Code Vein II may just be succeeding for me where the original failed

It feels a bit derogatory to say as much, but if there's one way to describe the 2 or so hours I played of Code Vein II, it feels like the team has learned and borrowed a lot from FromSoftware's Elden Ring. Regardless of what the team themselves might say, the comparisons are obvious; a shift to an open-world, with dedicated dungeons. Materials to can pick up and use in crafting, and as a result of the larger worlds and dungeons - a much greater focus on mobility. A faster, more nimble sprint, a jump button, and a significantly heavier emphasis on verticality in level design. 

The same week as The Game Awards, we had the chance to go hands-on with the game on a base PlayStation 5 for 2 hours, consisting of the opening moments of the game and a dungeon a bit further into the experience - alongside 2 boss fights, both of which I ended up enjoying rather immensely. Part of this came down to the sheer level of customization at display here - while Blood Codes return from the original Code Vein, they've seen a number of changes that offer a bit more flexibility in buildcraft, not least of which the ability to wield any weapon regardless of Blood Code equipped - though of course different Blood Codes with different stats will synergize better than others.

I ended up using a Halberd, and and I found a specific combination of skills that could dish out some serious burst damage within the confines of the preview for the final boss of the demo; a buff that boosts your attack after successive strikes, an attack that deals a flurry of damage via many weaker hits, and a single-strike attack that I could then use when the buff had been activated. The person next to me went with a different tact for the same boss - a hammer, but using poison afflictions to help bide his time between strikes. 

There's a lot more to the customization system that I wish I had the time to fully explore. For one, different weapons can place a different burden on your stats - but instead of just being unable to equip certain weapons or even being exclusively punished for not quite having the stats to match that burden, each stat has both a beneficial effect and a negative one as a consequence for overburdening them. This wasn't something I fully understood in the heat of the moment, but reading through the preview guide that Bandai Namco sent our way after the fact - which we sadly can't exactly share - leaves me plenty excited to experiment even more with some unconventional builds once the full game gets sent our way later this month.

One element that I did appreciate was how partner characters now work in battle; if you take fatal damage, your partner will momentarily sacrifice themselves to restore a portion of your health - offering an additional chance to beat the boss. After a short cooldown, your partner will respawn, and once again if you take fatal damage they'll swoop in to save you. While this does mean that players are given a certain level of safety against bosses, this is by no means a get out of jail free card. Both encounters we faced were clearly still early into the story, and yet were already quite aggressive. Furthermore, the more times you take fatal damage the longer the cooldown for your partner to respawn, and the less health will be restored when they save you.

In other words, while it does offer you a chance to keep going as long as you can play safe while your partner is out of the fight - you still have to learn the fight in the end, and it feels pretty clear that these fights have been balanced around this system, so they're not just going to be a cakewalk for Soulslike veterans. I was pleasantly surprised how much these fights asked of me in terms of thinking of my positioning, and whether to dodge roll or jump to avoid certain attacks - something that brought to mind some of my favorite boss fights from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, if that can help explain what I'm getting at here.

That all being said, I do have some concerns. While I quite enjoyed the one major dungeon I had to explore's level design, there were some instances where level geometry that I thought was an extra path was not, and lead to my death; visually, the game looks astounding with some incredible art direction. I also noted that the game looked remarkably clean on PlayStation 5. I was actively looking out for stuff like TAA artifacts, and there was nothing distracting on the image quality front. That being said, I can't say for sure how exactly the framerate will hold up.

Obviously this comes with a whole host of caveats, not least of all that what we played was a preview build of the game, but I couldn't help notice some slight framerate dips during the dungeon. Only small dips here and there that's nothing egregious, and while in these closed-off spaces I'd say performance is looking quite good, especially once VRR enters the equation. However, very early on in the demo we had a very brief excursion in the open world, where I noticed that things were at least a bit shakier in terms of framerate stability. One of the selling points of the game is the giant motorcycle you can use to traverse the environment, and I couldn't help but notice how that motorcycle was practically nonexistent for the scope of the preview, especially so close to launch.

I'm not saying that performance in the open world will be a problem, because I can't say that definitively. Yet I wish I'd had the chance to do so, at least in the hopes that I could have alleviated those concerns. Maybe it's nothing; but I remember how the presentation that the team showcased at Summer Game Fest showed a very inconsistent framerate, and it's not hard to raise an eyebrow when that portion of the gameplay loop is now conspicuously absent. I sincerely hope that I'm overthinking things, and with any luck we'll be able to report on how things stack up on that front within the next few weeks, if we could be so lucky. 

All in all, Code Vein II feels like a more confident sequel where it counts - and as someone who was never quite a big fan of the original, it's a testament that I'm all on board to play this one right at launch, even when the genre has become that much more crowded in the years since Code Vein's release. Code Vein II feels like it's up to the task of standing out, now all that's left is to see if it can stick that landing.