What do we usually imagine when it comes to games like Dark Souls? Decay, death, gloomy scenery, dangerous enemies, a series of victories and defeats with repetitions of the path traveled and memorization of every turn. Challenging boss fights at last. In this sense Code Vein adheres to the canon only partially – the team Shift, famous for the series God Eater, offers something of his own. First of all, the anime style and character editor, where the “Physique” slider changes the size of the heroine’s breasts. Again the Japanese are at their best.
Vampires don’t suck anymore
Like any other fictional apocalypse, this one began with the fact that scientists decided to save humanity. They resurrected the dead using so-called BOR parasites, which transform the host into an immortal and powerful being. They recruited a whole army of mutants. And the matter would have ended with the victory of good over evil if GMO soldiers did not need to drink blood. As a result, a catastrophe occurred and the two races became mired in hostility. Now vampires are combing the ruins of the city of Wein in search of the last people and, along the way, collecting bloody tears growing directly from the soil, because this is the only alternative to murder.
But I’m still strained with resources: some bloodsuckers, due to hunger, become lost – stupid death machines, while others organize gangs where slaves, under the threat of violence, obtain food for their masters. A fighter against the system named Louis is equally disgusted by both options – he dreams of both feeding his brothers to the full and protecting ordinary people from violence. Why did a vampire suddenly become overwhelmed by such a whim?? He just found out that bloody tears do not ripen out of nowhere – they are fed by underground springs. To get to them, you need to revive special springs in all locations Code Vein. The plan seems to be working, but who will implement it??
This is where the immortal (or immortal – depending on the choice of gender at the start) with unique talents comes into play. The hero can activate springs, watering them with his own blood, disperse the miasma that has poisoned the world and collect memory fragments. This is important because the price of vampire superpowers is high – amnesia. And so Louis and his friends are at least able to figure out who they are, where they came from and why they still have a conscience. They could have gone completely wild and gone out into the street with a club. But no: they set up a base among the city ruins and fight for the friendship of peoples, and along the way they learn that a more terrible threat hangs over the Earth.
Ready for pathos and drama? Right. Not much of a plot Code Vein is amazing, but you can’t deny him one thing – at the right moments he produces an effect. The story is logical and the motives of each character are clear. And they are revealed with fiction: you need to turn to the girl Io to decipher the found fragment of memory and travel through a fragment of someone’s past. A few sketches snatched from the darkness – and you know why Louis suffers from depression. Even though the rebels look like cosplayers who escaped from Comic-Con, they discuss universal problems in all seriousness.
A farce based on Dark Souls
However, the script in such a work is not even half the battle, because the main part of the game is battles. The process in general terms resembles Dark Souls, where you have to collect the souls of defeated monsters, regularly die, be resurrected by the fire and fight your way back through already slaughtered enemies in order to return the lost goods. Just replace fires with mistletoe and souls with haze. Instead of classes, there are blood codes, skills useful in battle have become gifts, and the mana spent by shots and spells is called the strange word “ichor”.
The rules of battle are also familiar. The hero alternately uses two types of weapons, fast and powerful attacks, parries, somersaults and blocks, and also uses magic. Particularly strong blows can be delivered by going behind the enemy’s back or jumping on him from a height. Most monsters are slow enough that even an unprepared person can catch the moment for the desired action. But a good vampire also needs to be on guard, because his mobility depends on the weight of the weapon – with a heavy hammer, rolls become half as long. We decided to heal in the midst of battle and immediately got hit in the head? Of course this happens. And all this would be great if it worked as it should.
However, regarding battles Code Vein gives way. Every now and then the registration of hits fails: it seems that the ax was plunged into the enemy’s body, but the damage was not counted. On the other hand, the enemy does not have to touch the hero with a weapon to draw blood. It’s especially fun when the monster hits a spot right in front of him and ends up behind his back. “Yes, I managed!“- this exclamation will escape you more than once or twice. There are also glitches when the animation of individual enemies slows down while everything else is working smoothly, and outright bullying – try to dodge an area attack in a narrow corridor.
It’s hard to believe, but at some point the main threat is not monsters at all, although they come in crowds the likes of which you will never meet in any other country Dark Souls. No, the worst enemy in the studio’s action RPG Shift – the environment, in some places licked off you know why. And, alas, it’s not always clear: there are thin bridges all around, cliffs, holes in the floor, paths from which it won’t take long to fall. Add a confusing layout – in some labyrinths you need to wander for a long time, like Moses in the desert, in order to somehow advance the plot. This expression is familiar – “topographic cretinism”? Code Vein explains its meaning with specific examples.
A little bit of good things
Either the authors of the game did not have enough budget, or time (despite an additional year of development), but for almost every advantage Code Vein due to reservation. Apart from the music, it’s definitely good. But the rest raises questions. For example, a role-playing system: blood codes that determine characteristics and a set of abilities can be changed at any time. But increasing a character’s levels due to haze does not allow you to distribute points in your own way – add a bonus to strength, agility or defense. You just invest, relatively speaking, a portion of souls and get small growth on all fronts. And then twirl the template codes to slightly strengthen one and slightly weaken the other. This looks like a deliberate complication of simple mechanics.
After military feats, it’s not a sin to relax in hot springs. Although no, there is still something sinful in this.
The idea of a computer partner, instead of whom you can invite a friend and go through a difficult moment in co-op, also seems great. If you don’t need help, fight on your own; if things get difficult, take help with you. Cool, what’s the problem?? It’s about balance. Ordinary opponents are too weak: the authors have left the canon Dark Souls in the direction of the slasher, they added mass appeal – and it’s still easy to chop up devils. Unless the constant screamers (you can’t call it anything else) with monsters jumping out from around the corner and falling on your head keep you in suspense. But on bosses it’s hard without a partner. Wasn’t the co-op just a patch for this hole?? And in general, who is the game intended for – for Souls-like fans or beginners who want to push ahead, hitting one button at a time?? You can’t please both at once.
Even walks through memory palaces are not as smooth as you expect. The hero trudges too slowly through the muddy astral plane, and it’s impossible to switch to running – it feels like time is being deliberately delayed. But is there any sense in this if replicas are still allowed to be skipped?? Those who are not comfortable listening to the shadows of the past and delving into the plot will still find a way to interrupt the chatter. It seems like a trifle, unworthy of mention, but such details, when accumulated in sufficient quantities, somewhat cloud the overall picture. It’s a pity, because the overall picture deserves attention.
It’s not necessary once in https://kingdomcasino-uk.com a while: this bastard, for example, is not so cool. But an extra sword wouldn’t hurt anyway.
Studio Shift released an action role-playing game with good genetics: it’s beautiful, interesting, and trimmed Dark Souls oil does not spoil the porridge. You can completely enjoy the process. But every time the game disappoints with glitches and inconveniences, it’s akin to a huge pimple on a beautiful anime vampire – no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to look past it. So the rating is “Commendable” Code Vein receives in advance – with the hope of a patch that will at least correct the problems of the combat system.
Pros: a simple but understandable story that is interesting to follow, wonderful music, nice graphics – an overdose of anime does not threaten anyone; battles are mostly spectacular and uncomplicated.
Cons: It is necessary to delve into new concepts, although their essence has long been known; the locations were designed by the same person who designed the Minotaur’s labyrinth; There are a lot of technical problems – the game seems unfinished.
Code Vein
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As a person who has probably been through all the souls bands in the world, I’ll say that Code Vein is very similar to the work of an apprentice. The developers are trying very hard to do it like a master (FromSoftware), even bringing in something of their own (and the local role-playing system and combining skills is a really cool and interesting feature), but they screw up in the little things. Hellish hitboxes, AoE for half the arena (besides, by DS standards there are huge arenas, but at a glance all the bosses have an attack that stupidly forces you to retreat to the other side of the map and God forbid there was a wall behind you), spam of attacks (in DS, after a few tries you know when there is a window to heal and attack, but here it’s pure randomness – you dodged a powerful attack, went into the boss’s ass and think “It’s panish time!». And the game responds to you with “Fuck you” – and the boss simply turns 180 degrees in the middle of the animation and charges an AoE in your face. In general, here too often you have to guess – one boss can instantly make a second slide from a slide, a powerful AoE attack with a huge hitbox and mean timing, or a circular attack on a pole. And sit and guess what comes to her mind.)
And there are so many seemingly little things like this that it can’t lay claim to DS laurels in any way. These developers simply did not have enough experience/knowledge/genius to bring everything to mind and polish it. Although so far no one except the Froms themselves have managed to find this golden mean (I’m not saying that they are completely sinless, but the final balance has always turned out to be in their favor) – that’s why all these years their games have invariably remained the first, no matter how many imitators there are.
P.S. In some ways, my first death in this game is indicative. And you know how I died? Breaking a box – here a regular attack for some reason moves you one step forward, and in my case it turned out to be a step into the abyss.
I’m so burned that I’ll even fucking write.
Excuse me, but what the author writes is nonsense. Because:
— The plot is actually a little more complicated than described, but as I understand it, this was done so that the reader does not get confused.
— “Registration of hits is weak”. No way. The enemies’ attacks are sweeping and always have different speeds, and I never once felt indignant that something somewhere had unfairly annoyed me. It burned because the damage here was impossible (killing in one hit is not as difficult as we would like), they were thrown off cliffs, they were put into an endless stunlock – all this, yes, but not “registration of hits”.
— “Enemy animation slows down”. I found this only once – when in the dungeons I led enemies to the fire and they.To. they didn’t have the right to approach there, they were wildly stupid and didn’t walk normally, but “slowed down”. But that’s all for the whole game. Kamon, this is a small change.
– “The main enemy is the environment”. Well, if it’s not clear that when there are cliffs around you need to tank with your face, and not run as usual, then this is not a problem of the developers who came up with the challenge. By the way, you can’t roll into the abyss, which actually makes such levels easier. (about the labyrinths – I think we are only talking about the Cathedral. but this is a design that, by the way, is justified by the plot – in order to prevent random individuals from getting to the boss of the location. but this is the only location. the rest are either a solid gut straight to the boss with a couple of shortcuts, or round locations combined with transitions).
– “This looks like a deliberate complication of simple mechanics."Here are the bastards, they came up with something new and different from the canon. Parasites! Seriously though? Blame the game for introducing something new and different from the soul series? Yes, it’s not easy to understand what’s going on here at first, but it’s not an accusation.
– “You can’t please both of them at once.”.» You’ll please. Hardened Solus fans went solo, newcomers went with a bot. Well done, handsome guys. I don’t really understand what the complaint is, this is actually an elegant plot solution to not drive away the newcomers, but at the same time give a challenge to the oldies.
— “The hero trudges too slowly through the muddy astral plane” Well, that’s the gist of it. Idea. You walk slowly and calmly listen to the memories of others. You don’t run to your ass when stung, but exhale after battles and calmly listen to flashbacks. There are feelings, emotions, characters and there is no need to run there. Everything is even debugged there so that everything goes practically without any hiccups. The only thing is that there are a lot of them, and if you go through the game in one gulp in a couple of days, then it becomes boring, but this is a question of the speed of completion.
— “Whoever can’t bear to listen to the shadows of the past and delve into the plot will still find a way to interrupt the chatter.”. Well, it’s just top… the writers worked hard (and actually did a good job. simple, but it works), but why if you can press a key and skip. Really… You can also take a partner and not try. Why go into it..
Of course there are problems in the game, but there are not many of them and they are not that terrible. The mechanics here are polished (although I wouldn’t say that they are as perfect as in Fromov’s games), the plot is there and it’s simple and workable, and the variety of builds is pleasing and the game can be played by both beginners and old-timers. Personally, I was probably only confused by the fact that the main character here is Louis, and not GG, because GG is just a nodding dog running errands (for example, like Bucellatti is more important than Giorno).
What’s the result?. Of course, I understand that this is an opinion, but here I strongly disagreed. This rarely happens, but I even wrote to someone on the Internet that he was wrong.
what a nightmare. Zelda… uh huh. and especially against the backdrop of the mention in the general series of Fromsotfer games of the word DmS… and BB is no different from DS at all, yes, and Sekiro even more so..
Like any other fictional apocalypse, this one began with the fact that scientists decided to save humanity. They resurrected the dead using so-called BOR parasites, which transform the host into an immortal and powerful being.
I recently finished playing through the game and the plot is a little different from what is described in the review. I’ll try without spoilers, but just in case, under the cut:
An apocalypse occurred in the world in the form of spikes emerging from the ground, which razed almost the entire world to the ground. Then monsters appeared, which were called Horrors. These two moments in the game were called the Great Crash. Our vampires, who are difficult to kill, were bred precisely to fight monsters. To win for sure, a Queen was created – a super-powerful lady who went crazy and in the end the vampires had to fight with her, and not with the Horrors. At the same moment, they began to breed a second generation of vampires purely to fight it. Somehow they filled it up, a vast area became isolated (that same red fog). As a result, vampires were divided into two camps – those who are for the government (where people in general are treated normally, protected as best they can, in return they are sometimes asked to donate blood for chow) and renegades who form their own groups, force weaker bloodsuckers to look for chow, and the people found are kept for cattle. The fact that vampires need to drink blood is more likely a side effect of the BOR parasite than the cause of the disaster itself. All this gimmick is revealed during the first hours, and then acquires interesting details, in particular, the “Chosenness” of the GG was explained quite logically
I didn’t remember a word about the fact that something was pissing me off. In general, as for the author of the review, the artistic component eluded you – in memories, with beautiful chords and an interesting design, “go to the light” we are told human stories. As only the Japanese know how, with a certain simple touching. About duty, love and friendship, self-sacrifice, the will to resist to the end. About the fact that all the characters we meet have something behind them.
And “running” at such moments would be inappropriate if you want and hope that the player doesn’t give a damn, despite the fact that even with such horror as walking, almost all of the several dozen memories take only about a minute. And for those who came purely to “soak”, again, almost everything is skipped from the very first second, except for the three obligatory plot.
Probably from 10 to 20 hours. Some locations are really too confusing, but fortunately, and this was not mentioned in the review, there is an in-game map that you draw by touching different types of mistletoe, and on which even without this your path is drawn in paths, so once you learn how to use the map, clearing locks becomes much more convenient.
In addition, additional time will be taken by viewing memories (if you don’t skip them, although they last about a minute, and there are very few non-skippable ones) and the desire to get good endings, because for this you need to wool locations.
I’ll add to the review: the locations are confusing – this is neither good nor bad, but the fact that there are too many ordinary opponents in the locations that there is no point in killing is already stupidity. you can run through all the locations without any problems without touching anyone – just by collecting items at the end to meet the boss, win, cursing the hitboxes along the way (they are the strangest ones I’ve ever seen). exceptions are several locations where there are keys that drop from certain mobs.
In short, there are simply fewer mobs in the location. Then it would be interesting to at least walk through the location for the first time and clear everything, but I don’t want to do that either.
I also didn’t like the design of the mobs – it’s super boring, the same medieval knights look more interesting.
But pumping is just different. I wonder what kind of imba-pumping speedrunners will come up with?
I liked the endings of the game.
Especially the fact that code vane and god iter are in the same universe and those same horrors are oracle cells from god iter.
And so, I had a really good time with a friend in co-op, some of the bosses were a little difficult, but in principle the game is not bad. I don’t really agree with the text of the review, but I agree with the assessment, but without the advance payment. I haven’t encountered a single bug in the entire game.
Personally, I was probably only confused by the fact that the main character here is Louis, and not GG, because GG is just a nodding dog running errands (for example, like Bucellatti is more important than Giorno).
"Animation of enemies is slow". I found this only once – when in the dungeons I led enemies to the fire and they.To. they didn’t have the right to approach there, they were wildly stupid and didn’t walk normally, but “slowed down”. But that’s all for the whole game. Kamon, this is a small change.
I remember how in Bloodbourne an unwritten hunter killed me and just stood there shooting without a break. I left my character behind the obstacle and went to make tea at this time, when the NPC returned and continued to shoot at the obstacle. Oh, these perfect games from fromom. As someone who has played many hours of games from from, I encountered all these gameplay problems in each of them. Be it the camera, the problem with hitboxes, hitting through walls, the boss turning sharply in your direction and hitting at 360, the registration of hits on enemies was also lame.
As you know, if you are Japanese, then at the genetic level you are not able to do three things: a camera, an interface and hitboxes.
In general, in its current form, this “feature” looks like a spit in the face of solo players. You’re walking calmly, and then 3-5 mobs drop into your ass out of nowhere. In soulslaying, aggroing more than one mob is most often an unreasonable and unnecessary risk, but here, without warning, a rod, and more than one wave at that. And the saddest thing is that the reward for this means nothing at all – so far only items that give echoes have been given out, but the whole irony is that you get much more echoes if you are lucky enough to survive the ambush (i.e.e. you killed everyone).
Having found myself in one such Blood Test, I decided, ungentlemanly, to climb the stairs and deal with the enemies one by one as they arrived. And who knew that the developers used an original system for climbing stairs – the entire wave of pursuers stupidly TELEPORTED to my landing.
There’s actually no main character here. The story revolves around a group of characters in which our mute hero (not actually mute) is as important a character as the rest, except for the fact that he is the Keeper of the Queen’s Blood, whose blood sets off the entire storyline . And so all our characters remained revealed, even Io.
Oh, and the registration of hits fails: it looks like they plunged the ax into the enemy’s body, but the damage is not counted. On the other hand, the enemy does not have to touch the hero with a weapon to draw blood
It’s as if Fromov’s current games are a development of the ideas of their own games that have been released since 1994. Such as King’s Field and Shadow Tower Abyss. You can watch the walkthrough. The mechanics there are almost identical, only from 1st person and without rolls.
GreyKarasu is completely right that Vane suffers greatly from a lopsided balance. This is especially true for those people who play the game solo. Balance in such games is very important, and there are big problems with it in KV. I understood from the first three words that he meant barefoot… (bosinya? bosque? bosesu?) with a pole. I hope the developers didn’t hiccup too much when I remembered them during its passage.
And waves of enemies that suddenly start running out at you? For a solo passage, this is certain death if you stumble upon such a place unprepared. This is complete insanity. Why not make these waves activated at will?? Anyway, after the first activation you just avoid that place until you decide to fight with them.
Took me about 30 hours. Moreover, in the middle of the game, I spat on my pride and got a partner, because some bosses and places are too inadequate.
I don’t believe about the first death, unless there was a bug. In the game, the character’s blows do not throw him into the abyss. Even long distance ones, like passing with a pole from the boss, he goes about ten meters, and when you go towards the cliff, it’s like he’s running into a wall. You can only fall by walking into the abyss yourself, by rolling, and possibly from a strong blow from the enemy.