Famitsu’s 8/8/8/8 and our own mixed review scores frame Code Vein 2 as a bold but uneven sequel. Its open structure and wild build freedom give the anime Soulslike real identity, but shaky performance, erratic pacing, and dull stretches of exploration hold it back. Here is what works, what doesn’t, and what Bandai Namco should take forward into a potential Code Vein 3.
Famitsu’s 8/8/8/8 and a split critical consensus
Code Vein 2 has landed in that awkward middle ground where a single number never tells the story. Famitsu’s quartet of 8s reflects a solid, confident sequel with unusual charm, while a spread of Western reviews range from warmly positive to openly frustrated. Averaged out, it sits in the mid‑70s on aggregators, but look beneath the scores and you see two very different games coexisting.
For one group of critics and players, Code Vein 2 is the sequel they wanted. The world is bigger, the combat toolkit is broader, and the RPG systems go all‑in on player expression. For another, those same ambitions are shackled to rough performance, sluggish loading and an open structure that too often forgets to be interesting between its best moments.
That friction is what makes Code Vein 2 worth talking about. It is not just a better or worse Code Vein. It is a case study in how far an AA Soulslike can push toward Elden Ring style openness before its budget, tech and encounter design start to buckle.
The appeal of Code Vein 2’s open structure
The original Code Vein lived and died on its dense labyrinths and hub‑to‑dungeon flow. Code Vein 2 tears that up and spreads its ideas across a contiguous, interconnected wasteland. Instead of moving from one discrete Bloodspring to the next, you pick a direction from a central base, hop on your Revenant bike and thread your way across ruined highways, sand‑swallowed city blocks and derelict industrial zones.
That structure works in its favor in a few key ways. First, the simple fantasy of being a vampiric hunter roaming a cursed open world fits Code Vein’s tone far better than the corridor‑heavy layouts of the original. Even critics who bounced off other aspects of the sequel tend to highlight the sensation of freedom, the ability to sidestep a rough boss or area and poke at another corner of the map instead of grinding their head against a single wall.
Second, the open world makes better use of the series’ companion system. Lou and the other partners feel less like scripted co‑op bots and more like actual fellow wanderers as you cross long, dangerous stretches together. Their chatter, reactions to new discoveries and synergy in combat do a lot of ambient story work that the first game often shunted into cutscenes and menus.
Finally, the new structure pushes the game into a better rhythm when it is working. Pockets of handcrafted level design sit along a network of roads, caves and ruins, with shortcuts and fast travel Mistles tying them together. When you are rolling between succinct challenges, stumbling into side bosses and returning to base to respec for a new build idea, Code Vein 2 can feel like the nimble, anime‑infused Soulslike the original was reaching for.
Build freedom that actually matters moment to moment
Code Vein 2 doubles down on the first game’s biggest strength: its off‑the‑rails character customization. Blood Codes return in evolved form, letting you stack passive perks, active Blood Arts and weapon affinities into bizarre but viable archetypes. You are encouraged to respec frequently, experiment with wild combinations and build to your current weapon or even to a specific boss.
Critics who clicked with the sequel consistently praise this angle. Instead of picking a greatsword and playing roughly the same way for 30 hours, you might start as a nimble bayonet user, shift into a heavy parry‑focused tank for one region, then respec into a caster‑leaning hybrid that abuses time‑bending skills for another. The key thing is that Code Vein 2 gives you the tools and the frictionless systems to do this often.
The result is a combat loop that can feel tailored to you. If you like to play reactively, there are builds that stuff your bars with perfect‑guard counters and slow‑field debuffs. If you are more aggressive, you can stack life‑steal, stagger bonuses and movement buffs until you are practically breakdancing across the battlefield. Coupled with partner synergies, it is easy to construct a duo that feels like an extension of your own playstyle.
Compared with other Soulslikes that quietly herd you into a handful of meta builds, Code Vein 2’s best quality is that its combat systems stay expressive right to the end credits. You are not just tuning numbers. You are meaningfully changing how fights feel.
Where ambition outruns execution: performance
The other side of that coin is that Code Vein 2 is stretching tech that is clearly under strain. Across PS5, Xbox Series and PC, critics and players alike report inconsistent frame rates, traversal stutter when new chunks of the world stream in and occasional ugly drops in heavily populated zones.
On console, it often feels like the game cannot quite decide if it wants to target 60 frames or fall back to a more stable 30. Fast traversal on the bike is one of the sequel’s signature flourishes, but it is also where you are most likely to feel the engine hitching as it streams in large vistas and enemy clusters. That would be annoying in any genre, but in an action RPG that leans on precise dodge timing and parry windows, it can become actively disruptive.
PC does not escape unscathed either. Benchmark tests highlight a game that scales poorly relative to its visual payoff, with mid‑range GPUs being pushed harder than expected in scenes that simply do not look that demanding. Some players point to shader compilation stutter, others to CPU bottlenecks when big enemy mobs, particle effects and streaming operations collide.
Bandai Namco has already started rolling out performance hotfixes, and the studio has publicly committed to further optimization. But the damage to first impressions is real. For a fanbase that was hoping Code Vein 2 might be the series’ coming‑out party on modern hardware, seeing the sequel’s grander world tied to inconsistent performance has been a consistent theme in mixed reviews.
Pacing problems in an emptying world
Technical issues would be easier to forgive if the open world kept your attention, but this is where Code Vein 2’s design ambition most obviously runs ahead of its content budget.
The strongest sections still happen in more traditional, contained “dungeons” hidden off the main arteries. These zones twist and loop back on themselves, sprinkle in verticality and trap encounters and culminate in bosses that make real mechanical demands. The problem is how much connective tissue you have to ride through to get to them.
Long stretches of the wasteland are visually repetitive and lightly populated, more like scenic hallways than spaces dense with interesting decisions. Enemy placement can feel haphazard, with basic fodder packs scattered across big flats of terrain that do little to test the elaborate builds you spent time crafting. It is telling that some critics praise the game’s ability to let you bypass certain areas, because the alternative is wading through content that feels like padding.
Narrative pacing mirrors this unevenness. Code Vein 2’s central time‑twisting premise has potential, and the relationship between the protagonist and Lou gives the story an emotional throughline. But the way those story beats are delivered often works against momentum. Clusters of long cutscenes and info‑dump conversations break up what might otherwise be genuinely brisk stretches of exploration. Then the game swings in the other direction and leaves you to wander for extended periods with minimal narrative pressure.
The end result is a game that alternates between grabbing you by the collar and then forgetting you are there. When Code Vein 2 is in its groove, chaining a couple of sharp dungeons with a meaningful story beat, it feels snappy and modern. When it strings together three or four undercooked zones separated by choppy traversal and thin side content, the experience sags.
Iterating on identity without leaving the AA tier
None of this is to say that Code Vein 2 fails. If anything, it succeeds at the hardest part for a sequel in this space: it knows what Code Vein is and tries to refine that identity instead of chasing FromSoftware’s exact playbook.
The anime stylings are sharper, character customization is richer, the partner system is more tightly integrated, and the open world pushes the series closer to the kind of adventure fans imagined from the first game’s concept art. Famitsu’s 8/8/8/8 makes sense in that light. If you weigh originality and mechanical expression heavily, Code Vein 2 can look like an eight out of ten across the board.
The problem is not lack of ideas. It is the cost of trying to bolt those ideas onto tech and content pipelines that seem tuned for a smaller, more corridor‑driven game. By spreading itself across a large contiguous map, Code Vein 2 exposes every weak point: texture work that has to cover bigger surfaces, AI that was not built for longer sightlines, engine streaming that cannot quite keep up, encounter design that struggles to scale out into wide‑open spaces.
Bandai Namco and Shift have, in other words, made exactly the kind of second entry that should inform a much sharper third.
What Bandai Namco should take forward into Code Vein 3
If there is a Code Vein 3, it should not retreat from Code Vein 2’s ambitions. It should refine them.
The open structure is worth keeping, but it needs to be denser and more purposeful. Future maps should be built around clear “circuits” of interesting encounters, secrets and bespoke events, with less dead air between highlights. Borrow the best lessons from Elden Ring and other open Soulslikes: make curiosity the engine that drives you forward rather than simple checklisting.
Build freedom should remain the series’ calling card, but it needs a better on‑ramp. Code Vein 2 is generous with respecs and options, but it sometimes leaves players to drown in them. Smartly surfaced starter archetypes, clearer in‑game explanations of key synergies and a set of curated “sample” builds that evolve as you progress would help more players appreciate how strong the system really is.
On the technical side, Bandai Namco needs to treat performance as a pillar, not an afterthought. That means choosing rendering techniques and world‑streaming solutions that align with the studio’s resources and the target hardware, and being willing to scale back pure square mileage in favor of stability. A Code Vein 3 that runs rock‑solid at its target frame rate, with consistent input latency and fewer streaming hitches, would instantly make its already lively combat feel better.
Pacing is the other non‑negotiable. The sequel has already shown that shorter, sharper dungeons and well‑spaced story beats bring out its strengths. A third game should trim filler, kill off visually dead zones and group its best material into tighter loops. Side quests and optional areas need to pull their weight, whether by deepening partner relationships, revealing crucial lore or delivering unique mechanical twists.
A flawed but important step
Code Vein 2 is not the breakout sequel some fans hoped for, but it is more important than a simple “good” or “bad” verdict implies. It proves that there is space in the Soulslike genre for something that is unabashedly anime, that embraces build tinkering as a primary form of expression and that dares to go open world without copying FromSoftware beat for beat.
The cost of that ambition is evident in its performance woes, rough‑edged pacing and inconsistent content density. Yet those are solvable problems, not fundamental flaws in the series’ identity. If Bandai Namco and Shift can learn the right lessons from Code Vein 2’s reception, a third entry could finally deliver the fully realized vampiric Soulslike that these games have been pointing toward since the beginning.