Code Vein
72
★ /10
PC
PS4
Xbox One
Bandai Namco Entertainment
Code Vein is a 2019 action RPG developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Bandai Namco, released September 27, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It holds Metacritic scores in the low 70s — and a commercial record that outran them completely: a million copies in under a month, past three million since, enough to greenlight the 2026 sequel Code Vein II. The “anime Dark Souls” tag started as a joke about its God Eater-adjacent art style; the sales suggest it was simply an underserved audience’s order form.
Set in a walled post-apocalypse, it casts you as a Revenant — a resurrected vampire soldier who loses memories with each death and hungers for blood — in a society one bad day from monstrous frenzy.
Technical Specifications
| Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| Developer | Bandai Namco Studios |
| Publisher | Bandai Namco Entertainment |
| Release | September 27, 2019 (PC, PS4, Xbox One) |
| Metacritic | Low 70s (by platform) |
| Sales | 3+ million copies |
| DLC | Hellfire Knight · Frozen Empress · Lord of Thunder |
| Sequel | Code Vein II (2026) |
| Genre | Action RPG, Soulslike |
| Mode(s) | Single-player (AI partner) · Online co-op |
Blood Codes and Partners
Its two real ideas hold up. Blood Codes are swappable class kits — dozens of them, each with masterable skills that persist across swaps — making it one of the most freely respec-able Soulslikes ever shipped. And the partner system keeps an AI companion (Mia, Yakumo, the fan-canonized Io) at your side by default: reviled by purists as a difficulty crutch, beloved by the game’s actual audience as the feature that let them finish a Souls game at all. The character creator, meanwhile, became genuinely famous — for a stretch, “Code Vein” screenshots were an anime-OC genre of their own.
Reception
Critics landed at “competent but derivative”: praise for the build flexibility, creator, and story swings, criticism for bland level design (the endless red-mist ruins), uneven bosses, and difficulty flattened by partners. The patientgamers long tail runs warmer — “extremely satisfying” is the representative thread title — and the game’s community remained active enough across seven years to make the sequel announcement one of Summer Game Fest 2025’s louder cheers.
Where to Play It Today
Code Vein is on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox, with the DLC-complete editions perennially under $10 — one of the cheapest entry points in the genre, and required background for Code Vein II only in spirit: the sequel opens on a new world and cast.
