Prince of Persia Review
The Sands of Time Trilogy was possibly my favorite franchise of last generation, next to Metroid Prime, and Jak and Daxter. When I heard that the Prince was coming back, on the current systems I was excited to see the changes that are made. I also was looking forward to what platforming madness he would have to go through. Ubisoft, took the stance of if ain’t broke, then make subtle changes that water down what was already there.
You are a new “Prince”, I use quotes because it is never revealed during the game that this dude is the Prince of anything. You are looking for your Donkey full of gold (seriously), and stumble into a Princess and her epic battle against a God. From there you learn several moves to help you traverse the landscape. Most of them are parkour based, much like the previous POP titles. However, most of them have also been simplified, sometimes down to a single button press. So, large areas that would have taken the old Prince a long difficult trip have been boiled to pressing A (or X) about five times after moving your character into place. This made the game un-frustrating, but also took the focus off of the platforming and laid it directly on the combat…we will get to that later.
Since the new game in sans Sands of Time, Ubisoft Montreal had to create an alternate way of instantly saving you after you fall off a deadly cliff. In swoops Elika, the Princess (of Persia?) that you are there to save/assist. She has the ability to fly down to you and save you before death. You will die a lot in both combat and during your trek through the world, and Elika’s magic hand is there to catch you everytime. Is it a cheap replacement for the rewind capability? Yes. Does it break the game? No. Did I get tired of seeing her damn hand pop on screen after jumps that the Prince should have been able to make by himself? Yes. This magic that she possesses also is key to your battle sequences and the story itself, so while the magic’s use in gameplay may be silly, it ties into the overall story arc really well.
The art style that Ubi went with is a strange not-quite-cell-shaded, cell shaded look. The world looks beautiful and the draw distance seems infinite at points. The generic enemy character designs are a bit muddy and blend with one another, but the four main bosses are distinct enough to draw your eyes. The Prince is kind of funny looking, and Elika looks remarkably like Natalie Portman. I like the look, but at no point in a game should a character be a victim of the art style. The characters look too clunky at times and the strange style is clearly to blame.
Now, let’s take a look at the combat. The hand to hand combat of the Prince of Persia series has always been its weak point, and its good to see that this tradition wasn’t lost on the new game. Combat is very block then combo heavy. Once you enter a battle, you are locked onto your enemy and you best start blocking immediately. Attacks are done by both the Prince and Elika, and they have to coordinate with the stance that the enemy is taking. The game tells you exactly which stances can block which attacks. The problems with the combat come from tedious button combinations.
When an enemy has you in a quicktime event, you don’t have much time at all to hit the corresponding button. This is made doubly and triply hard if you haven’t memorized the button layout of your controller and almost impossible if your audio/video setup has any kind of delay (Unlike Rock Band, Prince of Persia doesn’t have a calibrate lag screen.) When an enemy knocks you out, you don’t die because Elika saves you. While she is saving you, your enemy gains energy back. So, if you are up against an enemy that is pretty difficult, there is literally no end to how long your battle could be.
I enjoyed most of the battles, but the timing on almost all of them is ridiculous and gets super aggravating. It helps that you only fight one enemy at a time and the bosses have to be beaten 5 times each. This allows you to get used to their button combos. However, it would have been better had the developer just made a better combat system with more enemies. I’m not going to go any deeper into the story, but I am going to say that POP is good. It only feels like the parts that are oversimplified shouldn’t have been and the parts that should have been refined were done so the wrong way.
3.5/5 Stars
