I went back and forth on getting it for a while, cause it's annoying to import Japanese games translated to English and released in America from America back to Japan so I can play them on my American 3DS. And I have to admit I've only put in about an hour on it after receiving it tonight. But it's still kind of capturing my attention.
I've heard a few people compare it to Guardian Heroes, which seems apt enough if you were familiar with that game's massive framerate drops, which Code of Princess packs in glaringly apparent spades. That's not to say it's not fun, but it does give the game a bit of the feeling that you're wading through some mud. It's mostly broken into small chapters where you gotta clear out a series of enemies instead of longer, specific levels, a design decision I'm not entirely sure about yet.
The feeling of the game kind of reminds me, funnily enough, of Nintendo's own Kid Icarus Uprising in a way, with lots of self-referential and tongue-in-cheek humor. The main character is the Princess of "DeLuxia" and wields the "DeLuxcalibur" sword. And at one point a character told the boss character to "stop jiggling" in his idle animation and get to kickin' my ass. The dialogue is all fully voiced, and pretty over-the-top, while the 2D art itself is colorful and nice. The game also looks like it's not going to bother playing it too straight, which is probably a good thing, considering.
The in-game graphics occupy a kind of weird space between Saturn-era pre-rendered sprites and 3D models. I had initially thought the game was entirely sprite-based, which maybe seems to be not the case? The graphics kind of remind me of heavily cel-shaded models that were posed in different positions and then capped for frames. What am I talking about all this stuff for!
At its core Code of Princess is looking to me so far to be a pretty worthy side-scrolling beaty game with some nice RPG/equipment customization elements. I even took the thing online and got my ass kicked by some guy shooting green beams across the screen, which is something I definitely cannot do yet. It seems like the game gets better in coop, which is something I will probably never get to test because ha ha ha.
Anyway, I'll probably dig into the game more as the week goes on here. Also I like to change Solange's pretty colors and not look at any part of her body while I am doing it.