I've noticed a pattern with Souls-like games recently, and the more I look back on it, it's a pattern that started very early on.
I first noticed it with Team Ninja's Nioh series, where Nioh 1 was clearly taking influence from Dark Souls 1 and Demon Souls to a lesser degree. Then Nioh 2 was an expanded game with more refinement and challenge like Dark Souls 2. I remember thinking that this developer was going to try making Seikiro next and sure enough Wo Long was a parry drift game following that idea. Okay so now do Elden Ring, oh hey look Rise of Ronin is open worldy and soon Nioh 3 will also be open world.
It's like everyone copied Fromsoft's homework but changed it enough to not get caught by the teacher. I see you Lies of P copying Bloodborne you aint fooling me.
With Elden Ring I feel like a lot of devs are trying to skip steps in the evolution process though. And here we have Code Vein 2, the sequel to anime Dark Souls which featured exceptional poor level design but some creative ideas despite that.
Code Vein 2 is Elden Ring with anime vampires, same concept and many of the same gameplay ideas. Unfortunately it also has not of the polish or creatively Elden Ring managed to put forth throughout that huge game.
In CV2 you are a ressurected vampire thing called a Reve..or wait....you know what nevermind. CV2 throws so many different terms for things at you in the first 20 minutes, the story is a confusing mess. The world is ending, go save it. It's your standard Souls combat for the most part, different weapons have different attack movesets and your character has a few bells and whistles taped on. The Weapon Arts from DS3 and ER are here except you can equip 4 at a time and most abilities aren't directly tied to a specific weapon allowing you some freedom of mix and matching. Along with a couple defensive shield options you can create a character to fit just about any playstyle you like.
However combat struggles for me as there is a slight floatyness to it that is hard to pin down. Dodging feels good, but your weapon attacks just feel like slightly delayed from when you press the button which makes the direct combat feel sluggish. Even blocking and parrying feels overly difficult because they don't seem to happen when I push the button, but instead slightly after I push the button.
Thankfully combat is really easy. I only have 3 hours into the game so far and I've beaten 4 bosses without trouble at all. Partly because like the first game you get an constant AI companion to fight along side you, which if you've ever summoned in Dark Souls you know how much of a difficulty drop this can make bosses who aren't focusing on you. Additionally when you die, your companion will revive you at the cost of them disappearing from battle for a few seconds. So long as the companion is there, you are immortal and cannot die. The more the AI has to revive you however, the longer they will be gone from the battle, however in theory if you can just run away and survive long enough, you can prevent ever dying in the game. Despite that, some monsters are aggressive enough that you'll still die.
Speaking of enemies the variety in game sucks. Which for a massive open world game is a problem. Apparently there are only like 25ish enemy types in the game which means in the first few hours you'll have fought everything the game will ever throw at you in terms of normal enemies to fight. There are unique bosses but many bosses repeat or become normal enemies in later areas which admittedly was also a problem in Elden Ring, but ER pulled from a much bigger pool of enemies at least.
Overall CV2 is fine. But it's not great, it's clunky and quickly repetitive, but if you need to scratch the itch for an anime souls game it'll do. Just wait for a big sale and maybe some patches to fix some of the performance bugs.
I first noticed it with Team Ninja's Nioh series, where Nioh 1 was clearly taking influence from Dark Souls 1 and Demon Souls to a lesser degree. Then Nioh 2 was an expanded game with more refinement and challenge like Dark Souls 2. I remember thinking that this developer was going to try making Seikiro next and sure enough Wo Long was a parry drift game following that idea. Okay so now do Elden Ring, oh hey look Rise of Ronin is open worldy and soon Nioh 3 will also be open world.
It's like everyone copied Fromsoft's homework but changed it enough to not get caught by the teacher. I see you Lies of P copying Bloodborne you aint fooling me.
With Elden Ring I feel like a lot of devs are trying to skip steps in the evolution process though. And here we have Code Vein 2, the sequel to anime Dark Souls which featured exceptional poor level design but some creative ideas despite that.
Code Vein 2 is Elden Ring with anime vampires, same concept and many of the same gameplay ideas. Unfortunately it also has not of the polish or creatively Elden Ring managed to put forth throughout that huge game.
In CV2 you are a ressurected vampire thing called a Reve..or wait....you know what nevermind. CV2 throws so many different terms for things at you in the first 20 minutes, the story is a confusing mess. The world is ending, go save it. It's your standard Souls combat for the most part, different weapons have different attack movesets and your character has a few bells and whistles taped on. The Weapon Arts from DS3 and ER are here except you can equip 4 at a time and most abilities aren't directly tied to a specific weapon allowing you some freedom of mix and matching. Along with a couple defensive shield options you can create a character to fit just about any playstyle you like.
However combat struggles for me as there is a slight floatyness to it that is hard to pin down. Dodging feels good, but your weapon attacks just feel like slightly delayed from when you press the button which makes the direct combat feel sluggish. Even blocking and parrying feels overly difficult because they don't seem to happen when I push the button, but instead slightly after I push the button.
Thankfully combat is really easy. I only have 3 hours into the game so far and I've beaten 4 bosses without trouble at all. Partly because like the first game you get an constant AI companion to fight along side you, which if you've ever summoned in Dark Souls you know how much of a difficulty drop this can make bosses who aren't focusing on you. Additionally when you die, your companion will revive you at the cost of them disappearing from battle for a few seconds. So long as the companion is there, you are immortal and cannot die. The more the AI has to revive you however, the longer they will be gone from the battle, however in theory if you can just run away and survive long enough, you can prevent ever dying in the game. Despite that, some monsters are aggressive enough that you'll still die.
Speaking of enemies the variety in game sucks. Which for a massive open world game is a problem. Apparently there are only like 25ish enemy types in the game which means in the first few hours you'll have fought everything the game will ever throw at you in terms of normal enemies to fight. There are unique bosses but many bosses repeat or become normal enemies in later areas which admittedly was also a problem in Elden Ring, but ER pulled from a much bigger pool of enemies at least.
Overall CV2 is fine. But it's not great, it's clunky and quickly repetitive, but if you need to scratch the itch for an anime souls game it'll do. Just wait for a big sale and maybe some patches to fix some of the performance bugs.
