A soulslike that is like no other soul
Code Vein is an action adventure anime style RPG with heavily inspired elements from the Dark Souls series formula. Despite taking some inspiration from Dark Souls this game falls hard on the floor when it comes to what makes those kinda games fun and engaging. Although this game has many build variety and play styles that are the main focus to mix up combat, it easily becomes cluttered and overwhelming.
This game is stylistic in some aspects, one area stands out the most but it's ripped right from Dark Souls Anor Londo but every other area is just unappealing and feels the same as everything.
The combat is clunky and deliberate, even builds focused on speed over power still feels clunky as I experienced that most damage sponge enemies and all bosses seamlessly have a damage threshold. Say if I get the upperhand on a boss and knock them off guard, I unleash a burst of 5 light attacks with a damage output of (-439, -442, -98, -12, -8), some bosses have phase 2 and when going into the second phase, they have basically invincibility frames for a short time but even without them going into another phase, I think I'd rather my last 3 light attacks didn't register than give me poor damage out put.
By far the worst part of combat is always having a companion alongside you, this game doesn't trust the player to master the mechanics of the game and make it practically impossible without one as they act as a safety net in fights, oh hey, didn't heal at the right time in the fight and died, no worries, heres a second chance. You can play without them but it's a super challenge to your own patience and unlike Dark Souls SL1, Hollow Knight no charm run and Bloodborne BL4 runs, it's just not fun and more for masochist.
I played this for roughly 48 hours and I can say I got about 4 to 8 hours of fun but the last 40 were a chore, like tedious and draining. The story is extremely sub par and the emphasis on wearing a mask compared to the cutscenes are a joke, I'd rather they ether commit to the mask completely by never having the characters take them off or scrap them completely (I know the emphasis of the story is that air is polluted and if consuming it, you'll become a feral revenant/lost, I wish for story purposes that near the life seed trees in cutscenes, they were more human and be paranoid about completely trusting the air around the life seed trees)
As a stand alone game it's meh at best but as a souls like game, its an insult.