MysticMistral (MistralPhoenix)

Macaria Crane lost her family at eight, taken in by the Magmell Orphanage after her Grandmother’s town had been razed by Horrors. While Magmell takes good care of its human occupants, there was no action to combat the emotional distress she suffered, and continued to suffer as she found no purpose or sense of belonging.

It seemed like a no-brainer to become a Hunter working for Magmell. She would work to become strong enough to protect others and herself, while having the underlying hope that to fall in duty would be to reunite with her family proudly.

She did indeed fall during an island evacuation gone awry at the age of nineteen, giving her life to aid in the innocent townsfolk escape towards the mainland. Her seeming selfless act, budding talent and protecting a Revenant who was desperate to aid others but couldn’t, resulted in Voda House’s Matriarch adding her an elaborate plan decades in the making. A pawn in their game, a soldier to follow orders, and a tool to be used.

Macaria awoke with hardly any sense of self and a choice to either aid humanity in a heroic journey, or to die so the half heart within her chest could go to another willing Hunter. With no agency, Macaria accepted the weight of the world: to kill the Heroes who gave their lives in a failed attempt to seal the Resurgence, accompanied by the Revenant she died protecting who would always stand by her side.

To see the world for what it was in their times and see the twisted and lost heroes as who they once were. They became friends, brothers-in-arms, and unexpectedly partners- bonds that warmed her ashen heart and soothed a mind that couldn’t fully understand the past hurt it had endured. She cherished them all- and it ripped her own heart each time she had to rip their own. The only saving grace was that their futures, their hopes and dreams, the people they cherished, would live on through her. That gave her a reason to continue on.

She vowed to protect and cherish each Heroes legacy, and every person they left behind. She loved Revenantkind more than her own people.

But she was still just a Pawn, unaware that the hand who guided her would finally reach the checkmate because of her actions.

And all of Revenantkind had lost.

(Also yes, this is a reference to that one meme image/drawing thing circulating)

Like, all the Bloodlines and Bloodcodes mimicking Crests.

Trying to create a heir to Progenitor Idris’ power and said successful heir is implanted in our heart that can control time. (Progenitor God being Sothis, Progenitor Heir being Lou)

Said Implanter is a person of power who manipulates others around them (Rhea/Seiros, and Lavinia)

Though for the sake of Roleplaying, Byleth and the Hunter are both mercenaries who have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.

The Ten Elites being the Revenants who sealed away the Resurgence, their bloodlines descending to Holly and Camilo, Craig and Lyle, Zenon and Jadwinga, Lavinia and Valentin, Josee and Lise. (Probably extras somewhere)

One thing I really didn’t like about Code Vein 2 was how close the events of the game are. “Long Ago” wasn’t too long by Revenant Standards, and not very distant in the past before the game starts. Whereas the War of Heroes took place long ago, giving a lot of credence to the Seal fading. If I remember right it was maybe over a hundred years ago while given the lifespan of Revenants we see in the base game, it’d be more legendary if it happened hundreds of years ago, or in Fire Emblem’s case, over a thousand.

How would the whole Liberation thing work? I dunno. Nemesis operated as a champion of humans/mortals while wanting the powers of Nabateans/Dragons who had guided humanity with their knowledge. How would the endings play out? No idea.

The Voda house could still be a bastion of Forma, just like how the Church of Seiros stores Crest Stones and hidden history. They can spend decades trying to make artificial vessel after vessel to have Indris’ power in order to seal the Resurgence for good, only for them all to fail until Lou. They find a dead Hunter from evacuating the Cocoon, revive them with Lou’s Heart as they acknowledge that the Human will is strong and Lou is weak. A seemingly perfect balance. It’s like Sothis and Byleth. Hell, it could even have the same start, sprinkle some CV1. Failed Vessel (Let’s go with Queen/Cruz) has a kid, heart is taken and transplanted into the kid, and father runs away with the Hunter. Who comes from that merge is Lou, reborn but connected to Hunter, growing with the, as a figure that can’t be seen and only awakened when they die against the cocoon like in the base game.

A hug returned.

Josee wouldn’t actually be opposed, just very flustered.

Lyle probably wouldn’t find it funny given his backstory.

Holly would probably be bewildered.

Valentin and Noah would seriously tell us to not say that.

Unless you count the Miraculous Bonds Ending where we come back. But that leads to the question of did our Hunter take pity on a Hero and let them come up with these plans of a happy life because it would never come to pass? Or does the Hunter (Your Hunter), truly love Josée?

Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of the Josée romance in the beginning. It seemed like it fed the male audience with the fact there wasn’t a male option but they wrote it so damn well. Or it struck and stuck. She clearly loves us, the game dangles all these other heroes that people would like to romance but can’t.

(Valentin. He in particular. Imagine doing all of this for humanity, promising to this human Hunter Noah picked off the tunnels who helped him, that he’d secure them a better future… only to either A) Kill everyone they bonded with in the 1st ending or B) Make them sacrifice themselves in the end for his misguided and doomed attempt to save humanity.)

I feel like they really want to show off lip animation or just mouth animation in general since the first game had very little with everyone being in masks, for one. It’s the only explanation as to why they use it so often.

The weapons, the skills you can learn from bloodcodes, the whole stat system is really nice compared to the first. With a wider variety of codes and weapons, it really is fun to toy around with builds especially since you aren’t for example, too far into Strength and too little into Willpower like the first game which sort of locks you out of making a build viable for a long time.

The characters do have depth, I’d say more or equal to the CV1, but the MC on the other hand is very plain. In CV1 you are a newly revived Revenant to fight the Queen, you get a backstory to how and why you have these powers and why you are important.

CV2 does sort of have that, but we don’t know why our Hunter went to that exploding cocoon, how they died, why out probably many dead bodies, we were chosen to be revived into a pseudo-vampire. At least not that I can remember. We’re given a mission to slay the Heroes so their cocoons don’t explode and not to interfere with history but also there’s no real consequence for changing history…

Unlike CV1 it’s got open world aspects with would be nice… if they, like in Dragons Dogma, weren’t so barren. I understand the Horrors and all that, but I feel like after giving each clan a better outcome, a few places once destroyed would be in better shape near their respective bases. Technically there is the Refugee camp but you’re telling me after decades they still live in the rubble? Also, the lack of important humans. Or at least humans in missions. It would have been actually cool to see Revenant’s like in the last game taking humans and stopping their gangs like in Lyle’s quest. While the ‘pleasing the sibling-in-law’ quest is fine, I would’ve liked to see how the Outpost operated normally as it seems to almost be a trading hub.

In CV1 there are three endings, Good, Bad and True.

Good is that you quell the relics but fall into slumber with Io by your side. Here, Lou is the one with the responsibility and you, either asleep or dead, remain by her side. The Heroes continue to live, your hard work and sacrifice not wasted as you and Lou have ensured an era of peace where both Humans and Revenants can live in harmony. In 1, Io becomes a Tree to not only feed Revenants with Beads eternally, but allows the group to venture outside of the Gaoi and frees everyone, human and Revenant.

Bad is the first canon ending of CV2. In 1, you frenzy under the energy of the Queen without restoring the other relic bearers bonds fixed, and you are killed to stop the Queen’s revival. In 2, Lavinia (to my knowledge) either weaponized or seals the Resurgence funny and it kills every single Revenant in existence who were the largest demographic on Earth. Lou gives you her heart and you survive in a world that is spectacularly more gloomy than the other endings. The sky is dark, the land looking dead. And you are actually dead, remembered as the Hunter and a Leader of Humanity.

True in CV1 is the same as the Good ending but there is a hint that Io has a human form again, able to tag along in the groups adventures. While in 2 you save Lou from the Resurgence Core which is it actually being a foe and not a force of nature and then you wake up. Without a heart at all to see all your friends again. It is a good moment, but the game doesn’t change after that. No explanation on what was happening, how long, or what you are. There is DLC coming out which I hope does have a sort of CV1 MC Origin story within it. Our character maybe in a flashback showing the exploding cocoon. Letting us interact with the world after the True ending and not just a boss rush like in CV1. Maybe us, as a human, actually seeing the darker side of Revenants instead of the positive side when they are our friends

Also, Headcanon/OC moment here-

Can you imagine our Hunter waking up in Magmell, slowly realizing that Lou is gone? Not only that but all the hard work, killing the Heroes they bonded with not once but twice so that their clans and their loved ones can continue to exist (and help as Lavinia herself admits!), are wiped from existence? Craig and the Chorus protecting and rescuing people, Holly and her advancements in medicine, gone. The good that they could’ve continued to do not even a possibility because they are Revenant’s. Us, as the player character, are the sole Leader in the Age of Humankind built upon the death of thousands of Revenants and our own friends. What do we have to show for it in the end? At the end of the first ending, we have to die maybe a decade after Lavinia’s betrayal as the two kids Jacob and May are late teens-early twenties, when they come to our funeral. Can we not live on a Golden Heart? Or is there a threat in the world that kills us, the only powerful human left who could defend the small fraction of normal humans left? If we actually made human friends and saw the human perspective for more than five minutes with Gobbo, I imagine a bit of it would seem justified.

Is it clear enough that I absolutely dislike Lavinia? As someone who got compared to their more successful sibling growing up I did not like her interactions with Valentin and the pressure she put on him, enough to drive him away. How she made Lou with only one goal in mind and nothing else, letting Lou see herself as just a means to an end. I’m sure she too had the same pressure on her, but the cycle of abuse can stop with her and she just kept it going. Manipulative, forced unsummomable and all around hard to like imo.

Also in the DLC if we can romance Valentin or get cutscenes with him like the other heroes that’d be great.

Also more time with the heroes please.

Also Noah decides to crash a Hot Spring Date with our girlfriend/wife. No such thing as privacy I guess. While I don't like how petite Josee is, I gotta admit I actually grew to really like her. The whole betrothed side story was honestly sweet. Bittersweet, but sweet.

Side note: I hate our wolf form. I wish it was a fox form. It’d match our nature.

1. Gala

2. Indris

3. Valen

4. Eironn

5. Bryon

I’d admit, I have my frustrations. Lack of guitar in the ost, the fact all the the Pawn Vocations (excluding Fighter), only wield one weapon, and at times a lack of speech, the game is a 10 out of 10. Perhaps it’s Nostalgia that makes me rate the first so higher or the fact it’s tied to the first that I rate it so high. It’s open world, something I usually loathe, is actually quite nice with places to find and quests to do. The story was iffy at times but it was still a great story nonetheless. Especially the ending because if I didn’t love my DD1 pawn before, I love them now.

I created my Arisen and my Pawn from Dragons Dogma, awesome character creator though I do miss the presets for eyes and a lot of hair options from the first that aren’t in this one. On topic of customization, I do also miss the outstanding armor options DD1 had like boots and pants being different options, but I can understand why that is gone.

Pawns as a system got a nice upgrade with filtering and the many Riftstones, pair that with different personalities and professions (I forget, but the skills like Forager, Woodland Wordsmith) are a nice sense of individuality. Their conversations with each other can get old, even with small talk with your Pawn but it’s the higher affinity dialogue that I will never get tired of. Though I do wish that they had more dialogue like when you return after being brined or when you fall in battle. Ultimately, all this critique is brushed away because we can now high-five them.

Also while a sort of kinship can be felt in DD1, DD2 has the Pawns being sort of romantic which I am not sure how morally right that is considering Master and Pawn but I now understand Arisen x Pawn ships and and now one of them, especially at the end. They voice their fondness for you, how happy they are to see you after returning from the rift (sort of rare in my case), blush and act shy around you… Give all that they are readily for you, sacrificing themselves so you can end the cycle.

I think the Pathfinder is some sort of entity that takes the throne after DD1, banking on the fact the throne is now vacant. Does that make sense? No. But it’s what my mind immediately went to. A part of the Greater Will trying to keep a story alive that’s kept the wheel of time and space moving since humans can’t be trusted given we Godsbane’d ourself.

Vocations. Trickster sucks, I dislike it the most. Warfarer is pretty nice with it leveling all your vocations and able to use multiple weapons (Spear, Bow, Staff) but my favorite is tied between Thief and Spearhand. Both are awesome and great additions. I thought I’d desperately miss just setting myself ablaze as Mystic Archer.

Seeing the Seafloor Shrine and slowly realizing it was the Duke’s Demesne was actually enough to tear me up and realize knew every room was or should’ve been.

Also, my beloved was Sven because I thought it’d be hilarious.

Disa probably hates us, did all of this so Sven could be ruler, so I thought it’d be a Power Move to romance her son just to mess with her. He’d technically still be royalty if we married, not like the Arisen has political experience needed to have the throne. I was disappointed that Sven had no additional dialogue or that Disa had none either. No word on how the dragon took her son, no words from her son about the encounter with the Dragon like in DD1. Even without the power move, I do like Sven a lot. He stood up and took the reins, leading the Kingdom at the end of the world. That had to be stressful, especially with Disa not cooperating.

In DD1, We were the one falling from the sky, dying as a sacrifice or a freedom first.

In DD2, Our Pawn is the one who sacrifices themselves, and us dying last to achieve freedom.

But in seems the blight from the dragon pierces our body clean through the chest, and maybe that is still our heart in it’s chest. So our final act of defiance is still killing ourselves in the end.

Black and White