CODE VEIN

Slightly above-average linear soulslike experience with my outright favorite character build system for any soulslike period. As of this review, I'm at 44 hours of playtime on Steam, but have played easily three times as much on console. Gameplay is quick and responsive, with several distinct playstyles you are heavily encouraged to experiment between. Whether you favor a brute melee approach, a magic system with weaknesses to exploit or a frenetic dodge-parry-punish playstyle, there are so many parts to mix and match. In addition to five weapon types you can freely switch between, each character class (called "blood codes") is freely swappable, coming with unique active & passive skills. Using each class for a while with its skills equipped masters them, allowing you use these skills on any class moving forward. Shoring up new blood codes with old abilities eventually snowballs into a treasure trove of abilities to play with, dozens of puzzle pieces for each new area and boss. Leveling up simply increases your raw stats, so you don't need to worry about building "wrong" or needing to jump through hoops to respec. The bulk of the game's progression is very linear, but this works to its benefit, implemented in classic "soulslike" fashion with unlockable shortcuts & teleporting between safe points. You are occasionally rewarded with new sidequests when visiting old areas. In an era of poorly implemented open world games, coming back to a linear game like Code Vein for another set of playthroughs was refreshing. The story is fine throughout, a strong emotional core weighed down by slightly gratuitous anime design elements and awkward writing now and again. The narrative itself is fairly well paced, gradually building up on the world and answering every major question in one playthrough if you collect every vestige. Co-op is fun too, and the main reason I've kept coming back to the game after achieving every ending; the game allows you to assist players who are attempting areas/bosses you've already cleared. It's not the best game in the genre, but it'd make a solid starting point for people who are scared of the reputation the genre has.