Bought a character creator and got a free souls like attached to it

Is this a soulslike? Yes, a Dark Souls 2 like. Kinda all over the place type of game. Terrible hit boxes. Not all the time tho, you might say it's hit or miss with that. Terribly long cut scenes for a soulslike game. The repairing memory aspect is just awful, so tedious it could just have been a short cut scene. The worst and disgusting screen shake ever. Go to nexus and download the stop shake mod.

The absolute worst part of this game is how long the animations take to complete. Some folks say the gameplay is janky, it's not. It is just that the animations takes too long to transition. Parry is useless since that animation takes so long I can beat 3 more enemies in that same time frame.

This is again a good example of devs not understanding good difficulty. Difficulty for them means huge mobs and a lot of "ah ha, gotcha" moments and just plain trickery. You fight the game mechanics more than anything else. Boss fights are just meh at best. A lot of the stuff ingame feels kinda useless I guess. at least for me personally. ( Parry, armor, useables, leveling system ) The most viable thing is maxing your main weapon.

But I digress, I would still place this in my top 20 soulslike games and if you are a fan of the genre you can give it a go, still better than DS2 base game.

Controller settings for anyone that want it more like a souls game:
Right bumper = Weak attack
Right Trigger = Heavy attack
Left bumper = Block
Left Trigger = Parry
Y/Triangle = Top Gift 1
X/Square = Left Gift 1
A/Cross = Drain attack and interact
B/Circle = Dodge & Sprint ( Now on this one go to steam controller settings and edit. Then go to the B/Circle and add command. Add Shift to that and then change the option from a regular press to a long press. Now make sure in game that Dash/combo is set the shift. Now you should be able to sprint with holding down the B/Circle button and slide down ladders.
D-Pad Up = Use item
D-Pad Left = Left Gift 2
D-Pad Down = Down Gift 2
D-Pad Right = Right gift 2

I never used any other useable items, but I changed my track pad (PS controller) to Directional buttons and used that to change items if needed.

This mapping gives you 5 slot for abilities so 3 will not be mapped. Honestly this didn't bother me since Triangle and Square was my two main abilities and the 3 on the D-Pad was buffs. And all in all this played very much like any other souls game control wise

CODE VEIN is the first souls-like game I have ever finished. It was hell, but made better by the partner system (thank you Yakumo!).

I loved the art direction, some of the characters have really cool designs while some... were giving fan service, but that didn't ruin the experience. The story was decent, pretty easy to follow and interesting enough to keep you wanting to know more. The only complain I have is the amount of bloom (You can lower it though in the setting I recall) and the Final boss battle. The camera was janky and the locking on the boss was targeting the torso is pretty hard to reach, would probably work better if you can lock different body parts. I'm not sure, but it def was a hard time aiming at parts .

i am a hot anime girl

the game is rly fun and well made

Ta decente

In a nutshell, this is practically dark souls but anime with mid ahh story and characters. So far, it's pretty fun to play

Anime Dark Souls. It's fun, but things feel a bit off in overall design. Interesting approach with the codes. Stat spreads are effectively locked in, so no need to worry about what stat to level. Instead, the main building is pulling actives/passives from different codes.

Yakumo is a bro, best teammate. Just get a copy of his greatsword and code, then go bonk.

Anime tits. That is all.

best souls like ever