CODE VEIN II Blood, time and a broken world

The Luna Rapacis has turned Revenants into mindless monsters called Horrors, and the world is sliding toward its end. Your way back from the brink is a girl named Lou, who can manipulate time. Together you travel between a dying present and the past that broke it, hunting for clues in lost histories and hidden truths. The hook is that the past is not a museum: you can alter the fates of key Revenant characters you meet there, and those changes carry back with you. A story that spans two eras, where the people you save decades ago are standing next to you today.

The core trick of combat is simple and a little gruesome: you drain blood from enemies and spend it on skills. Every fight feeds the next one, so an aggressive rhythm pays off. On top of that sits a build system that lets you freely customize weapons and skills to match how you like to fight, and enemies have weak spots and resistances by body part, so where you aim matters as much as what you swing. You read an enemy's moves, adapt on the fly, and the fights are built to be difficult and deliberate rather than frantic button mashing.

This is a Souls-like at heart: enemies hit hard, death sends you back, and bosses take real attempts. The game rewards learning over reflex spam. Dodge too early or mash the roll button and attacks timed for that will catch you; learn the pattern and the parry timing is consistent enough to exploit. The semi-open overworld pairs with a quest-focused structure, so exploration feeds a purpose instead of filling a map, and you get plenty of tools early to try different strategies when one approach stops working. When a boss finally goes down, it feels earned.