Kevin Werges

I'm not going to comment on the parts of the game that do work, because a lot of the systems "just work", as has been the case since the very start of the series. You got the weapon fighting and the story mode being decent, even if the writing is sort of like one of those off the cuff Dungeons and Dragons sessions where some weirdo threw the plot for a loop. 1) Character customizer by far was not that great, and I think the style of the characters vs the artwork did not add up. We're not in the early to mid playstation Era where people could get away with mid-grade models, so picking a style that is easy to work with and matches the artwork of the characters is best. 2) I didn't like how the story mode was setup. It's hard work to setup hypothetical scenarios for so many characters, especially since depending on who the player is playing as, the story is going to run differently, but the battle chains seemed short for some of the fighters. SCIII did it a bit differently by having it so that whoever the player was playing as would make it to the end of the tale. 3) I liked the custom characters that were developed for SC IV along with the star-wars crossover far more than the Geralt and 2B inclusions. I think it largely comes down to the presentation with the art style vs the characters.

Okay, so plenty of people have said "it is a good game" and "it isn't up to par with dark souls" and such. After playing this for a bit here is some clarification on those points so it makes a bit more sense (instead of having someone just say words that are mostly flowery) **The Good** The Resource System for Spells called Ichor is really good. I mean, I wish we had this in Dark Souls kind of good. You know how you had to keep going to bonfires to recharge your magic? Imagine if you could get that back by backstabbing people and hitting things. I believe they did this because there's no real ammo outside of Ichor so it has to be recharged pretty consistently. The character customization is really good. The way they handle the character story telling through memory segments is probably one of the best things I've seen in a very long time. It helps a lot with giving life to the world and it's always interesting to hear old war stories. Character socialization feels a touch above Dark Souls as a whole. **The Dark Souls Criticism** When people say the game isn't up to par with dark souls it is actually not that hard to understand why. In dark souls, you are in a decaying world that is falling apart and are completely alone. Those that you find are a hallow shell of what they once were, and it's pretty clear everyone is doomed to an eternity where they will eventually go insane. In Code Vein, there is an outside world. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is because it means you are not in an eternal death trap. In fact, there are even humans still alive in shelters and society as a whole is still kind of trudging along somewhere among this torn apart city. On top of which, the Miasma can be negated with filter devices and only appears to effect revenants, so humans could hypothetically make it out unless the red mist somehow stops them, too. Finally, the combat is definitely a bit stronger in the souls series with one very big exception involving the magic system. Bloodborne is just far and away better at keeping the flow of combat up and I find myself having to use the faster weapons in Code Vein to keep battle flow consistent. Even then, you can get clipped by enemies just jumping out of no where in some parts, especially their invasions, or sometimes have enemies that just stare at you like zombies. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does occur in the early zones.