joe randel's art dump

Finally!  I didn’t think this would ever get delivered.  I felt like I was a kid again waiting my 4 to 6 weeks for delivery on something.  But no longer!  Yay!  I actually got this on Friday, but I waited to post it until today so I could get some game time in and give my opinions thus far.  So lets take a look, shall we.

First things first… I was totally bummed by the visual book.  It’s more like a booklet that you get in a CD.  It still has nice art, but I wish there was more.  I guess I was hoping for a bit too much on that one.  Oh, well.  It’s still cool to have official printed art, no matter how small.

Once I got looking at the book, I felt a little happier.  I still wish there was more and it was larger though.  I guess that’s something I might not ever get over.

Basically the book runs through the main cast and some enemies with little bios of each.  This big guy is a master of the UMA (Ultimate Manimal Arts) fighting style.

Of course this game couldn’t pass on a loli character.  She’s a general in the enemy army somehow.  I haven’t seen her much yet in the game.

Here’s the music CD.  I probably give it a listen to when I’m at work next week.

When I finally flipped over the case, I saw that the box boasts 50+ characters to customize.  Dang!  I figured that you can unlock each enemy in the game some how… and I was right.  It looks like as you find the enemies, you make them available to play with in the online/local verses battles.  I don’t think you can customize them, but you can customize the main cast of characters.  Everything from HP, attack, magic, speed plus lots of others to put points in to every time you level up.

I haven’t tried any of the online battles yet.  I went as far as to see the level of characters/difficulty in the lobby and I don’t think I’m quite ready yet to get my ass handed to me.  Looks like fun though.  You can even do online co-op and create password protected rooms.  If anyone out there has the game and want to hook up for some CoP battles, let me know!

I’ve only played the game in small chunks since Friday, but what I’ve played so far… I like.  It’s a nice beat’em up that actually played well in small sessions, which works great for me.  The missions are short and simple.  Go in, beat up the bad guys, listen to some dialogue, adjust stats, repeat.  I’m very much looking forward to seeing what this title has to offer.

There is one thing I have an issue with…This.  Who the hell thought this was a good place to put the name frame during the cinematic?!  Seriously!  No one saw this as an issue?  I checked out the Japanese version to see if they have it like this too, and they do.  So it’s not a North American “We can’t show anything remotely sexual” edit.

There… that’s better.

Actually, now that I have this screen up, I will say that the story and voice overs are very corny, but I think they’re supposed to be like that.  Sometimes it’s funny, but mostly it can be hard to listen to and there is no way to switch to a Japanese dub or anything.  Oh well.

Overall, I like Code of Princess, but I can see how others might not dig the story/voices or think the fighting doesn’t have enough “depth”.  To me, it feels very arcade like in its play style and I can get behind that.  I think I’m going to have fun with this title for sure. ^_^