Code Vein

The 27th of October, 2025

The Oshen one has come out of their great slumber to write about a video game? Whoever could have imagined such a thing happening? The Earth will quake and the realm will tremble at the sounding of this revelation, indeed!

It’s autumn now, dear readers, a very pleasant time of the year, as the leaves change to those warm colors we all love so much. Halloween is rapidly approaching, and thus, it is time for spooky games!

And to that end, I bring you Code Vein.

Code Vein is often described as “Anime Dark Souls” and: Yeah? In many ways, that’s more or less what it is, but it’s also got a vampire gothy vibe that it’s extremely committed to, which makes this one a fun one to play around this time of the year.

I actually got Code Vein the day it came out in 2019 for the Xbox, and beat it in the first week of owning it, but for the sake of this blog, I’ve rebought it on Steam and played it anew from the beginning. In 2019, I really loved the game, and on this replay, my feelings are no different. I think Code Vein is oft overlooked, and there’s really a lot here of value for a potential player to enjoy.

The first great thing about Code Vein is the character creator.

The character creator is extremely robust and allows for a great deal of versatility in making whatever you want. If you check out any Code Vein forum or discussion online, usually what you’ll see is people’s custom characters. People make OCs (like mine), but there’s also a huge community of people who make characters from anime or other games to play as. Maybe it’s a bit of an old-head 2000s sentiment, but I think a good character creator really adds a lot of enjoyment to a game for me.

The second great thing that I must speak of is the story and characters.

Often this game is compared with Dark Souls, which is a valid comparison, but the Dark Souls games are quite lonely and sombre. In great contrast to that, this game has a boatload of character interaction and story cutscenes. The game takes this very far; you even have a selectable follower character who goes through all the levels with you, and they all have unique dialogue in which they comment on elements of the levels as you are walking through them. So while the gameplay is quite similar to Dark Souls, this is something that makes the game feel very different from it. The story is straightforward and told to the player very directly, and as the player, you have a more direct role in the narrative than something like Dark Souls.

In general, it’s also just a fun game too. The Blood Code system that you build your character with is fun, and it’s got punchy, good-feeling Bloodborne-esque combat. The game takes itself super seriously, but it’s got that anime-style writing so the characters are still personable.

Does Code Vein leave some things to be desired? Yes, the multiplayer is wack, and some of the bosses are a bit poorly designed; perhaps the game is a bit too easy; however, I think this game is criminally underrated. Simply by the nature of being an AA anime-style game, it’s already niche, but I have a lot of friends who haven’t played this one, and I suggest you change that! Code Vein often goes on sale for around 8 dollars, and it’s absolutely worth it for that price. The game is well optimized. I played this game on a mix of the Steam Deck and my desktop PC, and it ran well on both. The era this game is from is that sweet spot before we had DLSS and FSR shipping with every game, so I think this one is actually quite scalable and playable across a wide range of hardware.

Now is probably the best time to play this game too? Code Vein 2 actually comes out in a few months. From the footage released, it looks quite good as well.