Why Code Vein is a great game

[Admin]

I think the main indication that a game is great is you enjoying it even after playing it for an extended time and this has very much been the case for me with Code Vein.

It's a game that delivers what i have been searching for and being unable to find, the ability to play as a nice female character and enjoy gameplay that is mechanically good and challenging.

Controls worked just fine and performance was also good with my 3090 and 13900KF.

I have tried many times to find something else to play but almost every time i find myself getting disappointing often to the point where i simply uninstall the game.

 

[Admin]

The start of the game
The game starts out very strong with you being taken straight to a character editor. The character editor has loads of options and as you spend time there you will get invested into what you made. You want to see her achieve great things in the game.

You can actually make a character that looks young and very feminine.

I do plan on changing her appearance slightly for the next play-through, ill go for something more mature looking facially. You cannot actually change the body of your character after you have started which is arguably a good thing.

 

[Admin]

Mods
One issue i had with Code-Vein was finding a nice dress to put on my character but luckily there is a fix for that.

There are even mods that make character completely naked if you are into that. Personally i prefer my female character to have nice clothing on (rather than completely naked) but i did use a mod to make mia nude for a while, nice if you are playing with an ai companion but kinda pointless for the solo run i was going at the time (which is why i later disabled the mod).

You can also mod the games engine itself to play with settings higher than the official max settings.

While some mods are definitely nice there were also things i looked for but never found such as a nice long-hair option (never really found anything particularly great).

 

[Admin]

Core gameplay
The main challange of the game is the bosses. Getting to the bosses is generally easy and serves as a nice break after intensive fighting.

The exploration is fairly linearl. Sometimes there are multiple paths but for the most part you will just follow one main path unless you are backtracking to find some stuff you missed.

You get 'rewarded' by "haze" for defeating enemies/bosses. You can then use the haze to level up which makes the game easier. The haze you havn't used will end up at the place you died if you die and then it will get lost for good if you die again before collecting it (unless you kill the game or load safe file).

I personally would have preferred the parts between the bosses to be a lot more challenging in exchange for not having haze get lost permanently. That would allow them to make the section between the bosses a lot harder since people wouldn't permanently lose haze from trying and failing to get to the next section.

 

[Admin]

Preventing the game from becoming too easy
As you learn more about the game and learn the mechanics of it it will become increasingly easy to play.

The game for example has a system where you can gain additional abilities/powerups called "gifts" and using these effectively will be massively advantageous when you combine that with the AI partner also helping you.

I ended up not using the gift system at all for my first playthrough. I did the mistake of playing with lui for most of the game, he was definitely annoying and i should have replaced him with io or mia earlier. Still even with that the game became too easy after i had beated the double boss fight, i then stopped leveling up but even then a lot of sections really wasn't challanging enough.

Then for the next playthrough i instead played solo which was much harder and arguably more enjoyable. I still avoided using the gift system for most of the game, i delved into it more for the final boss fight where i made myself overpowered to beat it easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USGjmH8I0yw

Next i will try doing a level1 run where i will simply abstrain from leveling up my character but otherwise no restrictions.

 

[Admin]

Top5 Code Vein bosses to do solo
I enjoyed all these a lot and it felt amazing beating them all.

0. Blade bearer and cannoneer
1. Successor of the breath
2. Butterly of delivium
3. Invading executioner
4. Insatiable despot

 

[Admin]

The story
The game does a very good job in making you like the way the character you play as act and also the characters allied to you.

Interestingly the game blatantly portray some other characters as embarrassing wimps which is a bit funny and a big contrast towards yourself and your brave team who isn't afraid to fight for what's fight even against very though opponents.

Early in the game when you are treated very badly by some criminals the character you play as wants to fight back but is stopped by another character, in retrospect fighting back would have been a much better option and you will see why as you play the game.

The games goes heavily into the memories of others and all the hardships and heartbreak they went through.

The game has multiple endings but i am not sure if the 'best' ending is actually the ending i prefer.

Note that in order to get what the game authors view as the best ending you have to collect the red crystal things in time and give them to the attendants in time, if you miss that you cannot go back to fix it later, you will have to start the game over.

 

[Admin]

Controls
You really feel like you are actually in control over your character.

When i played the game i only used the lock-on feature when the game kinda forced me to for 2 of the bosses, otherwise i simply controlled the camera myself via my mouse which i very much preferred over having a locked camera.

I did change away from the default keyboard mapping to make the game more convenient to play (such as F to heal) and once you have configured it you don't think about the controls that much which is an indication that they are working. You simply play the game and win.

 

[Admin]

graphics and framerate
The game looks fine for the most part while also not being particularly demanding (also for the most part). There was still some lagg (1% low under 80) when i stilled played with my r5 3600 but i no longer had those issues once my intel system was up an running.

The game does not however offer things like raytracing or any other particularly demanding settings.

The environments are generally fine but nothing particularly impressive from a technical standpoint.

I used the following graphic settings.

[Core.System]
Paths=../../../Engine/Content
Paths=%GAMEDIR%Content
Paths=../../../CodeVein/Plugins/NetCommon/Content
Paths=../../../CodeVein/Plugins/Wwise/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/CriWare/CriWare/Content
Paths=../../../CodeVein/Plugins/SpriteStudio5/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/2D/Paper2D/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Media/MediaCompositing/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/AppleARKit/Content

[SystemSettings]
p.AnimDynamicsAdaptiveSubstep=1
r.TonemapperFilm=1 ; game default = 0
r.Filter.SizeScale=2 ; double sample count for bloom/DoF, game default = 1
r.LightFunctionQuality=3 ; use highest light function quality, game default = 1
r.MaxQualityMode=1 ; enables max quality mode for a bunch of shadow-related code, game default = 0
r.MaxAnisotropy=16 ; use 16x AF, game default = 8
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.5 ; sharpens the image slightly (try 1 for even sharper image and see which you prefer), game default = 0
r.Streaming.MipBias=-15 ; always use best mips, default = 0
r.MipMapLodBias=-15 ; always use best mips, default = 0
r.SceneColorFormat=4 ; better color format for scene, default = 3
r.SSS.HalfRes=0 ; use full resolution for SSR, default = 1
r.EmitterSpawnRateScale=2 ; increase emitter (fog/smoke) spawn rate, default = 1
r.TemporalAACatmullRom=1 ; use sharper TAA filter kernel, game default = 0
r.ScreenPercentage=104 ; Slight natural AA, game default = 100
r.MSAA.CompositingSampleCount=0 ; MSAA doesn't work in this game, so disable it, game default = 4
r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=4096 ; double shadow resolution, game default = 2048
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=4096 ; double shadow resolution, game default = 2048
r.Shadow.MaxSoftKernelSize=80 ; double size of soft kernel, game default = 40
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.0075 ; lower value = further shadow distance. game default = 0.01
r.Shadow.TexelsPerPixel=16 ; increase shadow texels per screen pixel, game default = 1.27324
r.VolumetricFog.GridPixelSize=4 ; lower fog pixel size, default = 8
r.VolumetricFog.HistoryMissSupersampleCount=16 ; increase fog supersample count, default = 4
r.VolumetricFog.LightFunctionSupersampleScale=4 ; increase fog supersample scale, default = 2
r.ViewDistanceScale=20 ; makes viewable & LOD distance of objects 20x, less pop-in of things, game default = 1
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.05 ; increase static mesh LOD distances, lower = larger distance. game default = 1.
foliage.LODDistanceScale=20 ; increase grass LOD distance, not much perf impact. game default = 1
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2 ; increase character LOD distances. game default = 0
r.MinScreenRadiusForLights=0.015 ; game culls lights based on their size on the screen, lower the culling size so that more lights can stay onscreen. game default = 0.03
r.Streaming.PoolSize=0 ; first make streaming pool size unlimited, game default = 3000

File: Engine.ini

Location: Users/admin/AppData/Local/CodeVein/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/

Note that "admin" here is the name of the windows account, yours might be something else.

 

[Admin]

I think games don't pander enough to foot kink guys.

https://www.deviantart.com/nyanaki/art/Code-Vein-Female-Barefoot-824093663

Not sure what mod that is if any.

 

[Admin]

You cannot aim freely with ranged weapons
This would be a huge drawback if it wasn't for the fact that you do not actually have to use any of those weapons in the first place.

I instead used a quick mobility build where i only used my sunset sword to inflict damage (except for the first boss fight where i hadn't gotten my preferred sword yet).

Gameplay where you instead aimed manually at your opponent could have been interesting but unfortunately that aspect of the gameplay got botched for the sake of providing the typical dumb console experience, it's not even required on PS5/PS4 since the dualsense/DS4 support gyro aiming.