You’ll be able to explore the land of a dystopian world newly formed after a mysterious disaster brought about the end of civilization with such destruction, almost no one survives.

In this world, you play as a soldier of the hidden society of Revenants known as Vein—but pretty much known as Revenants—, and attack the Lost, bloodthirsty ghouls who were once human but have now “lost” all of their humanity, plaguing the land with their spikes of despair. As you help defend the final stronghold of humanity, you will discover who you really are and how all this came to be!

Code Vein is a dungeon-like souls game where the fighting mechanics can be pretty simple but enjoyable. Movement and abilities of your characters are great. Characters move smoothly when idle or in combat, making for a great experience with this anime-souls style game! In most areas, the enemy is almost at every corner, and fighting them requires patience and skill-building. Blocking is key to the game, and if you are facing the opposite direction, it will leave yourself wide-open so being aware of your stance/position will also be something to look out for, of course.

You can use gifts which are your spells—wonderful visuals with those—to mix and match for your power-up/specials when fighting that one boss that you need everything you got to defeat. Having the right setup is also key in this game so make sure you are collecting all the gifts you can and pairing them up for maximum use!

Dodging will also be your best friend as the combat system developed for Code Vein is spot on and has great reaction time. When executing a dodge and thinking about camera movement, it was very nice and didn't feel in the way. The movement was smooth, sharp, didn’t make you feel weird, left no stress on the eyes, it was great! And keep in mind, this was a demo at E3 2018 that we tried as press.

From our demo experience and right off the bat, you are in a rocky canyon of narrow trails with mini caves or crevices, where the Lost are littered all over the canyon. As you try to make your way past the scattered Lost in the area, and out of the maze-like trails, you come up to a crazy boss—maybe a side-boss that is rather hard to describe. It was kind of like a dark cell-shaded female character, aking like a clown but more pirate and mutant zombie than anything. It could've been a Vein at its limits of becoming a Lost creature of the world!? Or it could’ve been something just horrific!? Who knows!

After playing that level for a bit it was pretty much time for us to move on… While we wanted more time with Code Vein, it only left us with anticipation of wanting to play it more! Just so we can discover the truth about the story and what really lies ahead for the Revenants.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to check out the team system but there was an NPC that was with you as you fought your way through the canyons. With this teammate, which you can switch between 3 other characters during your missions—each with a different attribute, of course—, you’re able to stay on top and have the advantage when completing missions. Your powers were more or less the typical setup of your lows, mids, highs, and a special. You got your block, your dodge/sway, you had an inventory bag/box where you could store items, checking your stats, upgrading them (?), etc. The one cool thing, though, is that you are able to customize your weapons during missions as well! This helps in the long run as you can all make sure you are ready for the next task!

We also didn’t get the chance to check out the multiplayer mode they had announced for the game, but all in good time. I’m honestly not sure it was even ready?! Very curious as to what missions or training challenges they will have in store for us at launch?! At least, we assume they will have such features for us, right?! Gosh, we hope so!?

The design of the characters are lovely. Nice, bold shading with much depth to add to the movement of each character which you can customize prior to starting your story mission or during it. The environment also had some nice cell-shading that was anime-esque much like God Eater! Love those types of games! Your character power-ups are pretty nice as they provide extra visuals to an already visually entertaining game from Bandai Namco Entertainment!