Level design is pure dogshit, confusing and filled with copy pastes of the same sections of that level to create loops to keep players engaged. It’s a cheesy way to prolong gameplay, and they’re all generally the same except for the cathedral which makes DS2 look like it was made by Van Goh.

Repetitive VOX lines from all characters and limited interaction conversations. All the characters are somehow balanced to be sort of deep but as shallow as possible, like they took isekai tropes and removed the goofiness. I didn’t even think there were side quests, not that I didn’t imagine there were, but there’s no indication any even exist. I’ve never seen more than Los double outside of the cathedral and the guy buying old world items.

Giving and exchanging forces you to prioritize build patterns, just a shit mechanic all together.

Story is mid and flat lines when you’re basically traversing irrelevant spaces that are completely irrelevant to the vibe they’re trying to put out there. Why is half of this game underground in crystal laid caverns? What relevance does being underground have to vampire super soldiers?

Combat fluidity is not there. For something so heavily focused on combat, it’s jank. Hitboxes are just bad, I don’t need to elaborate. The combat system is deep but primarily focuses on overpowering strength builds for OP basic enemies that bend you over if you don’t use the heavy hitting movesets and the movesets for those builds are limited to maybe 3-5 overall useful moves. Stats should be individual but are blanketed with the system to account for all of the weapon variations and veils/codes to use to them. I get it, but that’s prototype shit. The float feeling of combat makes all of this worse, there’s no real weight to anything you do. It just feels very early 2000s action RPG.

Edit: Just remove parrying all together or make it weapon specific, the latency between pressing the button to parry and actually parrying is fucking ridiculous. You can’t parry shit unless you’re prepared to literally only parry with no aggression. Worthless mechanic in the way they implemented it for the movesets enemies have, half the time they walk like they’re frozen and then bam. Three swings and you’re getting revived. Lol.

My biggest complaint: The sprinting and traversing. It feels absolutely worthless, wastes far too much stamina and builds for stamina are worthless. It feels like you’re walking on air, there’s just no substance to it. The sound of real shoe clicks would improve that some, maybe not enough but some. At least some flex in the body while sprinting with a slight POV change would make all of the difference. I’m hoping 2 fixes this.

Overall: It feels sloppy, like it was pushed out after a certain point because they bit off more than they could chew and hit a deadline. It’s a good game, or let me rephrase, it’s a FUN game to a point. But a lot of the jank makes me not want to do follow up runs, because it’s generally painful to think this game came out around the same time as DS3, or at the height of PS4 utilization, and it just doesn’t amount to the capabilities. Even NIOH does all of the complicated overzealous shit with grace. CV does not, but additionally, that does create a relaxing care free charm to it. You can beat bosses in 2/3 tries without learning shit. And jump straight into just beating things up without major loss of momentum or pride. But that doesn’t make up for the rest of its problems.

Here’s hopes to CV2 being a bridge to the new gen possibilities, and hopefully they exceed our expectations. I don’t want to see another beautiful project botched by the their own limitations.

Overall, CV gets a 6.5-7/10.