Prince of Persia Review (Gaia Rai)
This game is simultaneously incredibly underrated while being just as dismissable as what led to it never getting a sequel. I posit that statement to all the games core features, both having aspects that are amazing only to be brought down by aspects of those same features.
In one instance, you have the visual presentation. This is a game that has an absolutely stunning art style that has stood the test of time. using a beautiful palette of colours to really bring out the feel of a decaying world contrasted against the beauty it reveals once the lands are healed. Unfortunately, the times when the game is at its most beautiful are also the parts of the game you'll be spending the least amount of time in simply by the very structure of the game. a problem that only gets compounded the farther you get into the game. When you heal a land, it transforms the desaturated blue and gray environments into lands full of warm browns and lush greens, and when the boss of a land is defeated, the area becomes vista that will have you stopping just to appreciate its beauty. Unfortunately, the only reason to be in the restored areas is to collect orbs for new abilities, something that, at a certain point, becomes irrelevent to all except completionists. The unfortunate truth is that for most of the game, you are looking at the land in its corrupted state.
For the gameplay, you have arguably one of the smoothest climbing systems that Ubisoft has ever created. A testament to the readability and predictability of the movement along side near perfectly crafted levels that give the player a sense of flow and control while also not being too demanding. While there is no death state in the game, each level acts as a collection of gauntlets where if the player fails a sequence, they are sent to the last time they were on solid ground. It is a checkpoint system without the loading screen; difficulty is added by adding to the length and complexity of those gauntlets.
Alongside this masterfully crafted climbing system stands what has to be among the worst combat systems Ubisoft has ever created. I say worst; perhaps that is a bit harsh. It may not be the worst, but it is an incredibly agrivating system that favors flashy animations over intuitive and compelling mechanics. While there are a bunch of actions that do different things and the game will occasionally demand that you imput those actions, combat will basically boil down to 'drag enemy to edge of arena' when you fight goons and 'input that one combo that does a lot of damage' when you fight bosses. None of this is helped by the slow movement and clunky feedback.
And finally, we have the story. Putting aside the fact neither of the main characters sound remotely like they are from Persia, let alone the continent in which it resides, I do think they are very well written. A carefree thief and a dedicated princess have to team up to stop a world-ending threat. While they start off a bit prickly towards each other, they grow a bond during their adventure and even develop a budding romance... that we will never see develop because, for as strong of a twist this ending has going for it, it is also the worst kind of cliffhanger you could think of. There is even an epilogue DLC that you can only get on console that ends with an even more agregous cliffhanger. The kind of cliffhanger that almost ruins the story that leads to it, because the only way it could be redeemed is with a sequel, and given that this game came out in 2008 and modern Ubisoft is physically incapable of writing compelling character dynamics these days, even if by some miracle they decided to continue this story, it would be, at best, a disappointment.
So to conclude, everything about this game is fantastic aside from everything that causes those things to stop being fantastic. I do think you should play the game.
Fall in love with the climbing,
Endure the combat system,
Take the time to appreciate the world's beauty.
Endear yourself to these characters.
Brace yourself for a disappointing ending.
It is worth it.