YMMV / Code Vein

• Anti-Climax Boss: While far from a complete walkover, the True Final Boss the Virgin Born is generally considered to be significantly easier than the boss that immediately precedes it, the Skull King, who is considered one of the hardest bosses in the game. The fact that there's a checkpoint between them so you don't have to refight the Skull King even if you die to the Virgin Born after it is an appreciated bit of mercy, but it does render the latter even less of a challenge, since you can simply die and then challenge it again after recovering all the resources you would have expended against the former.
• Awesome Music: With music by Go Shiina, an awesome soundtrack is to be expected.
  • The game's opening theme "Underworld" by VAMPS.
    • And on that note, the game's ending theme, a collaborative effort between VAMPS and Apocalyptica "SIN IN JUSTICE".
    • The credits song, Amber Journey, reflecting the protagonist’s resolve in the ending.
  • Both the Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the basic boss themes are some epic tracks.
  • "Memory of the Lost", which plays during the Vestige scenes, accentuates the Dark and Troubled Past of all of the Revenants residing in Vein.
  • "Requiem of Tranquility and Light" is heard as you approach the boss arena for the Successor of the Throat and serves as its boss fight music. It's a chillingly emotional theme since you're going to face off against the Successor of the Throat with a very real chance of failing to save Eva. It's not unusual to hear of players choosing to walk to the arena to absorb the atmosphere.
  • The True Final Boss theme "King of the Shingai", an ominous grand march fitting for the most powerful Lost in existance, The Virgin Born.
  • Sounding like a godddamn Disney song, we get "Human Qua Human" for the True Ending song. A double dose of Tear Jerker and Heartwarming, as it is Io's Image Song after her Heroic Sacrifice and describes her journey of self-discovery.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The game is more widely known for its cast of absurdly Stripperiffic beauties, both in the cast and the boss list, than it is for its challenging Souls-like RPG gameplay. Your home base even contains an honest-to-goodness hot spring for Pete's sake!
• Breather Boss:
  • The Queen's Knight Reborn, while still a reasonable challenge, comes straight after the double whammy of Blade Bearer & Cannoneer and Juzo Mido, both strong contenders for That One Boss. The Knight hits hard and fast but has a familiar moveset, most of which are recycled from the first time you fought him.
  • Attendant of the Relics is a complete pushover compared to any of the bosses leading up to it. The enemies in the preceding level put up more of a fight than her. Her Tower of Trials counterparts, however, is a different story as you fight two of her in a rather tight claustrophobic space.
  • The Insatiable Despot, a heavy-hitting but overall easy-to-read boss that makes for a fairly breezy fight between the poison-spamming Butterfly of Delirium and the utterly brutal fight against the Invading Executioner.
• Breather Level: The Ridge of Frozen Souls. Compared to the massive slough just prior to it that's the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood, the Ridge is comparatively tiny, with very straightforward paths and the Vestige fragments are easily found. The enemy population on the Ridge are also much easier to deal with compared to those in the Cathedral. That being said, it is also one of the few levels where deaths by pitfall are much more common due to the lack of guard rails along many ledges, the fact that many enemies can knock the player backwards, and prevalence of ice floors that drop out from under your feet as soon as you step on them. It's also where you will come face-to-face with Boreal Brutes.
• Catharsis Factor: After going through most of the game slaying former revenants who have succumbed to the miasma, and going through the tragic pasts of the Successors, it's incredibly satisfying killing Juzo Mido, the one boss who's aware of his horrific crimes.
• Complete Monster: Juzo Mido leads Revenant research for Project QUEEN. Experimenting on and torturing Cruz Silva to insanity, Mido's cruelties turn her into a monster that nearly destroys the city. Before the Great Collapse, Mido is also revealed to have adopted orphans for the purpose of experimenting on them and turn them into Super Soldiers to sell to the military. Having created the "Successors", powerful beings who exist in a near-feral state, Mido intends to remove the barricade protecting the human race from the Aragami, mutating mankind into more Successors to put against the Aragami and fight them, warping into even more monstrous beings. When found at his hideout, Mido murders all of his henchmen and transforms the man protecting humanity from the Aragami into yet another Successor.
• Continuity Lockout: Those who bought the game on its own merit without realizing that it exists in the God Eater universe or having no knowledge of the other may be underwhelmed by the scene where what lies outside the Red Mist is revealed. The creature shown, while fearsome, doesn't really stand out from the other monsters fought so far. Without context, it can be hard for a player unfamiliar with God Eater to understand why these creatures are so feared.
• Crossover Ship: There are fanart of the male CV Protagonist pairing up with Hifumi Togo, in paying homage to vampire/human pairings. One can wonder the CV Protagonist's edgy appearance blends in with Hifumi's Chuunibyou manners.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The fat noblewomen lost are honestly boss-level durable and hit like runaway trains, and tend to be found with other lost. Their only saving grace is that they can be back-stabbed quite easily.
  • Queen's Vanguard in the Cathedral of Sacred Blood. While not as durable, they make up for it with much faster attacks. The halberd ones also have an unblockable attack, while the ones with shields are completely impossible to stagger out of their attack animation due to leading with a Shield Bash, and their combo can easily take up to 2/3 of your HP in one go. They're made easier if you can learn the timing to parry their teleport dive attack and can bait it out for a reliable riposte, but if you can't they will maul you, as it comes out lighting fast and is unblockable.
  • Boreal Brutes are also boss-level durable and hit like airplanes, and also move almost as fast as them too. They flip around with great agility which usually causes your attacks to miss while turning their entire bodies into a hitbox at the same time, usually followed up by a powerful AoE attack. And just when you think you've got one on the ropes, it Turns Red and grows ice armor that makes it basically invincible until you manage to shatter it with blunt or fire attacks. Also, due to the aforementioned flipping around they are quite difficult to backstab. The Silent White area of the Depths makes you fight two of them at the same time, and the first Tower of Trials pits you against one in its very first encounter to show you it's not to be taken lightly.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • An optional choice a player can take, and spike it does, hard. An option for New Game Plus allows the player to crank up the combat difficulty in their new run, which gets harder and harder the more times it's chosen. At NG+ 5 and up, the spike is massive, and players are very liable to be One Hit Killed by even basic enemies, even at level 300 and wearing all +10 Blood Veils. Update 1.04 introduced the ability to reduce enemy difficulty by one level per NG+, though, but only once per playthrough, and the player won't gain the indicative star point that they would normally get for beating an enhanced run.
  • A more conventional example comes when you reach the Cathedral of Sacred Blood. Apart from being confusingly laid-out and almost impossible to navigate properly, this is where the enemies stop fucking around. Running down the stairs from the entryway Mistle, you find yourself on a large, circular platform where you're confronted by a tall, slender female lost in shining armour, who will blitz you and beat the crap out of you more ferociously than anything you'll have encountered up to now in the Dried-Up Trenches or the Howling Pit. Moving on into the level, your heart will sink when you realise that, despite the presentation of that first encounter, that wasn't a miniboss- it was a common enemy. Depending on which way you go, you may rapidly find yourself getting baited into a Lost Invasion by a Vestige shard where you get drowned in brutal enemies including at least three Armored Stone-Crushers. And if you go another way, you'll just end up getting lost. Plus the mid-boss of the area, the Argent Wolf Berserker, is almost depressing in how he's a very simple boss with INSANELY high damage, fought in a right bastard of a boss arena, like fighting a rabid wolverine while locked inside a wardrobe.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • When the Blade Bearer was introduced in the closed beta and demo, fans immediately took a liking to her for her regal ojou-like design.
  • Io. She elicited quite a few players to play the game, if only just to see her. Her gentle demeanor and Undying Loyalty to the protagonist only continues to endear people. She also becomes a companion after a point in the story, and she's generally considered to be one of the most flexible companions. The fact she's pretty easy on the eyes herself also helps.
  • The Invading Executioner, both for her resembling an evil Hatsune Miku and being a literal stripper.
  • Oliver Collins. He's only with you for the first half of the first level, but he's earned numerous fans. His Dark and Troubled Past certainly helps some as well.
  • Coco, due to her Buxom Beauty Standard figure. There is a surprising amount of Game Mods out there that serve only to enhance her, erm... "qualities".
• Epileptic Trees: The one scene featuring the Dyaus Pita predictably has fans scrambling to connect any possible dots between two seemingly different franchises. Multiple theories have been postulated regarding a variety of subjects, from how the two timelines would coincide with each other, the current state of the world, the actual merits of BOR Parasites versus Oracle Cells, and most significantly the effects such a reveal will have on future content updates and/or installments.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: For the sake of your own health, do not pronounce Ichor as anything other than "eye-kor". Correct pronunciation is apparently very Serious Business for a large portion of the playerbase.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The game itself tends to be called "Anime Dark Souls", "Weeb Souls", "Waifu Souls", and other similar variants due to having an anime art style with similar gameplay to the Dark Souls games.
  • "Evil Miku", a name or some variation of it that tend to be given to the Invading Executioner boss due to her uncanny resemblance to Hatsune Miku.
  • "Anor Londo/Anal Rodeo" for the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood, owing to Code Vein's source of inspiration, and the Cathedral's general gothic decor and confusing layout.
  • Much like the infamous duo that inspired them, the Blade Bearer and Cannoneer have picked up a few nicknames for themselves, the one with the most traction being "Pornstein and Pyrough".
  • Nazeem for Juzo Mido, due to having the same English voice actor and equally slimy personality.
• Fetish Retardant: The over-the-top Fanservice, both in the female cast and the number of bosses that look like giant mutated pole dancers, turns off just as many people as it turns on.
• Funny Moments:
  • Whenever the playable character sits in the chairs or couches for too long, they would then feel tired and fall asleep.
    • With the patch that allows the player to sit at (and play) the piano in the hideout, waiting around long enough results in the above-mentioned happening... only for the character's fingers to press the keys in a loud chord that makes them jump and wake back up.
  • If the Protagonist is able to save the Successor of the Claw it prompts quite a hilarious exchange. As Emily tries to play off the Dying Decleration Of Love she gave to Yakumo, by telling him she was talking about the onigiri they used to eat. Hilariously, Yakumo still has some. Cue a giant, cute, vampiric, Cat-girl gushing over a rice ball.
• Game-Breaker: With the wide variety of possible builds, having a few of these is a no-brainer.
  • Stacking buffs in general can make bosses a breeze since there's no limit aside from your ichor stock, but special mention goes to Final Journey, a buff exclusive to the Queenslayer code. It gives you a 50% damage boost for weapons and gifts, fully heals you on activation, and sets your mobility to quick regardless of your prior weight, and lasts for 3 whole minutes. It comes with the tiny downside of killing you when it runs out, and you're unable to be revived by a partner if this kills you, but most boss fights are over long before the duration runs out. For extra icing on the cake, Queenslayer is a very strong all-rounder code with great physical stats that lets it use any weapon and high mind making it even stronger for stacking buffs on top of Final Journey.
    
    Sadly, Final Journey was nerfed slightly with the 1.20 update, reducing its duration to just one minute, and increasing movement speed by only one stage (i.e., slow builds will only be upgraded to normal speed, instead of simply becoming quick). Nevertheless, it still remains a very potent buff, even if you can only use it for part of a boss fight rather than the whole.
  • Swift Destruction is a passive that gives you an all-around 20% damage boost if your mobility is Quick (10% if Normal). What's so great is that it affects all damage you do, even Gift damage which normally doesn't benefit from your other buffs — most mage builds are fragile by nature; pushing into a Fragile Speedster build makes them stronger and fast too. Its damage bonus also stacks fantastically with Final Journey.
  • Zweihander and the Argent Wolf Hammer under Fortification allow you to block physical damage completely as they offer 100% physical damage reduction. While you can block with any weapon you want, most weapons still allow chip damage to bleed through. In exchange for your rolling speed (since the weapons becomes heavier under the Fortification path), you get powerhouses that work as decent strength-based weapons while being the only two weapons that can completely block damage in the entire game. The problem with rolling speed can also be nullified by using Blood Codes with increased weight limit. If you don't mind about evasion and just want to go full DPS, you can use Ishtar instead for its unrestricted access to all the attack buffs you'll ever need, high ichor stock to cast them without needing to refill, and the highest base stamina in the game to block as much as you please. Just add the rest of the available slots with QOL choices, and you'll become the quintessential juggernaut.
  • While Io is meant to be a support caster, her abilities make her more of a Jack of All Trades, and arguably the most effective partner overall. She does a fair amount of damage in melee, can use fast single target spells at range, is an effective tank, and has useful support skills. While she isn't the best at anything, her overall versatility makes up for her lack of specialization, making her an effective companion no matter what approach the player chooses.
  • Yakumo is a brutally effective partner. Like Oliver Collins, he tanks hits with his high defense and HP, while doing enormous damage and staggering enemies off their attack windups with his two handed sword. Left alone he could deal with just about anything that isn't a boss, and like Io he's effective no matter what build or play style you choose.
  • Light magic builds in general. Nearly every buff in the game is Light based and several very strong, very fast offensive spells are Light. The elemental Barrage gifts can do a great amount of damage if fired into an enemy point-blank, easily rivaling Dark builds in sheer damage output. On top of this, most Light based Codes come with good physical stats making them passable melee fighters and surprisingly durable even before they start buffing themselves. It's not really surprising Io is on this list as well as her Code, Eos, is arguably the strongest Light caster Code.
    • Bridge to Glory is one of the strongest buffs in the game, adding half your Light to your Attack stat. With it and enough Mind specialization its damage output can rival that of Final Journey. The Eos Code already has fantastic synergy with its high Mind stat, and once mastered this Gift can be used with any compatible high-Mind build you fancy. It also synergizes incredibly well with the Noble Silver Blood Veil which is one of the lightest Veils in the game and has the best Mind scaling of all Blood Veils period, and all this comes together to make a deadly and fast character.
  • Cleansing Light regenerates 75% of the HP you lose while it's active, serving as effective damage reduction unless you're taking many hits in quick succession. What's most interesting is that it doesn't discriminate how the HP is lost, so it works wonders with Cast from Hit Points skills.
    • The Hunter's Blood Sacrifice exchanges 20% of your health for up to 6 ichor. With Cleansing Light active you effectively only give up 5% HP, which means you can easily generate as much ichor as you need and get it all back with just a single regeneration, even on tanky builds with low ichor caps. Bayonet builds can use this combo to quickly refill Ichor without needing to rely on their guns' poor drain rate for refills. In particular, you can use this combo right before you engage a boss to make use of the buff stacking strategy mentioned above, applying tons of buffs without ever needing to regain ichor the traditional way by hitting an enemy.
    • Red Shoes of the Fionn Code and Supernatural Blood of the Harmonia Code lets you expend HP in place of Stamina or Ichor respectively if that pool has run dry. Cleansing Light regenerates most of the HP expended so you can safely continue chaining your attacks.
    • Sacrificial Edge from the Heimdall Code has a steep HP drain in exchange for increasing your damage output. Cleansing Light greatly slows down the drainage. The only drawbacks here are that Heimdall doesn't naturally have the stats for Cleansing Light or the base Ichor to activate both buffs quickly, so a little bit of prep work and a stat-increasing passive is needed.
    • Deliverance from the Ishtar Code passively prevents your partners from dying, leaving them at 1 HP, while the rest of the damage will spill over to you. Even if your partner is on their Last Chance Hit Point, it will continue to protect them until your health is depleted. Cleansing Light will gladly refill the HP you're losing this way. Back this up with Health Stimulant and Improved Regeneration and you can let your partner do most of the heavy lifting.
  • The game doesn't tell you this and you may not notice it on your own, but the Ivy-class Blood Veils have a unique functionality that makes them by far the most powerful of the four types. When you charge up your Drain Attack, you can manually reposition the target area the Field of Blades will thrust up from, and it's got a very far reach that lets you strike enemies before they notice you; you can even send it around corners to hit enemies you can't even see. This is particularly useful for picking off ambushers who hang onto the edge of a stage, waiting to climb up and surprise you (especially in The Cathedral of Sacred Blood), with the AoE strike of the blades knocking them to their doom. With a powerful enough Drain stat this can let you even one-shot lesser Lost without them even knowing you're there or take a large chunk out of tougher ones. It's completely free (aside from the stamina you use for the attack, which recovers in about 2 seconds) and lets you increase your Ichor cap to the maximum with ridiculous ease since, as with all charged Drain Attacks, every hit gives you +2 max Ichor. The Ivy Veils are also among the lightest Veils you can get (the Ivory Grace being the lightest Veil in the game), perfect for Fragile Speedster builds that would prefer to initiate from a distance.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The small monkey-like enemies that appear in almost every area don't present much of a threat on their own. However, their tendency to ambush the player in groups, often alongside more dangerous enemies, can end up overwhelming the unsuspecting, especially if they manage to put the player off-balance at an inopportune moment. The fact that their attacks can inflict the inhibit status effect, temporarily disabling all of a player's active gifts, is icing on the cake.
  • The basic Losts wielding Bayonets and their Palette Swap. They can appear in any map and deal rather low damage as far as enemies go, but the real threat these guys pose is the fact that they interrupt your attacks or Gift casts, making you vulnerable to being smashed by their melee-based allies that are swamping you. Their accuracy is nothing to write home about if the player dodges frequently, but it's when they are not that they become very dangerous, as their aim is true enough to bean a walking player from a respectable distance away. And to make matters worse, they come in numbers on occasion. Their overall damage gets a huge bump on New Game Plus as well, so have fun dodging all over the place to avoid their shots.
  • The Ghastly Flesh urchin enemies are largely silent and their one attack is a long-reaching dash that has a lot of knockback. You tend to encounter them in areas where they can knock you into pits or environmental hazards. They also tend to be positioned around corners just to ambush you from your blind spot.
  • Buried Fools are stationary turrets that regularly fire projectiles at you, and are frequently stationed around corners or above cliffs to harass you. They're easy pickings once you get up to them, but some Depths maps pit you against a single main enemy supported by up to four of these from the corners of the boss room, just to give you a hard time should you get caught in a their overlapping lines of fire.
• Harsher in Hindsight: When you first meet Louis, he promises he's not going to stab the player character in the back. In the "Heirs", he ends up forced to kill you like that to prevent you from becoming the next Queen.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Chapter 7 of a Persona 5/Code Vein crossover called Urban Legends that was written before the game's release, Io cosplayed as Rei Ayanami. Io's English voice actor reveals to be Brina Palencia, the voice of that character from Rebuild of Evangelion.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Go to Youtube and click on any video that has Blade Bearer in the thumbnail. It doesn't matter if it's a serious boss battle video or a breakdown, at least half of the replies will be about her boobs.
  • Io has attracted a number of players who simply want to support her. The other female characters also have their devoted followings, but hers is the most passionate by far.
  • The character customization is another reason that many players are invested in this game due to creating a lot of fictional characters. This person in particular had a field day as they recreated characters from RWBY.
• Les Yay: Aurora's devotion to Karen runs pretty deep, to the point that Aurora's willing to become a Successor and risk losing her sanity all for Karen's sake. When she finally frenzies, it's implied that her memories of Karen are the one thing she hasn't lost.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Jack and Eva both drew a lot of ire from players for their lackluster performance as AI partners. Jack especially as you're forced to take him as a companion for one area of the game, even if you return after defeating that area's boss.
  • In Eva's defense, she's a Long-Range Fighter armed with a Bayonet, so she's meant to have mediocre health and Defense. But at the same time, she's also very aggressive with her Bayonet if an enemy gets close, which is not good for her health, considering her Blood Code, Harmonia, is one meant for a Squishy Wizard.
  • The same could not be said about Jack, who's surprisingly squishy despite being a melee fighter. Unless the player uses Spiritual Communion with him, he usually dies very quickly while dealing very little damage himself. This makes him bad at both being a tank and a main DPS, and a liability if the player is playing a Squishy Wizard or a Bayonet build. Playing tank yourself isn't better, as he's a total Leeroy Jenkins who lives by the mantra of Attack! Attack! Attack! instead of balancing himself, and will cause complications by drawing aggro towards either of you at the worst moments.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Gregorio Silva is the charismatic leader of Cerberus and the survivors inside the Gaol of the Red Mist, who is willing to go to extremes to save as many as he can. Creating the Q.U.E.E.N Project and the Revenants in order to fight the Aragami using his daughter Cruz as the test subject, when Mido sabotage the program to drive Cruz into a frenzy, Silva turned many into Revenants as soldiers to stop Cruz's rampage. Knowing that the Queen he seeks to destroy is unkillable, Silva had her different pieces place into other Revenants as Successors, turning himself into one by taking her Brain to create the Red Mist before imparting an oppressive system towards the Revenants due to a resources crisis and giving Jack the task overseeing the Successors and put down any who frenzies. When Mido's attempt to eliminate him drives Silva to nearly lose himself, he has Jack lead the group into putting him down in a desperate attempt to maintain the Red Mist. While a dictator, Silva's only purpose is to save as many as he could in a desolate world ready to collapse.
  • Jack Rutherford, the Hunter, is Silva's right-hand man given the task of watcher over the Successors and Revenants. Working with the Protagonist to stop the Queen in Operation Queenslayer, when the Protagonist ends up infected by the Queen, Jack shows his resolve by attempting to put them down. Entrusted with the Queen's Eye, Jack is ordered to kill any frenzied Revenant or Successor and then scout out replacements, frequently appearing as an enemy, seemingly killing Mia's brother and trying to capture the Protagonist. Devoted to his duty, Jack decides to work with the group in defeating Mido and putting down Eva and Silva when they go rampage out of mercy, before leading them into the contingency plan to keep the Red Mist. While a cold-hearted executioner, Jack deep down is a warrior just trying to maintain order in a desolate world.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The Character Creator will be the hardest boss in the game" ^ExplanationDue to the game's very in-depth character creator, especially for an anime style game, it has lead quite a few people to label it as one of the game's greatest challenges to overcome just to get one's player character absolutely right. Humorously, its senior games had this same joke.
  • "Everyone, everywhere, is thirsty." ^ExplanationSaid by Io very early in the game, which, out of context, is a massive Narm due to how well-built she is for a "thirsty" girl, or rather implies that everyone is thirsty for her.
  • "BREAST SLIDER!!!" ^ExplanationAll possible body physiques of female PCs have quite ample chests, which doesn't sit very well with players who simply want a modest-looking character, or those who want to make their avatar's bust even more ridiculously large. This is despite the fact that petite character models exist, if Murasame and Mia are any indication. The discernible lack of fine-tuning sliders doesn't help, either, which caused an upsurge of requests for a breast slider to be included in a patch, which stands to be one of, if not the, most popular player demand on the Steam forums. If a player or moderator asks other players for suggestions on gameplay improvements, odds are very high that somebody will bring this up, and almost always in ALL CAPS.
• More Popular Spin-Off: If the steam charts are an indicator, Code Vein has more players than God Eater 3.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Parrying is tricky, but when you get the timing right, a successful parry is punctuated with a resounding thud as you get yourself free un-interruptible damage and extra ichor.
• Narm Charm:
  • The game's overall aesthetic isn't just aggressively anime; it's unapologetically chuuni with all of its impractical fashion choices, over-sized weapons, familiar story beats, cast of Bishōnen men and voluptuous women with unfailingly dark and dramatic backstories, and usage of vampires when vampirism has lost most horror connotations in popular culture. Besides the fact that a portion of Code Vein's audience would absolutely eat it up for these factors alone, the combination of solid Souls-like gameplay, good music, and earnest performances from the characters/voice actors loops the clichés back into being genuinely enjoyable and engaging.
  • The Successor of the Breath's design is completely over the top even for a game like this, being a top heavy knight with a jetpack booster and antlers. It loops back to being endearing considering it's the kind of thing a young boy would find awesome. It helps that the boss is considered rather great itself.
• Player Punch: The "Heirs" ending, without a doubt. Not only is the Protagonist killed under tragic circumstances, but Io fades away at their grave while the rest of your companions replace the Successors before them. To drive the nail in further, they lock themselves within the same Crypts as their loved ones' final resting places; in a best case scenario, they sleep indefinitely and can never reunite with them in death. No solution to Vein's inevitable decline, no way of waking them up without frenzying, and no more Successor of the Blood that can save them. That is one hell of a raw deal.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In order to get the best ending, you need to save each Successor by finding and restoring their vestige cores prior to fighting them. Miss even a single one, or forget to purify them, and the successor will die, locking you out of the best ending. The fact that this is never explained is extra annoying, especially since you could miss out on the Golden Ending as early as the battle with the Successor of The Ribcage.
  • Also on that note, to achieve 100% Completion, one would have to deliberately go out of their way to screw every Successor over to achieve the bad ending, as the Queen relic Blood Codes can only be obtained this way. For players who cannot stand the weight of repeated player punches, it is perhaps the worst possible case of the Last Lousy Point, but ramped up to eleven.
  • The cost system for accessories your characters could wear in customization. By default, the game allots a quite generous amount to allow for creative combinations, but the higher cost of the more popular items frequently lead to players not being able to customize their protagonists as they so choose.
    • To put things into perspective, the player is allowed 12 accessory points, and while glasses and earrings take up one each, more appealing items such as pouches, gloves, headbands, and some hats could claim upwards of four points per item. The pre-order bonus items are particularly expensive, with the arms occupying five each, ensuring that very few slots remain for anything else, none if you decide to put any two of them together. Generally, however, this cap puts a low limit on the amount of small piecemeal items such as badges or stars, that players could cobble together to form creative patterns.
    • Update 1.04 alleviated this somewhat by slashing the cost of most accessory items by half, effectively making many of them free of charge, though those that were particularly expensive still are, to an extent. For most players though, the concern has now shifted to the limited amount of actual slots instead.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Stinger type Blood Veils aren't very well liked because of the difficulties in using their drain abilities. It involves sending out a Prehensile Tail at the enemy from behind the player character. While it has good reach, because the player character does a small spin like animation, it makes it very inaccurate and leaves the player setting wide open if it misses. The same applies for the combo drain usage, which essentially spins the player in a different direction when used and makes it where the player will miss again.
  • Bayonets are designed to help support builds that focus on long range offensive Gifts, but while they do increase the stats used for them with their light weight, the overall damage output of Bayonets is very weak and generally not worth using outside of that. The fact their heavy attack uses Ichor means they also take resources better spent elsewhere.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Companions are optional and can be disabled by players who want a greater challenge and a traditional Souls-like solo experience. This actually deserves special mention as bosses become significantly harder as a result without losing any durability, as the game is balanced around being played with a companion. Cannoneer and Blade Bearer is considered by some players to be possibly the hardest boss in the entire Souls-like RPG genre when fought this way.
  • Pipe-only runs are actually rather popular for many reasons, chief among them being the increased challenge due to the Pipe of Thralldom's pitiful damage output, as well as the sheer hilarity of beating down big bad bosses with a dinky tube of rusted steel, and that it carries over to cutscenes and creates Bathos. Needless to say, it is a lot harder to pull off than it sounds.
  • Level 1 runs remain a mainstay of any Souls-like game; due to Code Vein's unique approach to builds, there is a lot more wiggle room and flexibility to practice whatever you want to get the job done. Just be prepared to have the durability of soft tofu.
  • And for the truly masochistic, it IS possible to beat the game using only Gifts. That means almost everything for attacking, from Companions to Drain Attacks (which you need to use to regain Ichor, which fuels your Gifts) to basic attacks, leaving only Gifts and blocking or dodging as your options.
• Shocking Moments: The Reveal. Turns out the world of Code Vein is actually part of the God Eater universe, as Aragami wander outside the Gaol of the Mist. This, plus the implications of the "Dweller in the Dark" ending, suggests that the Revenants may very well be the very first God Eaters; or perhaps their successors.
• Spiritual Successor: Similar to Bloodborne being one to Dark Souls, Code Vein is one towards God Eater, both being Bloodier and Gorier games with different aesthetics, on top of being Nintendo Hard. That is until an Aragami appears, revealing that it's actually a Stealth Sequel.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Compare the menu theme to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba's Demon Slaying Corps theme. Considering that Go Shiina had a hand in both, it becomes less surprising.
• Tainted by the Preview: The Anime aesthetic has divided a few viewers.
• That One Achievement:
  • Exalted Reputation. Barring Revenant Preeminent, which is 100% Completion, it is the least-earned achievement across all platforms for Code Vein, with global percentages somewhere along the low single digits owing to its very grindy nature. To elaborate, Exalted Reputation requires the player to reach an online companion rank of 30, which translates into about 400 Marks of Honor, that could only really be obtained by beating bosses with another player while playing online. All of this adds up to 400 successful boss fights, which aren't so much hard as they are mind-numbing and boring to do. Even by farming in the Depths, which typically have about three to five bosses, this could still take up half a day of nothing but constant boss grinding. The Tower of Trials has the highest yield of at least 6 Marks of Honor per successful run (and a lot more on multiplayer) but this yield poses a very real risk of dying due to the boss difficulty. While these Marks could also be found in the world, they only spawn in select locations per playthrough, so it's far from being an efficient farming method. If one has to pin down an achievement for being that Last Lousy Point, Exalted Reputation would certainly be it.
  • Determiner Of Fate. Even less people earned this one, and it's even more of a slog than Exalted Reputation. All it says is "View every ending", which would be straightforward if it didn't omit the fact that you need do it with one character. You have to play through the game 3 different times, through at least 2 New Game Plus runs where the game gets harder every time; one of those has to be where you do all the work for the Golden Ending. Yes, there is only three endings as described on the main page, but the achievement counts a minor variation in the "Dwellers in the Dark" ending (where you restore Io's Vestiges before the final boss) as a separate ending. This is if you don't take the description at face value and just waste your time playing as three different characters, or don't know you can access your save upon ending and restore Io's Vestiges before fighting the final boss again.
• That One Attack:
  • The Queen's Vanguard in the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood have an annoying habit of teleporting. Normally, this isn't so bad but depending on what they're equipped with and how they engage you, they'll either teleport from above and stab at you, or teleport in front of you and do a dash attack. Both of these are very tricky to avoid because you have to guess based on where they aggro from. Once you nail the timing down you can even use the teleport to backstab or parry and riposte them. However, if there are any other enemies around, the knights can and will teleport on top of you while you are distracted. And if not dodged, these attacks shear enormous amounts of health off.
  • Invading Executioner is actually not that bad of a boss, as most of her attacks can be avoided fairly easily. But she has one sliding tackle that, unless you are severely overleveled and using the most defensive setup you possibly can, will one-shot you. And even if you survive, your healing at that point is so weak that it will take three healing items to bring you back to the point where you can survive another. This wouldn't be so bad if this attack wouldn't come out so fast, or that she can do it up to three times in a row.
• That One Boss: As is inevitable for a Souls-like.
  • The Invading Executioner. She is fast, has a brutal AoE attack that all but makes her invincible, her sliding charge attack comes out lightning-quick, can easily be a One-Hit Kill and can be performed twice in a row, and her inherent slow debuff makes you wish you brought enough items or the right Light gifts for her fight.
  • Argent Wolf Berserker. Compared to previous examples this boss isn't particularly difficult if you have some good equipment (which is easy since enemies in the Cathedral of Sacred Blood drop Queen Steel) and a decent build. Rather, the main problem is the size of the boss arena. It's a tight space and, if you aren't careful, the boss can easily force you back into a corner. On top of all that, just getting to the boss requires running a gauntlet of very tough enemies,^note it's actually only 4 Female Lost Knights and 2 Assassin Lost, but the last encounter forces you to fight two of the Knights at once in an open arena that gives them free reign to flank you if your partner can't occupy one of them or you're adventuring alone, probably the hardest mandatory encounter in the area almost guaranteeing that you'll be going into the fight with kneecapped health reserves. Also we shouldn't understate the threat posed by the Berserker himself- while his attacks are relatively simple, his damage is absolutely HORRIFYING, easily capable of taking off over well over half your max HP in one hit, especially when he buffs himself in the second half of the battle. It doesn't help that his swings cover almost the entire arena even when you're not cornered and can even hit you when you're standing behind him and he's focusing on your partner. Even the fact that he's not immune to being backstabbed only barely helps.
  • The two Boreal Brutes in the Depths Map Silent White. A single Boreal Brute is already a horrifying enemy, thanks to their relentless attacks with Area of Effect, powerful ranged attacks, near-instant Sonic-style spin attack that can one-shot even the tankiest characters; and their ability to armor themselves in ice, which will reduce all damage it receives by about 90% until you break it with fire or hammers. But in this map, the game pits you against two of them. As a mini-boss encounter. Some players consider this one pair of Brutes to be the hardest boss fight in the game.
  • The Gilded Hunter. While the first phase isn't so bad, in the second it will cast a buff on itself that will render it disgustingly fast, hit like a truck and become relentlessly aggressive. He leaves next to no window to attack and it will be pretty much a race to take him down in the few windows of opportunity it gives. Several of his attacks are also very hard to dodge, such as his charging spear attack, which can still hit even if you dodge before due to the buff giving it extra range. While his buff does wear off after a while and leaves him extremely vulnerable, opting to wait it out may require a very different play style than what one is used to. Many players have outright declared it the hardest boss in the game because of all these factors, and it's a very popular location for Co-Op play.
  • The Cannoneer and The Blade Bearer. There is just an insane amount of visual effects and attacks going on at any given moment, there's very small windows of opportunity to attack or recover, and the pillars in the arena will offer you little safety— several of their attacks can reach behind them. Their rematch in the Depths pushes their difficulty up; there, if you defeat one of them, the other will fully heal, gain their fallen companion's elemental power and change up their moveset accordingly.
  • Juzo Mido. He hits like a truck, is unnaturally fast with his weapon despite its size and can inflict Inhibit to cancel out your Gift buffs and prevent you from casting more. The second phase turns the brutality up to eleven, as his personal BFS fully deploys for extra reach and he is able to cover a lot of ground really quickly.
• That One Level:
  • The Dried-up Trenches is your introduction to extremely treacherous terrain, as a lot of it is fought on narrow paths with deadly drops, against enemies that can easily knock you off. Not all drops are deadly, though — some lead to hidden paths that get you to treasure or Mistles, so it's a rough lesson on looking in all directions before deciding how to proceed.
  • The Howling Pit consists of a wide cavern filled with mist that limits your vision to barely ten feet ahead of you. The open nature of the map makes it extremely hard to get your bearings,^note There are beacons that can be lit, but seeing as your map marks where you've already been these are no help at all. making it likely you'll blunder into a group of enemies lurking in the mists or just below the water as you fumble around in the dark. Worse, there are places where the water is deep enough to slow your movement to a crawl. Naturally, the enemies aren't affected by this. It also introduces a new type of enemy that take the form of small balls that roll towards you, who hit very hard. Later segments become more linear but introduce bottomless pits that can't be seen unless the water is drained away first. Capping it off, the level ends with That One Boss, the Invading Executioner. What pushes this stage into the next level is that you can go there within ten minutes after the tutorial level, when you have next to no upgrades at all, and with how hard the enemies hit, you are encouraged to go here after going to the Trenches instead because doing so nets you the extra healing buffs you need to survive.
  • The Cathedral of Sacred Blood. From the outset you can see your final destination, and yet surrounding it is an absolute labyrinth of identical towers, hallways, and suspended paths. The early areas have nasty pitfalls without much warning if you're not paying attention, and the later areas start throwing out some seriously tough foes for that part of the game, to the point that Queen Steel (the second tier of upgrade materials) start dropping to say "get your gear in check". Between this, the fact that there's next to no stand-out landmarks, and that your status map does not differentiate between the heights of the numerous floors and pathways, it can take you hours to get through this location purely from getting lost repeatedly. Never mind that you'll have to revisit the place for side quests. Even worse, this is the first area where finding all the Vestiges becomes essential to working your way to the Golden Ending, with only a single Vestige-restoration NPC right before the boss fight serving as a loose warning to the fact and one of them being well-hidden in an easy-to-miss platforming pit.
  • The City of the Falling Flame is straightforward, having few branching paths and being rather easy to explore if you just glance at the map. What makes it a test of your temper is that nearly every single wall is on fire meaning that if you so much as brush up against them you flinch and take damage. Worse if you get smacked into them by an enemy you not only take an extra chunk of damage you get staggered leaving you open to yet another attack! Some enemies can loop this infinitely if you're unlucky enough quickly juggling you to death. There are also areas where the floor is burning hot and damages you if you walk on it. This wouldn't be too bad except there are many places in which you have no choice except to walk on the burning floor meaning just traversing the zone eats up your limited healing. There are also several extremely powerful minibosses scattered throughout the zone, each of them just as dangerous (possible more so) then the level boss, and naturally their spaces are also on fire.
  • Crown of Sand is Mana Burn to the extreme. Not only are the enemies in Crown of Sand quite powerful regardless of the playthrough, they also apply Leak with each hit. Getting hit enough will cause you to steadily lose Ichor, making it insanely annoying to keep having to spend Coagulants to alleviate, and it crimps the utility of most builds (Mage and Bayonet players in particular), as even the most melee-centric Blood Codes rely on Gifts to increase their mileage. And if that's not irritating enough, you'll regularly cross sand pits which not only bog down your movement speed but also drain your Ichor. You'll also spend a few fights tussling with strong enemies with very little safe ground. Quite possibly the only silver lining in this place is that it's rather small and short, but have fun wading knee-deep through the sand without a drop of Ichor for the entire duration of that.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Well, sidequest is a bit of a stretch, but Lost Invasion events can be nightmarish if the player is ill-prepared; they typically involve a horde of Lost appearing out of thin air to Zerg Rush the player. This horde can consist of any enemy type found in the respective areas, up to and including any Demonic Spiders, and will pursue the player no matter how far they run. They are usually guarding Vestiges or rare items, and although the events are scripted, there is almost no way to predict when they will be triggered. You might run into one while walking towards a chest, and it's just as likely that you'll trigger one by walking through an empty area in a level.
  • There's a heavily-injured Revenant in the middle of the Crypt Spire, and the game flags him as a "sidequest NPC". Talking to him initiates a Lost Invasion. If you somehow survive it, he doesn't give any unique rewards — your intended reward is the Haze and items you've gained from the fight.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Cruz Silva a.k.a. the Queen. Despite being regarded as one of the most dangerous Lost to ever exist, and the fact that she's Not Evil, Just Misunderstood, the audience only gets to know that she's actually really kind... and that's about it. There isn't much exploration of her character prior to her frenzy apart from her gradually losing control of herself, little in the way of how she interacts with others, especially her father, who later comes to see her as an abomination despite there being zilch in the way of development from their normal relationship up to that point. The game tries to show you more about her, but only in short, disconnected Vestige memories instead of something more substantial.
  • Gregorio Silva. He gets it even worse than his daughter. Most of what we know about him is fluff text delivered via loading screen tips. He has almost zero screen presence, only appearing in all of three cutscenes, tops, along with some memory segments and even they are a rarity. At no point in the game does any of the main characters get to converse with him or explore his psychology, how he copes with the loss of his daughter, the justification for his purportedly-tyrannical regime, the regime itself and opinions of him from those living under his protection, or the burden of being Vein's protector by sitting in his Cool Chair for life to maintain the Gaol. He literally went straight from being a very minor side character for the first two-thirds of the game to the Final Boss, the process of which took place within five seconds of Mido implanting him with several relics. And if you achieve the "Dweller in the Dark" ending, he still remains a mere background presence whose words are only relayed by Davis.
  • Louis, of all people. In theory, his character has a very solid foundation to stand on, between his Famed In-Story reputation, (nominally) being The Leader of the group, his personal friendship / Implied Love Interest relationship with Cruz Silva, his desire to be The Atoner for what happened to her, his sister being made a Successor, his sharing of the surname 'Amamiya' with several other major characters of the greater God Eater franchise and his overall design and the circumstances of his initial appearance just screaming Dark Secret, perhaps with the potential for a touch of well-intentioned extremism when pushed too far. In practice, he fades into the background very quickly as the story progresses in order to let the protagonist and other companions shine, everything there is to know about him is revealed within the first few hours of the game and while almost every other companion gets A Day in the Limelight featuring a more thorough exploration of their past, on-screen interactions with a loved one and a bit of Character Development, Louis is almost entirely left out, not even getting to have a proper conversation with his own sister. Much like Cruz above, he ends the game very similar to how he began, a Nice Guy and very little else.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The reveal that the Nicolai traveling with Mia was Actually A Doom Bot created by the original would've had a lot more impact if the cast had time to interact with him. Instead of being killed off right after he was introduced.
  • Much is talked about Silva's government and how oppressive it is early on, with various Revenants the player meets being either pushed into desperate measures because of it, or forced out by how harsh it is. With how often it is discussed, it makes it strange how ultimately it matters little in the game's story and largely remains a background element to the cast. The cast never interacts with a Revenant who agrees with the system outside of Davis (who barely talks about it), nor is there any real action taken against it during the game's story. In addition, since the player never visits the government's base while it isn't being overrun by Lost, it means that it's mostly an Informed Attribute. Having the chance to experience it directly and see better the flaws of the system would have made the heroes' goal more distinct as well, as it leaves a question about why the heroes never consider informing the government about their plans and work together^note though the Heirs ending can suggest that Silva's faction would have stopped Louis' group if they knew what they were doing to the Successors.
  • The reveal, the trailers and even the game's prologue and animated opening emphasize a Crapsack World where it seemed to be a lot darker and bleaker an overall story, especially with emphasis on the Revenants being murderous vampire-like beings and all. The final story even initially seems to push this idea — until you get into Louis' camp, whereupon all the consequences of being a Revenant such as Horror Hunger never matter again, implications about the problems of Revenants being entirely off-screened, and the game becomes a more standard trope of True Companions solving the mystery of the Gaol and finding the origin of the Blood Beads. A lot of emphasis is put on stopping potential Revenant in-fighting, and the entire plot of the Successors and Juzo Mido further hijacks the story away from that too. The result is feeling like the advertised premise and tone got waylaid in favor of a generic anime plot by some audiences.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The games visuals look great, looking like a polished, and more detailed looking God Eater, while having unique designs that make the game one of the more impressive looking games coming out from Bandai Namco.
• Win Back the Crowd: The game's network test was met with some mixed reactions due to various factors, mostly in regards to how combat felt, which led to a certain portion of the potential fanbase becoming much more on the fence about the game, especially since the game's scheduled launch was only months away. The director of Code Vein would then release a blog post listing a fairly comprehensive number of improvements to the game based on the feedback from the network test.