Code Vein 2 Review – An Ambitious Anime Soulslike That Trips Over Its Own Fangs

A sequel caught between redemption and relapse

Code Vein 2 arrives seven years after the original with a clear mission: stop being "anime Dark Souls" and become its own thing. In some ways it succeeds. The new open-world structure, time-era hopping story, and greatly expanded partner system are genuinely different angles in a very crowded Soulslike field.

Over 30+ hours on PS5 and PC, though, that ambition constantly collides with uneven execution. Some critics are calling it a sleeper hit; others are already nominating it for 2026’s worst Soulslike. After rolling credits and mopping up side content, I understand both takes.

This is a better, bolder Code Vein, but also a messier one.

Open world, half open heart

The biggest change is structure. Instead of the hub-and-dungeon layout of the first game, Code Vein 2 gives you a single contiguous overworld stitched together by chokepoints, legacy dungeons, and time-distorted pockets that shift enemy layouts and even architecture.

Early on this feels fresh. The first ruined district funnels you past a collapsed highway, then quietly loops back with a crumbling skyscraper shortcut that makes the world feel tangible instead of a series of tubes. Discovering an old-era pocket that rewinds a neighborhood to its pre-collapse state is also a cool trick, especially when it changes which enemies spawn and what loot you can grab.

The longer you play, the more the scaffolding shows. Biomes start repeating visual motifs, enemy placement leans on the same three ambush patterns, and the overworld’s supposed seamlessness boils down to narrow corridors between larger combat arenas. The time-era pockets evolve from intriguing anomalies into glorified difficulty modifiers you clear because a quest marker told you to.

Compared to true genre standouts like Elden Ring or Lies of P, Code Vein 2’s world simply isn’t that interesting to traverse. It’s better than the claustrophobic mazes of the first game, but it never becomes the kind of map you mentally hold and cherish. You move through it because your next boss is that way, not because you’re excited to see what’s around the bend.

Time-era shifts: smart ideas, clumsy pacing

Narratively, the time-shift mechanic is the sequel’s main hook. Your Revenant Hunter and your new partner Lou can pierce memories and eras, letting you hop between different stages of the apocalypse. In theory this lets Code Vein 2 tell stories about how places fell, who you used to be, and how your choices ripple.

In practice it’s a mix of neat vignettes and pacing-killing detours. Some sequences are fantastic: a mid-game arc that has you fight through a district across three different eras, with enemy types and patrol routes changing each time, is the closest the game comes to genuinely dynamic storytelling inside its levels.

Too often, though, time travel means ripping control away for another cutscene-heavy memory dive. You watch your character trudge through sepia-toned flashbacks, listen to exposition about factions that barely matter, then get dumped back into the present with a new passive perk. The emotional high the story clearly aims for is drowned by sheer volume. If you thought the original Code Vein talked too much, this sequel will test your patience.

Still, when the game trusts the mechanic to bend level geometry and enemy behavior rather than just serve as lore delivery, it hints at something special. You can feel the better version of Code Vein 2 in those moments, clawing to break through.

Partners 2.0: the best and worst of the game

Where Code Vein 2 genuinely stands apart from other Soulslikes is its partner system. The first game’s AI buddy was already its signature, but often broke balance. Here, partners are deeper, smarter, and more numerous, and they meaningfully change how you play.

Each partner has their own weapon preferences, support skills, and “Sync Arts,” powerful dual-tech moves that trigger off specific conditions. Lou, for instance, plays a mobile caster, kiting while feeding you stagger windows and setting up time-slow fields when your stamina dips. Another partner is effectively a walking guard break engine, chaining shield bashes and taunt skills that keep aggression off you.

The good news is that, for a large chunk of the game, the AI is competent. Partners manage aggro in a readable way, occasionally clutch-heal you, and even adapt to your build type in basic ways. On PS5 and PC alike, most mid-bosses felt tuned around having that extra body in the arena, and the constant back-and-forth of stagger setups and Sync Arts can be legitimately thrilling.

The problem is balance whiplash. Certain bosses melt under coordinated partner pressure, turning what should be tense duels into anime slapstick where the enemy spends 70 percent of the fight face-down. Others seem hard-scripted to ignore your partner altogether, deleting them with a few AOEs and leaving you to clean up solo. Difficulty spikes don’t feel earned so much as the game yanking the rug out because it remembered it’s supposed to be hard.

Worse, some late-game encounters combine cramped arenas with large bosses and one overly eager partner AI, which is a perfect recipe for camera hell. You’ll eat hits you can’t read because a cape, particle effect, and Lou’s latest time bubble all occupy the same three square feet of screen space.

Even so, I’d rather have Code Vein 2’s messy but ambitious partner system than another solemnly lonely Soulslike. When it clicks, it offers a cooperative rhythm that genuinely differentiates the game, even offline.

Combat and builds: flexible, flashy, and frequently fun

If you bounced off the first Code Vein because combat felt floaty, Code Vein 2 is a clear upgrade. Attacks land with more weight, hitboxes are more honest, and animation recovery windows are easier to parse. It still doesn’t have the surgical clarity of FromSoftware’s best work, but it no longer feels like you’re swinging a pool noodle through molasses.

Build variety is where the sequel truly shines. The old Blood Code system has been expanded into Formae, modular class archetypes you can slot together, cross-level, and respec at any checkpoint. In the first game you could end up with a “best in slot” loadout and never look back. Here, the interplay between Formae, weapon traits, Blood Arts, and partner Sync Arts nudges you toward experimentation.

I spent my first 15 hours as a nimble dual-blade Revenant leaning on time-slow counters and evasion buffs. Mid-game I pivoted into a hulking scythe user built around lifesteal and guard breaks, essentially playing tank while my partner nuked from afar. Late game, I respecced into a glass-cannon caster running a high-risk, high-reward blood magic build that almost felt like playing a different game.

The nice surprise is that the game supports these pivots. Consumables are generous, respecs are cheap, and most weapon types have at least one moveset worth mastering. Where some competitors lock you into a mistake for half the game, Code Vein 2 constantly whispers: try something weird.

Critically, it also improves on the first game’s opaque systems. Tutorials are still text-heavy, but terminology is clearer, UI nesting is less obnoxious, and you get practical reasons to change builds. Certain time-era pockets favor ranged builds, others reward heavy stagger, and partner-specific passives push you into synergistic roleplay.

The downside is encounter design that sometimes can’t keep up with the toolbox it gives you. A portion of the enemy roster feels like HP sponges designed to tolerate your new toys rather than test them. More than once, I kited late-game elites around a rock while my partner and I spammed Sync Arts until their health bar finally collapsed. It works, but it’s not particularly satisfying.

Performance: PS5 vs PC

Unfortunately, Code Vein 2’s biggest real-world difference between platforms is performance, and not in a flattering way.

On PS5, things are playable but rough. There is a performance mode targeting 60 FPS, but the game only hits that mark consistently indoors or in smaller combat spaces. In the wider overworld, especially near dense ruins or time-distorted pockets, the frame rate regularly sinks into the mid-40s and occasionally the high 30s. Boss arenas stuffed with particle effects can hitch right as you’re dodging, which in a reaction-based game is infuriating.

Resolution is reasonably sharp, and VRR can smooth some of the dips if your display supports it, but the lack of any PS5 Pro enhancements is noticeable. Load times are brisk and there were no hard crashes during my PS5 run, but texture streaming can stutter when sprinting across large areas, leading to a “pop-in now, admire later” vibe.

PC is a different story depending on your hardware and tolerance for tweaking. On a Ryzen 7 / RTX 4070 setup, running at 1440p with a mix of high and medium settings, I could maintain 60–90 FPS in most dungeons. The open overworld, though, still causes periodic traversal stutter, which smells a lot like poor asset streaming rather than raw GPU load.

The game does at least offer a decent set of graphics toggles and an FSR-style upscaler, and community optimization guides are already circulating. With some effort, you can get a smooth experience on a mid-to-high range rig. On lower-end cards, though, that Unreal Engine 5 sheen comes with painful hitching and inconsistent frame pacing.

Input latency feels marginally tighter on PC, especially with a high-refresh display and VRR, but this is undercut by those micro-stutters when loading new chunks of the overworld.

Between the two, PC is the better platform if you have the hardware and patience. PS5 is acceptable, but for a game that lives and dies on precise dodges, the frame-rate instability is a real problem.

How it stacks up in 2026’s Soulslike crowd

In 2019, Code Vein could get away with rough edges because the anime-Souls niche was so under-served. In 2026, the bar is much higher. We’ve had Elden Ring redefine open-world design, Lies of P tighten linear combat, and a swarm of AA pretenders crash and burn.

Code Vein 2 lands somewhere in the frustrating middle. It’s absolutely not the trainwreck some of its harshest detractors claim. The combat is legitimately more enjoyable, the buildcrafting is best-in-class for fans of fiddly RPG systems, and the partner mechanics offer something you can’t quite get elsewhere.

But for every smart step forward, it takes a clumsy one back. The open world opens up traversal but weakens pacing. Time travel spices up a few levels but bloats the story into a melodramatic dirge that forgets when to shut up. The expanded partner system adds welcome tactical depth, then smashes difficulty balance against the wall.

If you love the original Code Vein, Code Vein 2 is almost certainly worth playing. It’s a meatier, more expressive sandbox, even if you have to accept some technical squalor and design misfires. If you’re simply shopping for the next top-tier Soulslike in 2026, this isn’t it.

Verdict

Code Vein 2 is a sequel that clearly listened to feedback, then tried to fix everything at once. In doing so, it became a fascinating, uneven experiment: one of the more distinctive Soulslikes this year, but also one of the hardest to recommend without a long list of caveats.

On PS5, shaky performance drags down an already wobbly experience. On PC, with the right hardware, the underlying combat and build freedom have room to shine. Either way, you have to be willing to embrace its anime melodrama, tolerate repetition, and forgive technical hiccups.

If that sounds like your scene, there’s a bloody, stylish adventure here, bristling with ideas you won’t find in FromSoftware’s shadow. If not, Code Vein 2 is destined to stay what the first game was: a cult favorite for a very specific kind of player, in a genre that can no longer afford to be this inconsistent.