CODE VEIN

Review

 Starting a new game will open a screen where you’ll see a bright light with particles falling around. Then you’ll hear a sexy voice saying, “Good Morning”, “Hey... can you hear me?” then “Think back... Search your memory for an image of yourself”. I did think of an image of myself, sadly none of the options were as gorgeous as me so I had to make do with what they had on offer using the Customise Character options.

Basic Appearance will allow you to choose from several preset options for your character. There are quite a few more options to customise your character’s appearance, selecting Advanced Settings will allow you to change your Physique, Skin, Hair, Face, Eyes, Eyebrows, Makeup, Scars/Others, Face Paint, Accessories, Clothing, Purifier Mask, and Voice. Once you have your character to your liking you can save the appearance, then you can hit the Confirm button and the game will start.

You will hear that sexy voice again as the screen goes bright, revealing you in a strange place. Here you’ll have a face to put towards the voice; the owner of the voice is called Cruz. She’ll take you through the tutorial and explain how things work within the game. She also tells you that you have been reborn as an immortal creature, a Revenant. All revenants have different powers coursing through their veins, and these special powers are call Blood Codes.

To begin with you only have one Blood Code - the Fighter - although as you go through the tutorial, you’ll acquire a couple more Blood Codes - Ranger and Caster. The Fighter boasts endurance for melee combat and raises abilities on strength and dexterity. The Ranger blood code allows your character to provide support and defense buffs with Gifts. The Caster blood code allows you to use powerful attacks from a distance. You will unlock new Blood Codes as you progress through the game.

Each blood code will have a varying number of Gifts which can be learned, giving your character more powers. These Gifts are skills which can be used to increase your powers, heal, add effects to weapons such as poison, and more. You can acquire new Gifts at Mistle points, where you can rest, gain new gifts, store any items you don’t currently require in the storage. You can also Heal your health and Teleport to previously found Mistle points. However, if you have cleared the area around a Mistle point prior to using it, when exiting the Mistle all the creatures you disposed of previously will reappear.

After completing the tutorial, you’ll find yourself waking up with no memory, and a girl (Io) looking over you who can’t remember anything either. This happens with Revenants; each time they die they lose a bit more of their memory when they are reborn. Io leads you to a spring to quench your thirst, however there is no water at this spring and even if there were water, it wouldn’t quench your thirst, as only blood can do that. The spring is dry, the girl bites your arm and your blood drops down into the ground around the spring. This reinvigorates the spring, making it blossom with Blood Beads. Revenants need blood to hold off the thirst; without blood, their thirst will overcome them, and they’ll turn into mindless Lost. Once a revenant turns in to a Lost there’s no turning back.

After the Io gives you one of the blood beads, she takes care of you while you recover. Then a couple of revenants appear and take you both back to their base, which is run by an arrogant revenant who collects other revenants and uses them to search in the dangerous shadows for Blood Beads. You awake to find yourself amongst other revenants being held against their will. You can talk with the other captive revenants and maybe gain some information on what is going off.

This revenant needs to find enough blood beads before Silva comes to collect his levy, therefore he sends other revenants in search of new springs and blood beads. Silva is the revenant who runs everything; they have all the remaining humans and demand a levy of blood beads from the remaining revenants. The springs have all dried up, so the only hope is to find new springs. However, any new springs that may exist are places which are either filled with the Lost or where the miasma is too thick. Therefore, you and the other revenants are collected as slaves. It’s from here that your journey will begin.  After teaming up with another revenant, Oliver Collins, you’re both kicked into a hole which leads into the underground depths. You can’t leave the way you entered, so you head off in the search of Blood Beads and an exit from the underground. 

As you make your way through the depths looking for Blood Beads you come across plenty of Lost. Defeating these Losts will sometimes drop items, such as Shards or Weapons. You can also find these scattered around, shining on the floor or somewhere. Picking them up will reveal what you have found. There are also some chests scattered about; usually you’ll find some sort of lost you’ll need to defeat before finding out what is in the chest. While exploring, you’ll find Mistle points; some of these need activating, while others are rotten and will need purifying or defeating the Lost which infected the rotten Mistle. Purifying or activating a Mistle will purify the miasma in the surrounding area and it will reveal the surroundings on your map.

You will have another character partner with you as you play through the game, both exploring and in combat. As you progress, you’ll be able to change partners should you need or wish too; you can do this at Mistle points. When in combat you’ll have the use of different weapons, such as Hammers, Axes, Poleaxes, Blades etcetera. Which weapons you use can depend on your current Blood Code. You can have two weapons and switch between them at any time while in combat. If a certain weapon isn’t to your play style or you need some extra oomph, then swapping Blood Codes will allow you to change combat style. You can assign any Gifts learned from Blood Codes to your weapon attacks or to support your partner. As you defeat Lost, you’ll collect Haze, which you can use to level up your character at Mistle points.  Haze can also be used along with other items to upgrade your weapons, gifts and equipment. You can also gain Haze by using shards found from defeating Lost or found scattered around on the floor or in chests.

In the options you’ll find the settings: Games Settings (Auto-Switch Target, Cinematic Effect for Special Drains, Display Damage Values, Display Lock-On Marker, Attack Auto-Tracking, Vibration, Mini-Map Rotation, Critical Condition Screen Effects, Partner Conversations During Exploration On/Off options), Control Settings (gamepad buttons, keyboard and mouse and key binds for Exploration/Battle and Gifts; you can remap these buttons and keyboard shortcuts to your own preference), Camera Settings (Horizontal and Vertical Inversion On/Off, Horizonal and Vertical Sensitivity (Zero to One Hundred) and Auto-Dodge Obstacles On/Off), Brightness Settings (adjust the brightness from Zero to One Hundred).

Graphics (Basic Settings - Resolution, Screen Mode, Frame Rate Cap, Anti-Aliasing, Post Process, Shadow, Texture and Effects Qualities;  Advanced Graphic Settings - Draw Distance, Anti-Aliasing Processing, SSAO, Motion Blur, V-Sync, Film Grain, Material and Depth of Field Quality).

Sound Settings (Speaker Type, Music, Sound Effects and Voice volume controls from Zero to One Hundred), Network Settings (Matchmaking Password, Character Name Display, Area Restriction, Matchmaking Region and Select Region), Analytics Options (Here you can either allow to deny analytics tracking for data collection of Gaming Account ID, IP Address and Game Play Log), and  Language Settings (Event Subtitles and Gameplay Subtitles On/Off, Spoken Language - English or Japanese - Keyboard Layout -Qwerty, Azerty and Qwertz - and Confirm/Cancel Type A or Type B).

The game is very enjoyable to play; I love the graphics and the story. The game plays well and the combat is pretty good, although I tend to get a bit lost at times as the camera angle changes and I’m trying to get back into a position of being able to continue in combat. This only tends to happen with the bigger Lost creatures and may not be a problem for other players. Overall, I like the game and would certainly recommend it.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!