Code Vein II

Developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, Code Vein II released in January 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Windows. This review covers the base game and the free updates that have followed it, including the September content drop; the paid expansion Mask of Idris is a separate purchase and is covered in the edition notes at the end.

Your partner is a system, not a difficulty setting

Under your health bar sits LP, a second gauge fed by the partner travelling with you. Damage lands on LP first while it holds, and Regeneration tops it back up. Drop LP and you lose the Link Traits that partner was lending you, which can quietly change how your build performs in the middle of a fight. Reach zero HP and your partner spends their own life force to bring you back through Restorative Offering, then sits out of action while they recover. Healing past your maximum LP shortens that recovery, which is the game telling you the two gauges are one economy.

That economy is why the buddy here does not feel like a dial. You can summon a partner to fight beside you, where they act on their own, pull attention and cover you, or assimilate them into your build for a straight boost to your own numbers. Switching between the two is a quick input rather than a menu, so it becomes a live decision: an extra body for a crowd, or one stronger you for a duel. Jadwiga is the clearest illustration of what that modularity is worth, having spent most of the game's first year as an assimilation option before the September update gave her a summoning pact and a greatsword.

Worth knowing before you rely on any of it: partner damage shows as a white slice of the enemy's health bar that heals back over time unless you press the attack, and a partner who has just revived you cannot do it again for a while. The safety net is real, and it has holes.

Blood Codes, and a Burden that is not simply a weight limit

There is no class to commit to. Blood Codes are swapped like equipment, and each one carries its own attributes, its own weapons and Formae, and a Trait, so changing code changes the maths underneath everything you are holding.

The equipment side of that is Burden. Weapons, Jails, Formae and Boosters all load your attributes, and going past your tolerance leaves you Overburdened, which is deliberately not a simple failure state. Overburden grants a benefit and a penalty, and the penalty grows with how far past the line you have gone. Because it is measured per attribute rather than as one single number, two builds carrying the same gear can end up with different problems. You can check each overburden effect in Help on the Stats screen or the Weapon menu.

Death keeps the old bargain. You drop all your Haze where you fell and get one trip to collect it. Die on the way back and it is gone.

Formae are the spell list, and blood is the mana

Weapon Formae are equipped to your weapons. A weapon takes up to four Weapon Formae, split between attacks, ranged casts and buffs, and what you can fit is capped by that weapon's capacity, so the same spell list behaves differently depending on what you are carrying. Bequeathed Formae summon a separate weapon for a single heavy attack and, usefully, do not add to your Burden at all. Defensive Formae give you the guard, counter or evasive option of your choice, and only one of them at a time.

All of it runs on Ichor, and Ichor comes out of enemies. Drain Attacks pull it back: your hits build bleed on a target, a fatter bleed gauge pays out more when you drain, and the buildup resets afterwards. Staggering an enemy opens a Special Drain for the biggest return. The result is a rotation rather than a bar you wait on, which is the most interesting thing this game does with the soulslike template.

The exceptions matter, though. Some attacks cannot be parried, and the game has had to patch cases where that was not true. Treat a counter as one answer among several rather than the answer, and read the enemy.

The past is not set dressing

The present is failing because the seal holding back the disaster is coming apart, and the only fix involves killing the five heroes who made it. You go back through time to meet them while they were still people, gather the emotions they left behind, and then come home to fight what they turned into.

Altering what happened to those heroes changes the present you return to, and this is where the structure earns its keep. There are three endings, and the default one needs none of that work. The third, which is the one the story is actually built around, wants you to have changed the past for all of them. So the time travel is not a framing device bolted to a corridor; it is the difference between the ending you drift into and the one you decide on, and it gives a second run something to do besides watch health bars get bigger.

The world between the fights is where the ambition gets away from it. Code Vein II hands you a motorcycle that your character conjures as a Forma, lets it glide off high ground, and lets a partner ride along, which is a strong promise: long roads, big horizons, somewhere to go. In practice the regions are large and the interest is concentrated, so the bike spends a lot of its time crossing ground that exists to connect two places you wanted to be. It is a better world to move through than to look at.

Reception and post-launch updates

Critics were split at launch rather than hostile. Scores mostly landed in the sixties and seventies, and fewer than half of the reviewers tracked by the major aggregate recommended it. Common criticisms included a thin open world, combat and exploration hampered by dull enemies, and technical rough edges on console.

The game that exists now is not the one that shipped. Updates through the year went after frame rate drops and load, and the September drop added a post-game epilogue, a boss-rush mode with unlockable parts, an optional Story-Focused Mode you can toggle from the options menu, a shader that restores the anime look of the original, and a jukebox. The paid expansion arrived alongside it. Steam's all-time summary still sits at Mixed, but the last thirty days of reviews are Mostly Positive.

Should you play it

Yes, if you like the build puzzle more than the world. Swapping Blood Codes, fitting Formae into a weapon's capacity and keeping the Ichor loop running is a genuine second game sitting under the combat, and the ending structure gives you a reason to use it twice. It also suits anyone who wants a partner who does something, rather than a summon that soaks a boss for you.

Skip it if you need the places you fight in to be the reason you are there. The dungeons are functional, the overworld is padded, and the strongest memories here are mechanical rather than scenic. Skip it as well if you want one defensive answer you can lean on all the way to the credits.

On editions: the standard version is the whole main story plus every free update, and that is the sensible place to start. Mask of Idris, the expansion, is not sold on its own; you get it through the Deluxe or Ultimate editions or their upgrade packs, alongside costume sets and, at the top tier, a digital artbook and soundtrack. It is post-story content with requirements attached, including the Luna Fraterna ending and the line of requests running through Valentin, so buying it before you have finished the campaign buys you nothing you can start.