator part especially well. Where it falls short is specific and documented: combat feedback that several reviewers find unsatisfying, repetitive level design, and a co-op implementation that multiple buyers say doesn't deliver full story progression for anyone but the host. If you're buying for solo play, this is a reasonable, distinctive souls-like. If you're buying specifically to play through the story with a friend, check current reviews on that point before committing.