Prince of Persia

Speaking as someone whose sole experience with the franchise had been on the Apple 2 back in 1989, I came into this with no expectations whatsoever and enjoyed it very much. It is a *very* easy game, but the difficulty (or lack thereof) is not its selling point. That would be the award-winning artistic design, gorgeous environments, likeable characters, beautiful soundtrack, visually spectacular acrobatics and the gameplay's seamless flow. Superficial considerations, one might say, but that's pretty much what I expected when I got this game. The story is fine, the banter between the two main characters makes up for the otherwise empty world, and I found myself caring enough to want to know what happens after the cliffhanger ending (still waiting for that sequel, Ubisoft). Recommended, if you don't mind your endings a little on the open side.

Prince of Persia, remake of the sand trilogy, is probably the second worst entry ( yup, I'm considering PoP 3d too) of the entire series. Just scroll past this comment and you'll see them in more detail in other reviews ( Listing them here it's simply a waste of time... although all the flaws could be summarized in ''dull'' and ''boring as hell''). Still, it does not mean the game it's without any credit: I believe the fights were orchestrated to make look like a beautifully choreography, and for its time some visuals are pretty immersive ( not all of them, others are again pretty dull and common). Plus, the soundtrack is on point and gives that PoP vibe that one could expect from the game. Problem is, everytime the game tries to do something inspired and unique, it always comes out as dull, repetitive and something seen a BILLION times. To give just an example, the game literally opens with something just so.. terribly common that you could literally mistake it for any single 3d platform rout there and you'll be unable to tell any discerning difference, and, although the intro was built to be a right-in-the-action experience, it was done so at the expense of.. everything else. So, worth buying? mmmmmmmm if you are a fan of PoP or platform games, yes... but only if discounted. If not: stay away.

Here's a thing with Prince of Persia 2008 that gets me most - the characters are horrible. Yeah, you might've heard complaints about the lack of challenge (and there is no challenge in the game, yes), because you can't die or truly fail. Complaints about the one-butoon-ness of the game (and it is done to the extreme), the awful combat system, which (as you can't fail completely) just stretches fights to go on and on until you do it like the game wants... But people tend to like the story and characters for some reason. "Oh, it's a good love story," - they go. Yeah, it's as good a love story as a boy and his hamburger in a fast-food restaurant. So, what is good about the game? The setting and the style. Yes, game obviously got influenced by some great japanese games (like Ico or Okami). And i personally see nothing wrong with (getting influenced), especially if you're influenced by something fantastic. They look great, they feel great, the are quite fun to explore. It would've been fun, if the gameplay wouldn't feel like an extended QTE, yeah. But it's still fun to explore the world and collect lums. I mean, they're not called lums, but they always reminded me of lums from Rayman series. So, on the art and setting alone it is already quite good to check out. It also does have some good concepts once in a while. Does them wrong, but you can at least like him for trying. Still, of all "big" Prince of Persia games, this one is probably second worst (with worst being Prince of Persia 3D, obviously).

Visually the game looks nice but it does feel very much a case of rinse & repeat for each of the bosses. The world is open which is nice and you can pick the order you fight in however there is no upgrading that matters. You can get collectables which alter your transversal but in terms of combat moves you get nothing new as you progress which unlike games akin to mega-man makes which boss to fight 1st of no significance. You can't die as you are always saved at the last minute by your companion but the biggest gripe really is Ubisoft refused to release the Epilogue for the PC version of the game claiming piracy concerns, this is the same Ubi who had to resort to a pirate site to break DRM they put on one of their own games (Rainbow six Vegas 2) as it made it impossible for them to distribute digitally & stated in 2014 DRM doesn't cut piracy. Basically if you play it on PC you are getting an incomplete game and missing about 2hrs of gameplay due to lazy excuses from the publisher.

I played this without having played the Sands of Time trilogy, so i don't get most of the complaints from the fanboys of the rest of the franchise. I liked the storyline, the interaction between both characters and the acrobatic rummaging about. The never dying thing didn't bother me at all. I did get a little frustrated in some of the "teleport" paddle sections where you had no vision or proper indication of where to dodge, and failing meant repeating the whole process from scratch. Fighting sections sometimes felt a bit boring but was acceptable to break the monotony from all the jumping. Had fun playing the game overall. And didn't really miss the often mentioned epilogue DLC to have a proper ending to the game.