Code of Princess
It costs a lot of money to wear so few clothes
The system setting and control screens of Code of Princess do not do it any favours. There aren’t a lot of options when it comes to PC optimisation, but far worse is the fact that the control screen shows a picture of a Nintendo DS for button layout. It has to be one of the laziest ports we’ve ever seen when it comes to the interface, making all the Xbox ports that have a large “Press Start” or “Press A” prompt look positively bespoke. Don’t let the extremely lazy port put you off though, as Code of Princess quickly shows itself to be a fun and charming beat ‘em up/RPG hybrid that is full of actually funny jokes.
The story is more than a little trite. The Kingdom of Deluxia is in disarray after the King surrenders the land to monsters and an evil queen who looks like a sleepy high schooler with a severe crush on a stuffed rabbit. Princess Solange of Deluxia takes the magical sword of the kingdom, an enormous zweihander named Deluxcalibur and flees the Kingdom, determined to overthrow the evil usurpers and defend the people from the invading monsters. The armoured bikini wearing Solange is joined on her adventure by Ali-Baba, a rogue in a padlocked halter top, Zozo, a decaying necromancer who keeps replacing parts of her body with those culled from corpses, and Allegro, an electric guitar playing bard that claims he will be a great sage with a few more experience points.
Although there are a levelling mechanic, experience points and equippable items in Code of Princess, it is first and foremost a side scrolling beat ‘em up rather than a more traditional JRPG. Each of the four characters has
far worse is the fact that the control screen shows a picture of a Nintendo DS for button layout
a unique fighting style and special abilities. Solange wields her massive, heavily damaging but slow blade, Ali is fast and uses her small sword and bombs, Zozo wields ranges magic, and Allegro uses his guitar for a mix of melee and ranged attacks. The combat system is simple but quite robust, utilising a mix of combos and timing to string attacks together. Each fighter has a normal and heavy attack, a Target attack and a Burst attack. The normal and heavy attacks are just what you would expect, the Burst attack slowly drains the character’s MP (magic points) and allows them to do more damage, and the Target attack targets a single enemy making them take twice as much damage from player attacks and makes them the target for all special moves, no matter where they are on the screen. All attacks, including the quarter circle and other Street Fighter style special attacks can be comboed together with the right timing.
The large sprites, rendered from 3D models are beautifully animated, but once again show the laziness of the port. There sprites seem to be the same resolution as those from the 3DS, making them look extremely pixelated on PC monitors. It’s also a very short game, with the main story only taking 3-4 hours to complete. The multiplayer modes don’t really make up for the brevity either. Still, if you’re looking for a little irreverent fun with some good brawling, you could do a lot worse than Code of Princess.