Code Vein: A Game Which Could Be Better If It Wasn’t An Action Game
I might be a weird player among those who picked up this game since I even didn’t know it is a souls-like game before I started it. Honestly, I was initially attracted by the screenshots of other’s customized playable character, and the art style looks great to me, and that’s all about why I decided to play it.
After I started the game, I addicted to it almost immediately. It is not only because of the fantastic toon shading (or cel-shading if it is the more common) art style but also because there are lots of the details showing the designers and the developers of it must have tons of interesting ideas. However, Code Vein is not perfect, no matter how great the first impression it gave to me. As I made more progression during my first play-through, the flaws of the game, especially in the design of the combat, appeared gradually and became more and more evident.
Since my gameplay experience varies tremendously in the different aspects of Code Vein, I’d like to discuss the game in more detail by separate it in the following sections.
Character Creation & Customization
The first thing that you gotta do in Code Vein is creating your character, and I spent more than two hours customizing the appearance of my own character. I have played a lot of single-player RPGs and MMORPGs, which have the character customization feature, but I had never spent that much time on character creation before. The character customization is enjoyable in Code Vein. Apart from roughly the height, skin, hair, more details can be changed, and some are even beyond my expectations. For example, you can change not only the pupil color but also the sclera color of your character’s eyes. Also, you can put the headphones on the legs, and even hang a Christmas ring on your character’s chest as long as you want. Besides, although the glow materials are common in games, I don’t think it is that common that you can apply a glow material on your character’s hat or pants. Certainly, Code Vein allows players to be able to create their playable characters that meet their aesthetics, as long as the player is comfortable with the anime art style.
Unfortunately, there are not many clothes you can choose in the character customization menu. And you can not customize the appearance of your armors. But you still do have multiple choices of armors, which are called as Blood Veils in Code Vein, and each type of the Blood Veils has its own advantages during the combat, directly or indirectly.
Combat & AI
I believe one of the essential parts of a combat system is numerical stuff, or basically, math. Like almost all other RPGs, you have to build your character’s stats carefully if you want to do better in combat. However, you don’t have to distribute the single stat point to each of the stats one by one manually, and leveling up won’t give you stats points for distribution. Instead, leveling up in Code Vein will increase your HP, stamina, and the other base stats altogether. The way to distribute your stats is by equipping different weapons, Blood Veils, and Blood Codes (which basically means classes). For example, some weapons are good at increasing your strength, while some of the others can improve your dexterity. Also, it doesn’t mean that you can make combinations randomly. No matter of weapons, Blood Veils, or Blood Codes, each of them has a requirement for stats. And both weapons and Blood Veils have a weight factor. If your character’s stats are below the stats requirements or exceeding the weight limit, your character can not perform effectively. I think the developers made restrictions on stats distribution is because they want to keep the game balance in good shape and avoid grinding on a single stat. However, the transformation system and its impact on the defense stats seem totally arbitrary and broken to me. For example, there’s a level called the City of Falling Flame, where there are fires all over the map. After I find the material for increasing the fire resistance, I went back to the home base and transformed my Blood Vein into a fire-defense one. The fire-defense Blood Vein worked fine when it was decreasing the fire-damage in the environment so that I didn’t have to be super afraid of the fires on the ground. However, weird things happened when it came to the Boss fight. During the fight, the Boss will cast a linear AoE that split the arena, and it looks like the AoE should be really hurt. But when I stepped on the AoE unintentionally, I saw it barely dealt with damage to me. I could even stand on it for a while and just kept attacking the Boss without dodging. This is really one of the worst Boss fight experiences for me because of the imbalance caused by the problematic transformation system.
As for an action game, another important thing should be the enemy behaviors. The movement of an enemy, basically means its animation, should explicitly indicate how it is going to attack in the next few frames, as well as where is precisely the collider of each part of its body. I had noticed that the position of the enemies’ collider in Code Vein is always a bit off from where the animation shows during combat by observing the angle of some successful back attacks. But I still thought its combat system was acceptable until I met the final Boss. While the first phase was okay to me, except for the weird collider of his giant sword that sometimes made me confused about whether I got hit or not during his thrust attack, the second phase ruined my gameplay experience, tremendously. The crazy multiple front-claw attacks made me wouldn’t have enough stamina to dodge and attack in front of him, even though I knew his weak point is his head. Since I was using Atlas, Prometheus, and Dark Knight Blood Code for most of the time, I didn’t have enough range attack gifts (I did unlock a lot, but I didn’t have enough haze and materials to max out their proficiencies) to beat the Boss. So, to beat the final Boss, the only choice left for me was to attack his rear legs. But then, the giant body of the Boss often block my view, and it became hard to tell when it is going to perform AoE or body slam or claw attack. And speaking of the view, I think Code Vein has a lot of work that should be done with its camera, as well as lock-on. The camera shouldn’t just simply follow the character during combat and only change its position when playing the drain attack animation. The FOV is too small for the final Boss fight and some other enemies with a taller height. If the camera was able to zoom and pan around a little bit when encountering these types of enemies, I think the gameplay experience would be way better, at least visually. Also, because the FOV is too small, when you lock-on a taller enemy, your camera view will almost face upwards, and it is hard for the player to see the ground, which makes the lock-on feature useless. For myself, I think the lock-on feature could be the playable character will always facing towards the enemy direction while the camera can still be rotated.
Another example can be the Butterfly Boss fight. The tail-head attack is hard to see for the players. I didn’t mean that this Boss doesn’t have any indications of attack, but its indications are either too fast or too minimal. Also, its tail is too high, so the indication of its tail is even harder to observe by melee players. The only thing that I do enjoy about the enemy behaviors in Code Vein is the pathfinding method. If I was detected by an enemy who was on a lower floor, the enemy would try to find a path to get close instead of stuck at the wall. It makes sense to me since both the player and the enemy can’t jump, and not all the enemies can climb.
Moreover, to be honest, I also enjoyed the AI companions a lot. They can not only protect themselves well in most circumstances but also dealt with a decent amount of damage. They can provide tips from time to time, such as telling you to be aware of the enemies hiding around a corner, warning you to be careful and not to fall down from a steep edge, and even tanking a Boss for a while. And here is an interesting thing that happened to me about the companion’s dialogue during the exploration of the Provisional Government Center area. There are a couple of vines hidden behind the cracked walls that will attack no matter the player or the enemy entering their detection range. I was attacked by those vines about three or four times. And almost every time I got hit, Yakumo, my favorite AI companion, said, “Nice.” to me. I don’t know if it is a bonus, or there was an enemy who also got hit that I didn’t notice, or it was merely a bug. No matter what, it was kinda fun, and I had never felt these NPCs were annoying when they talked a lot. As an introverted person who doesn’t have friends to play with, I didn’t feel lonely when I was playing Code Vein.
However, the final Boss fight also ruined my impression of AI partnering. You can correct me if I were wrong, but I thought the first phase of the final Boss, the skull king phase, has a mechanic that if it is hit by a drain attack, then it will perform a close-range AoE and reduce taking damage. However, our players can learn this mechanic and avoid it by not using drain attacks, but AI companions can’t. What I noticed was that every time the Boss was staggered, the NPC would perform a back drain attack, and then the Boss cast its AoE. And because of the NPC just finished its back attack during the beginning of this AoE, it made the NPC almost wasn’t able to dodge this attack. The design of AI that letting NPCs perform a precise back attack every time the Boss is staggered makes the final boss fight becomes awkward. You will feel your smart NPC friends suddenly become stupid during this boss fight, especially when it is almost the last part of a play-through.
Level Design & Narrative
I can imagine how many players will be struggled with the complicated maps, as I have already seen tons of complaints about the level design of Code Vein, especially about the Cathedral of The Sacred Blood. As far as I remember, I spent more than five hours for the entire Cathedral level (which was actually including the time I spent in the Memory map, but I didn’t count them separately). I didn’t get lost, but I am the type of person who just wants to try to collect everything and explore every corner of the maps. So, when I finally came to the Crypt of the Ribcage, I was too tired to continue. So, I decided to go back to the nearest Mistle and saved the Boss fight for the next day. Actually, the overall design of this map is acceptable from a maze/puzzle-solving perspective, and maybe the only minor flaw of the maze itself is the room in a tower on the east side of the map where two devices are staying together. But, making a good video game level design is not exactly the same thing as making a good maze, because simply creating an interesting maze layout is not enough for this game. Here are some significant issues with the Cathedral level that I have been noticed so far as followed:
- First of all, it is too long. There are seven Mistles, which behave as the checkpoints, excluding the one at the Boss room in this map. For a newbie who is trying to find the path for the first play-through, it is likely to take more than 20 minutes from a previous activated Mistle to the next unactivated Mistle without knowing where it is. However, common estimation[1] shows that the average attention span of people ranges from 10 to 20 minutes, which means players tend to lose their concentration if they keep playing without rest more than tens of minutes. Moreover, when players feel hard to keep their focus, they are more easily to make mistakes, which will lead them to a harder situation. Thus, it is predictable that some players will certainly struggle if they can’t find another Mistle within 20 minutes. And if they lost their patience, they may randomly run into some lost invasion situation. The lost invasion is a mechanic in Code Vein, where it will suddenly generate a bunch of enemies around you. No matter how far you have run away from the trigger point, as long as you haven’t eliminated them all or until you find a Mistle to rest, then they will keep generating nearby you. If this situation happens to a player who has already been struggled with the maze puzzle itself, the player is very likely to feel the gameplay experience sucks. Actually, I can see that the Cathedral (together with the Memory level) can be separated into three parts. They can be from the entrance of the Cathedral to the point where you can get into your character’s Memory, your character’s Memory itself, and from the post-Memory part to the Successor Boss fight. I think they should really just explicitly separate this part of the game into three standalone levels. Nesting another level under a larger level is fine, but you really have to give your player some time to take a breath. As for me, I could see the Cathedral wouldn’t be short and straightforward when I saw it for the first time from the entrance, but I didn’t expect it could be that long. So, after I picked up the special Vestige behind the Wolf Berserker and read the text on the prompt-up introduction, which says that it will teleport me to a different area, I didn’t think of it would lead me to a nested level. I was assuming it means it would teleport me to another area inside this level so that I could find some shortcuts to the next Mistle. Therefore, when it took me to another level, the Memory level, I was shocked because I was like, “wait, can you give me a checkpoint first?”. I was definitely interested in the storyline of Code Vein, but I was really not in the mood for listening to a story after spent hours in the Cathedral. And then, things still went away from my expectations when I notice this memory is a whole level instead of some walk-around-and-gather-information narrative area. And yet, there is no checkpoint at the start point in the memory level, though the first Mistle is pretty near and easy to find.
- Second, the environment is too monotonous. But don’t take me wrong. The design of the environment of the Cathedral is impressive aesthetically. It was fascinating at the first glimpse, and I truly admired those textures. The problem is that the entire level is mostly painted in white. Although some wall lamps are providing different colored lights in some of the towers, the towers are white. I can see the point that using white as the primary color of the level to provide a feeling of sacredness, but players also tend to get bored after they have been viewing the same color and patterns for a long time.
- Finally, there is no introduction about how high the players can jump down safely. This is an issue occurring in several levels, not only the Cathedral. In Code Vein, your character will lose HP after jumping off from an extremely high place, and may even result in dead/shattered. As I got this game mechanic setting in the first level, I didn’t dare to jump off where I thought it is super high, which made me stuck for a while in the Dried-Up Trenches because I felt it looked like perilous to jump down to those thorns. The Cathedral has the same problem, there are many places you may be unclear whether it is safe to jump off to the ground beneath you. And all the players can do is to jump and try it. However, I don’t think it is a good idea to encourage players to play bold in this game since there are still many dangerous traps where players have to be more careful.
Although there are many problems in the level design, I think the hints provided by the AI companions compensate for the issues at least a bit. The AI will talk to you when they, or actually you, noticed something extraordinary within the FOV, in case you didn’t pay attention to the minimap. They will tell you whether a place is safe to fight or not, and as long as you’re listening to them, you won’t be frequently pushed off the lethal edges by the enemies. As AI companions provide some minor hints to you, they sometimes also provide you with some lore setting narratives. For example, your first companion in Code Vein at the first level will tell you how revenants turn into the Losts.
Besides, Code Vein also takes good advantage of environmental storytelling and some other non-verbal narratives to deliver its story to the players. One example of its environmental storytelling those memory spaces where you entered after you restore memories. The overall design of those areas, however, is mediocre. Instead of entirely cutting off the control of the characters and forcing the players to watch video clips, players can still control their characters to walk around. But that’s all for the movement control. Players still have to watch and listen to the stories that happened in the past without engaging in them. However, there’s a shiny point in the design of those memory spaces. In the memory spaces of Emily Su, who is one of the successors, the ground below the player breaks after played each piece of her memory. I believe this is a visualization of her emotion at those moments. She had courage and hope, but the reality smashed her hope again and again. In the end, she volunteered to become the successor to protect her friends. But the ground breaks again, as she finally turned into a monster. Another evidence of environmental storytelling can be Camilla’s memory. Even at the end of the game, we still know almost nothing about her life before she turned into a revenant. However, I can imagine she should have had a nice past with a happy family. Those paths the playable characters can walk through are full of exquisite carpets and pieces of furniture. I daresay those items scattered in the environment were pieces of her past home when she was still a normal human being.
The descriptions of the weapons, of course, provide a narrative of the game’s lore setting. But there are two interesting weapons designed in a way that the game objects themselves can deliver the feeling of the story without any text-based introduction. They are the default weapons that each character will have at the beginning of the first level. One of them is a pipe, while the other one is a piece of the concrete block. The idea of using a concrete block as your weapon may seem funny and weird, but it fits the post-apocalyptic atmosphere in this game perfectly.
Audio
Audio is not my profession, so I don’t think I am qualified to talk much about the music stuff. The one thing I can talk about is the sound effects. I have seen people discussing the combat in Code Vein doesn’t provide an excellent feeling of impact/attack. One of the reasons can be the collider issue I mentioned above, but the sound effects also contribute a lot to the sense of combat. Without a proper sound effect, players won’t get the correct acoustic feedback on the impact they expected. And that’s why every time I broke a wooden box in Code Vein, I felt like I was punching cardboards.
Other Interesting Details
It would be painful if you can’t sit on chairs in a game. In Code Vein, you are allowed to sit on most types of chairs and sofas at the Home Base. You can even sit on a piano bench, and the piano is playable.
We all know that those virtual characters are just a bunch of data, but sometimes we still wonder what our characters are doing during our AFK. In Code Vein, your characters can fall asleep in a couple of minutes after you AFK. They can fall asleep either sitting on chairs or lying on beds.
Like other games, you have the chance to access your unlocked cutscenes. However, you are not going to revise those movies in some gallery menu. Instead, you can look back on the cutscenes by entering the hot spring at the Home Base. The hot spring also allows players to collect half of the haze they lost during the adventure.
Conclusion & Further Thoughts
I like Code Vein; otherwise, I wouldn’t spend hours writing such a long review of it. It was fun for the most part of my gameplay experience. I enjoy the art style, the story, and the character design. When Yakumo blocked the enemy attack right in front of me, I knew it would become one of my best RPG combat experience, even though the AI didn’t do it intentionally.
You can see a lot of the fun ideas in this game. However, those severe flaws and problems I mentioned above remind me of what I have learned from school: ideas are cheap.
Everyone can come up with some cool ideas. But simply throw all interesting ideas together won’t generate a cool game automatically. A good game should be polished. The crucial part of making games is not about putting what ideas in it. It is about how to put those ideas together and make them consistent with each other so that the target players will always be around their comfort zones when they are playing the game. As for Code Vein, I can see the game company must have put a lot of effort into developing those interesting details such as the fancy materials for character customization, interactions in the Home Base, and photo mode. However, I don’t see the same quality of work done for the combat part. If there’s going to have a sequel, then I will certainly be looking forward to it. But if the quality of the combat design still stays the same, I doubt if I will step on that adventure.
