Prince of Persia

I think this game confused people when it originally came out. It's unclear why it needed a reboot other than the trilogy had ended, but they could have possibly made some prequel games which they eventually did with the Forgotten Sands.

The first thing to notice is the new art direction with cel-shaded look. The movement feels a bit heavier, and with the Prince's gauntlet, he has a few new moves such as a "roof run" and to do long vertical slides down walls. The iconic rewind mechanic has been replaced, but the replacement idea really functions the same; just more streamlined. The Prince soon meets Princess Elika who has a magic ability that means she essentially flies. This means she swoops in to save you and drops you back on the last platform, as well as giving you a "double jump".

I think this mechanic was much maligned but I actually like it. In the previous games, sometimes you moved through a checkpoint with zero or low sand which then inflated the difficulty of that section. For players with more sand; they have an easier time. To stock up on sand, sometimes you tediously smashed pots. If you ran out of sand, then you have a loading screen and have to replay the section. Therefore, the new mechanic is perfectly streamlined as you always automatically "rewind", don't have to tediously smash pots, and there's no loading screens anywhere in the game (other than first load and quick travel). It's definitely more efficient, but maybe loses the satisfaction of seeing the rewind.

The Prince is searching for Farah, but plot-twist; it is his donkey who is carrying treasure, rather than the Princess from the original trilogy. He bumps into a Princess who is being chased. She leads him into the Temple where her Father catches up with her and unleashes a demon Ahriman. The Prince and Princess then have to purify the lands and re-seal Ahriman. There's basically 4 areas in 4 regions. Completing all areas in the region opens up the door to fight the region's boss.

The corrupted worlds have loads of this slime that moves towards you and restricts where you can go. Once purified, the world becomes more open and colourful. It also has light orbs which you need to collect to unlock access to use the magic plates. Each unlock allows you access to 4 areas; 2 in 2 regions. This essentially means to fully clear a region, you need 2 plate unlocks. You choose the order of unlocks but it doesn't seem to matter (I don't think there's a good/bad order).

I think the structure of the game (unlocking plates by collecting the orbs) gives you a good sense of exploration and progression, as well as being a nice visual gimmick. There's much more freedom than Warrior Within which had an open world design but was pretty linear in which area you needed to be in. The game does well in making it clear where you need to go. Most of the areas are reasonably linear; more circular and the camera gives you a good view of the way forward. If you have an area selected on your map, you can press a button to make Elika send out a "guiding light" which zooms around the path. There are sometimes where it does get confused and takes you in a loop back to where you are, but it generally does a great job.

The movement takes a while to get used to. Instead of pressing Right Trigger (if you use a controller) to wall-run, you now just jump towards it, and it is quite forgiving with the alignment as well. The new double jump move takes a while to get used to if you have played the original trilogy recently; I am used to the next platform being the required distance to the next platform, but now sometimes you need the double jump to make it. There is a visual cue of the screen going grey so you know when you are about to fall to your death (well, Elika swoops in).

I think the plate mechanic could have been elaborated on since the ideas are pretty basic. One is a simple jump; one is a longer double jump; another allows you to fly; another allows you to run up walls. The jumps are basically just a visual thing where you press a button then wait several seconds until the next input, but the others need interaction of moving left/right to dodge obstacles. I think these sections weren't that clear, especially the flying one because your characters are automatically flying around and it's not clear if they are going to automatically move or if you need to intervene to avoid a wall.

The general platforming gameplay remains the same, but you do spend a very long time on walls. There is loads of wall-running, vine climbing, and sliding. I think the amount of combat is reduced, and the game still seems lacking in the number of puzzles, but the ones that it does have are good. I do miss the brutal-looking traps like razor blades; instead we just have corruption slime.

The combat has been completely changed to two-vs-one arena battles. You press X to slash, A to dash forward, B to use the gauntlet and Y for Elika to attack. These moves can be chained together with some transitioning to the air, or some ending the combo. Once you find a good combo, you will be using it all the time. As you progress through the game, the enemies transition to different states which means you just have to start the combo with a specific attack. Many enemies can be instantly killed if you get them to the edge of the platform, and this even includes a couple of the boss battles. The boss battles generally play in a similar way but then there's a few Quick Time Event moves they do, but the timing is fairly generous. If you fail them, Elika intervenes, but the boss recovers health as a punishment.

From time to time, you will be prompted to talk to Elika, and there's loads of optional dialogue if you trigger it yourself. She often tells you about the history of the city, but other times it is just character building, or banter between them. The Prince is more like a thief which Elika doesn't approve of, but she warms to him over time.

I was always a fan of cel-shaded graphics and it is a style that probably will be timeless. This game looks beautiful, even today. I quite liked the flowing clothes as if there is a strong breeze. I think towards the end of the game, it starts to feel a bit repetitive and formulaic. I do think it could be improved with more puzzles, traps, and a bit more variation in the combat. I could imagine a sequel would perfect what they had here, but since it wasn't well received, this sequel never came - which is a massive shame.

Prince of Persia 2008 is a weird one. It was released when Ubisoft were starting out their very famous collectible formula, but the game was clearly a lot more experimental and than the past games in the series.

Its a reboot, and as such it tries to retell the story of the prince. I actually found the story to be better than in the past games, simply because the prince sounds more like a real character and the best thing about the game is to witness the evolution of the two main characters and the relationship they have with each other.

Visually the game offers a sort of low budget cel shaded art style, that actually looks good. The animation works was not so hot, but looking at the game and its vistas can be really cool.

Unfortunatly the gameplay is absolutly trash. There are basically two gameplay cycles. One is climbing and platforming, and the other is combat. The climbing is very derivative and simple, and whenever you fail you get instantly saved by the princess. Basically you cant really die in this game, as the princess will automatically save you. The worst part is that you need to collect a lot of gems in order to get through, and these are done though platforming. And this section of the game just screams time waster and its a complete bore to get through.

The combat is also terrible. The combat is always 1v1, and the game features a sort of new battle system that feels more like a fighting game than a 3d action adventure. Except there is no depth here. The game is completly basic if you play only with counters, basically a lot like Assassins Creed. To be fair a lot of the moves are very catchy, but there really isnt any advantage of using one move over the other when the combat is so shallow.

I hated playing through this one, and i had a friend who would willingly do the boring collectibles part.