Xbox Game Pass adds Code Vein II to its late January lineup

Microsoft has unveiled its latest wave of Xbox Game Pass additions for the week of January 26 to 30, with Bandai Namco's Code Vein II leading the charge. According to the official Xbox Wire post by editor Will Fulton, the sequel to the 2019 action RPG will be available to subscribers starting next week.

The announcement highlights a relatively strong end to January for the service. While the post details the specific arrival window of January 26 to 30, the headline act is undoubtedly the return of the Revenants. The original game found a dedicated audience by blending the punishing combat mechanics of the Dark Souls series with a distinct anime aesthetic and a more narrative-heavy approach.

The Return of Anime Souls

The arrival of Code Vein II is significant for fans of the genre. When the original title launched in 2019, it was affectionately dubbed "Anime Dark Souls" by the community. That label was accurate but slightly reductive. The game was developed by the internal Bandai Namco team responsible for the God Eater series, and it showed. It featured a complex character creator and a flexible class system known as "Blood Codes" that allowed players to swap abilities on the fly rather than being locked into a single stat build.

This flexibility was a major selling point. In many action RPGs, realizing you built your character wrong means restarting the game or hunting for a rare respec item. In Code Vein, you could switch from a heavy-hitting tank to a nimble caster just by equipping a different code. It encouraged experimentation in a way that many of its peers did not.

The sequel arrives in a very different landscape than its predecessor. In the seven years since the first game, the market has been flooded with "Souls-likes" ranging from the open-world dominance of Elden Ring to indie darlings like Lies of P. Code Vein distinguished itself with its AI partner system, which allowed players to bring an NPC ally into battle. This made the game significantly more accessible to players who found the isolation of FromSoftware titles too daunting.

A Win for the Catalog

Securing a day-one release like this is a continued part of Microsoft's strategy to bolster its Japanese game library. For years, the Xbox platform struggled to attract Japanese developers, often missing out on major RPG releases entirely. That narrative has shifted in the Series X era. We have seen the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, the Persona franchise, and now high-profile Bandai Namco sequels hitting the subscription service at launch.

For preservationists and physical media collectors, a Game Pass launch is often a mixed bag. It provides immediate, low-cost access to the game, which is excellent for discovery. However, it often correlates with smaller print runs for physical copies, as the majority of the player base is expected to download the title digitally. The original Code Vein eventually shipped over three million copies, a healthy number that likely justified this sequel's existence.

Subscribers can look forward to downloading Code Vein II starting the week of January 26. If history is any indication, players should expect to spend the first three hours of gameplay in the character creator adjusting accessory placement before they even swing a weapon.