Code Vein 2 is like if Code Vein 1 and Dragon Ball Xenoverse had a child and left it on the doorstep of Dragons Dogma,
Anime aesthetic and characters, more trope-y than the first but still a story with notable friends, multiple endings and bonds to be formed.
Time traveling abilities were we are supposed to not change history, but can change history for the greater good and are seen as a hero for it.
An open world and materials to collect and craft with, but is actually quite empty with sparse dungeons and a small feel, a world retained in a single continent…
Really invested rambling below I just wanted to say that peace.
I feel like they really want to show off lip animation or just mouth animation in general since the first game had very little with everyone being in masks, for one. It’s the only explanation as to why they use it so often.
The weapons, the skills you can learn from bloodcodes, the whole stat system is really nice compared to the first. With a wider variety of codes and weapons, it really is fun to toy around with builds especially since you aren’t for example, too far into Strength and too little into Willpower like the first game which sort of locks you out of making a build viable for a long time.
The characters do have depth, I’d say more or equal to the CV1, but the MC on the other hand is very plain. In CV1 you are a newly revived Revenant to fight the Queen, you get a backstory to how and why you have these powers and why you are important.
CV2 does sort of have that, but we don’t know why our Hunter went to that exploding cocoon, how they died, why out probably many dead bodies, we were chosen to be revived into a pseudo-vampire. At least not that I can remember. We’re given a mission to slay the Heroes so their cocoons don’t explode and not to interfere with history but also there’s no real consequence for changing history…
Unlike CV1 it’s got open world aspects with would be nice… if they, like in Dragons Dogma, weren’t so barren. I understand the Horrors and all that, but I feel like after giving each clan a better outcome, a few places once destroyed would be in better shape near their respective bases. Technically there is the Refugee camp but you’re telling me after decades they still live in the rubble? Also, the lack of important humans. Or at least humans in missions. It would have been actually cool to see Revenant’s like in the last game taking humans and stopping their gangs like in Lyle’s quest. While the ‘pleasing the sibling-in-law’ quest is fine, I would’ve liked to see how the Outpost operated normally as it seems to almost be a trading hub.
In CV1 there are three endings, Good, Bad and True.
Good is that you quell the relics but fall into slumber with Io by your side. Here, Lou is the one with the responsibility and you, either asleep or dead, remain by her side. The Heroes continue to live, your hard work and sacrifice not wasted as you and Lou have ensured an era of peace where both Humans and Revenants can live in harmony. In 1, Io becomes a Tree to not only feed Revenants with Beads eternally, but allows the group to venture outside of the Gaoi and frees everyone, human and Revenant.
Bad is the first canon ending of CV2. In 1, you frenzy under the energy of the Queen without restoring the other relic bearers bonds fixed, and you are killed to stop the Queen’s revival. In 2, Lavinia (to my knowledge) either weaponized or seals the Resurgence funny and it kills every single Revenant in existence who were the largest demographic on Earth. Lou gives you her heart and you survive in a world that is spectacularly more gloomy than the other endings. The sky is dark, the land looking dead. And you are actually dead, remembered as the Hunter and a Leader of Humanity.
True in CV1 is the same as the Good ending but there is a hint that Io has a human form again, able to tag along in the groups adventures. While in 2 you save Lou from the Resurgence Core which is it actually being a foe and not a force of nature and then you wake up. Without a heart at all to see all your friends again. It is a good moment, but the game doesn’t change after that. No explanation on what was happening, how long, or what you are. There is DLC coming out which I hope does have a sort of CV1 MC Origin story within it. Our character maybe in a flashback showing the exploding cocoon. Letting us interact with the world after the True ending and not just a boss rush like in CV1. Maybe us, as a human, actually seeing the darker side of Revenants instead of the positive side when they are our friends
Also, Headcanon/OC moment here-
Can you imagine our Hunter waking up in Magmell, slowly realizing that Lou is gone? Not only that but all the hard work, killing the Heroes they bonded with not once but twice so that their clans and their loved ones can continue to exist (and help as Lavinia herself admits!), are wiped from existence? Craig and the Chorus protecting and rescuing people, Holly and her advancements in medicine, gone. The good that they could’ve continued to do not even a possibility because they are Revenant’s. Us, as the player character, are the sole Leader in the Age of Humankind built upon the death of thousands of Revenants and our own friends. What do we have to show for it in the end? At the end of the first ending, we have to die maybe a decade after Lavinia’s betrayal as the two kids Jacob and May are late teens-early twenties, when they come to our funeral. Can we not live on a Golden Heart? Or is there a threat in the world that kills us, the only powerful human left who could defend the small fraction of normal humans left? If we actually made human friends and saw the human perspective for more than five minutes with Gobbo, I imagine a bit of it would seem justified.
Is it clear enough that I absolutely dislike Lavinia? As someone who got compared to their more successful sibling growing up I did not like her interactions with Valentin and the pressure she put on him, enough to drive him away. How she made Lou with only one goal in mind and nothing else, letting Lou see herself as just a means to an end. I’m sure she too had the same pressure on her, but the cycle of abuse can stop with her and she just kept it going. Manipulative, forced unsummomable and all around hard to like imo.
Also in the DLC if we can romance Valentin or get cutscenes with him like the other heroes that’d be great.
Also more time with the heroes please.
