Code of Princess Review
by Omar (@siegarettes)
- Code of Princess
- Developer- Studio Saizensen
- Publisher- Degica
- PC (Steam), originally available on 3DS
There’s a certain appeal to revisiting games. It can produce alternate interpretations of the original, reuse aspects of it in interesting ways, or simply reproduce an aesthetic that hasn’t been seen in a while. Code of Princess is, at the least, a clear attempt that follows the logic of those approaches. It has a clear goal of being a successor to 1996’s Saturn RPG-brawler hybrid, Guardian Heroes, to the point where it even brings that game’s director and programmer aboard for development. Even without that knowledge it would be clear; there’s a heavy aesthetic debt to Guardian Heroes here, everything from combat to menu layouts feels recognizable.
To some degree it even looks the part. Originally released on 3DS, its particular mix of visual languages wouldn’t be out of place in the Guardian Heroes era, though perhaps leaning towards a more Playstation look than a Saturn one. Backgrounds are presented as 3D objects, with high resolution illustrations for character portraits and sprites created from pre-rendered 3D models.
It’s never an entirely cohesive aesthetic. The textures for the 3D backgrounds are distractingly muddy while the background objects themselves are in sharp relief thanks to the higher resolution of the PC port. The sprites also haven’t been re-rendered, giving them a pixelated look that’s not flattering. If they’d been created with a more illustrative style they may have translated better, but it’s clear that they were made to imitate 3D models without taxing the 3DS hardware it was originally designed for. Stack on that the portrait art and there’s so many varying levels of fidelity at play that it creates a jarring, disjointed look. It’s a symptom of translating a handheld game to a screen much larger than it was ever intended to be played on. Take it down to a smaller resolution and everything looks right at home, though there isn’t a way to do this aside from playing in a window and manually resizing it. In fact, even trying to change the resolution of my desktop caused it to alternatively crash and flicker to black.
The problems caused by the transition from handheld to desktop also creep in elsewhere. You’re required to switch between views of the two game screens by press F5 rather than having them integrated. There isn’t really any important information appearing in what used to be the bottom screen, thankfully, so you can play with the top screen in full screen size without losing anything.
The pacing of the game is choppy, going from lengthy dialogue scenes to bouts of combat that end without fanfare. Worse still, it throws you back to the menu after each of these, creating a stop and go drive forward. Again, it’s a design that makes sense for the handheld format, but feels absurd when translated here.
Even setting all that aside, the combat itself underwhelms. There’s a good sense of feedback, and there’s a range to the character playstyles that’s satisfying to explore, but there’s a sluggishness to it that wears it down. Trying to position yourself within crowds always makes you feel like someone turned up the gravity, and even actions like turning in another direction take too long. There are combos and juggles you can definitely set up, but there’s not enough fluidity to allow much self expression there. The equipment and RPG-elements don’t help much there either, acting more as gate to later stages for than adding a dimension to play around it. You can attempt some different approaches, but ultimately the way you play is going to center around the character’s defined playstyle and short number of moves.
Despite all these hang ups, Code of Princess wasn’t entirely unpleasurable to play through. The basic combos, while repetitive, can sustain a good couple hours worth of brawls. Later stages, as well as the extra challenge maps, bring in more enemies at a time, making crowd control a bigger component. This pushes the tension higher and encourages liberal use of the Burst attack, a move that burns all your mana for a major increase in damage. The localization is also excellent. While the story itself carries on conversation too long, it’s occasionally punctuated with some humorous lines (“You could grind XP all day and still be useless”) even if they don’t exactly take care with the fiction. There is, on a primitive level, an appeal to it. Unfortunately, that appeal never expands beyond the basics. In the end, Code of Princess is an imitator, not a successor. It can try for the throne, but isn’t ready to sit in it.