Despite never actually getting around to laying hands on it myself, I’ve always enjoyed the warmth people infused into the unofficial title “Anime Dark Souls” for Code Vein. Developed by Bandai Namco Studios, the 2019 Soulslike has enjoyed a dedicated fanbase among those chasing the intensity of FromSoftware’s signature combat but housed in an art direction and overall tone that would make even the crunchiest of rolls blush. Set in a post-apocalyptic world of vampires and proper nouns, the game’s efforts to emulate the popular action subgenre and plop a ushanka on it made for something eye-catching, if a little green around the edges.
Six years later and Bandai are taking another bite with Code Vein II, pitching it as less of a direct sequel and more of a total reimagining of intentions and systems. Bigger, louder, and faster, we recently attended a brief look at the new entry, which is aiming for a 2026 release.
Played out across two separate eras, the Present and Past (separated by about a 100 years), you’ll once again be running a Revenant hunter, specialised combatants who use the vampiric magic of the Revenants to maintain the new, unstable coexistence between human and creature of the night. A world in which Revenants and humans cohabitate wouldn’t make for much action for a hunter, though, so Code Vein II posits that a new type of magic is transforming Revenants into Horrors, and the only way to stop it is to jump back in time and figure this mess out. Your hunter will be teamed up with a young woman named Lou, who can manipulate time and enable the game to essentially double up on its levels and blow out the scale of its burgeoning lore.
The presentation only gave us the briefest of looks at how this Present and Past structure will work, with the Present timeline consumed by an aggressively veiny magic web in the sky and the Past still looking relatively chill, despite the whole post-apocalypse thing. There was a clear aesthetic divide between the eras, both deploying dramatically different lighting and colour palettes, but the core level seemed relatively unchanged. We’ve recently seen Lords of the Fallen use a similar trick to get more bang for your buck from play spaces by shifting between versions of them rather than whole new levels, so it could be neat here.
The Past also looks to give players access to a roster of recruitable companion Revenants (how this will work with moving between eras, I have no clue, but I sincerely hope the game accounts for time-misplaced characters and reacts accordingly). These gloriously overdesigned vampires are just one of the many pillars of Code Vein II’s revamped (I didn’t do that on purpose, but it’s staying in here) combat systems, the game boasting a whole host of new weapons, abilities, and juiced-up classes. Evidently, it’s impossible to tell how this all feels from a hands-off, early-days demo, but Bandai seem keenly aware of what players enjoyed in the first game and has built a sequel tailored to that.
Balancing Jails (flashy attacks and abilities powered by Icor gathered from foes), Formaes (additional systems built around offensive and defensive straterfies that can be embedded in gear), as well as your Blood Code (class) and a whole host of potential Partners (partners), Code Vein II looks to be building a clockwork of combat systems. And that’s before you touch the seven new types of weapons, now widened to include ranged options like rifles and bows. The demo showed off your usual assortment of blocks and parries too, all of which were characteristically extravagantly animated and showy, a Code Vein mainstay it seems like. Of all of these elements, I find the Partner system the most interesting; the ability to deploy a second body at a boss in a Soulslike, either on the offence or simply drawing heat away from you, sounds great, and the demo showed Lue using some AOE time magic in combat for good measure.
Until we can get some hands-on time with these ideas, though it’s all strictly academic, unlike Code Vein II’s immediately obvious goofiness (complementary). Starting from character design, in which everyone has gaping holes in their bodies and mechanical hearts strapped to their backs, and working your way up to the massive motorcycle you can use to traverse the map, Code Vein is nothing if not unique. The massive OC energy given off by its general character art has been heightened here too, the sequel built with customisation in mind and offering players more outfits, dyes, and 20 different voice tracks to choose from. Much like the first game, I still can’t quite tell if the motley aesthetics activate or trigger me, but I admire any series that makes a Choice with art direction and just guns it.
With this many moving parts and ideas at play, and this early in what we’ve seen of it all, it’s impossible to tell if Code Vein II will pull its threads into a unified vision, but its efforts to differentiate itself as more than just a sequel are compelling. Or at the very least, pretty earnest; Soulslikes are too often trapped by poor emulations of grimdark, so a vaguely-cheesy swing into gothic horror might go a long way. Provided the parry feels good at least.
One part pretentious academic and one part goofy dickhead, James is often found defending strange games and frowning at the popular ones, but he's happy to play just about everything in between. An unbridled love for FromSoftware's pantheon, a keen eye for vibes first experiences, and an insistence on the Oxford comma have marked his time in the industry.
