Code Vein II

Welcome to anime Dark Souls. This thought betrayed the mindset of many a reviewer when Code Vein released in September 2019. Although the image did not come entirely out of the blue, with the marketing playing heavily into the cravings of genre fans, with Dark Souls III three years in the past and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice not entirely sating the appetites of Soulslike fans but instead defining its own subgenre of ‘parry porn’. In came the vampires, and while Code Vein never ranked particularly high in reviews, with 70 points on Metacritic and a user rating of 7.5, it came at the right time and brought enough flavour to sell a good four million times between its release and the summer of 2025.

That Bandai Namco’s internal development studio has been working on a sequel to the vampire action RPG is therefore no surprise. The reveal was still one of the bigger news of this year’s Summer Game Fest. Code Vein II enhances the battle feel first and foremost, and makes the fighting snappier, the combat feedback stronger and the moves of enemies more reliable to read. The partner system has been updated and developed into a kind of summoning system that gives players two combat forms at any time. Last but not least, the story has been enhanced as well, with a hook that any good sequel uses: Time travel. Fighting for blood with anime undead has never been more stylish.