CODE VEIN II: story 5.6 times as usual in Japanese reviews
Story appears in 58.7% of Japanese-language reviews, 5.6 times the usual share. The count covers 651 Japanese-language reviews written from 2026-01-27 to 2026-11-02.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 651 Steam reviews written in Japanese, collected between 2026-01-27 and 2026-11-02.
Collected Japanese reviews match Steam's total
The collected count is 651 Japanese-language reviews. Of these, 496 recommend the game and 155 do not, giving a recommending share of 76.2%. The 95% confidence interval runs from 72.8% to 79.3%. All 651 reviews were sorted into topics, and 613 were classified by the model. The mean sentiment score is 63.2. The first review in the sample is dated 2026-01-27, and the last is dated 2026-11-02.
Steam's own figure for the whole history, read on 2026-11-04, lists 651 total reviews, 495 positive reviews, 156 negative reviews, and a positive share of 76.0%. Steam labels that all-time figure Mostly Positive.
The numbers
Story appears 5.6 times as often as usual
Across the 162 other followed games in the comparison, story, scenario, and writing appears in 10.4% of Japanese-language reviews on average. For CODE VEIN II, 382 reviews raise it, or 58.7% of the classified sample. That is 5.6 times the usual share and 48.3 percentage points higher. Reviewers who recommend the game often describe the story as direct, emotional, and tied to the cast. Some reviewers who do not recommend it describe the pacing as rushed or say the player character stays passive.
Characters, character design appears in 131 reviews, or 20.1%, against a 6.9% baseline. That is 2.9 times as common and 13.2 percentage points higher. Reviewers mention anime-style designs, voice acting, and companions. Difficulty, balance appears in 118 reviews, or 18.1%, against 9.4%. That is 1.9 times as common and 8.7 percentage points higher. Some reviewers say the buddy system eases combat, while others say enemy range and attack timing feel awkward.
Amount of content, length, and replayability is the topic raised far less than usual. It appears in 70 reviews, or 10.8%, while the typical game gets 25.0%. Its share is 0.4 of the usual share. Some reviewers still say exploration rewards are thin or repetitive.
Story and PC port issues split the sides
The clearest split is story, scenario, and writing. It appears in 62.9% of reviews that recommend the game and 45.2% of reviews that do not recommend it. That gap is 17.7 percentage points, with recommending reviews raising it more often. Among non-recommending reviews, story still appears far more often than in the typical game's negative reviews, at 45.2% against 8.6%. That is 5.3 times as common and 36.6 percentage points higher.
ストーリーについても、売りにしているわりには感情が乗りませんでした。
As for the story, despite being a selling point, it did not create emotional investment.
PC port quality and Steam Deck support appear in 7.7% of non-recommending reviews, against a 2.5% baseline for negative reviews across the compared games. That is 3.1 times as common and 5.2 percentage points higher. Performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes appear in 119 reviews, or 18.3% of the sample. They appear in 28.4% of non-recommending reviews and 15.1% of recommending reviews.
まず最適化不足が本当に酷い。
First, the lack of optimization is really terrible.
Reviewers who recommend the game sometimes still describe heavy CPU use and performance concerns. Reviewers who do not recommend it describe stuttering during field movement and poor optimization.
常にストリーミングロードをしていてCPU負荷がとても高いです。
It is always streaming, and the CPU load is very high.
Price, value for money, and DLC pricing appear in 9.7% of non-recommending reviews and 2.0% of recommending reviews. UI, controls, key bindings, and controller support appear in 7.1% of non-recommending reviews and 3.6% of recommending reviews.
Longer sessions recommend 34.0 points more often
The play-time split is 34.0 percentage points. In the least-played quarter, up to 27.0 hours, 162 reviewers are in the group. Of them, 53.7% recommend the game. Their most mentioned topics are gameplay, combat, and core mechanics at 66.7%, story, scenario, and writing at 32.1%, and performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes at 25.3%.
In the most-played quarter, from 69.4 hours upward, 162 reviewers are in the group. Of them, 87.7% recommend the game. Their top topics are gameplay, combat, and core mechanics at 86.4%, story, scenario, and writing at 69.1%, and characters, character design at 28.4%. The gap between the groups is 34.0 percentage points, with p < 0.001. The median play time behind the collected Japanese-language reviews is 46.9 hours.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2026-01-27 and 2026-11-02: 651 written in Japanese. Steam's own all-time totals for CODE VEIN II were read on 2026-11-04.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.