Prince of Persia

This game is much better than the Sands of Time stuff. The platforming is on the whole more graceful, there aren't as many fights, those that are there are aren't nearly as annoying, and it looks fantastic. By default the characters voices are barely audible over the music. It's possible that this is an issue with the French localization, which I played to increase my exposure to the language, but I had to turn the music down quite a bit. The localization was well done and there's quite a bit of backstory and banter, provided you actively look for it with the left trigger. My biggest gripe with the game are the fights. For some reason it insists on not telling me the easy to remember A/B/X/Y controller buttons, but to work exclusively with the colors. Even having finished the game, I can still only just about place blue. Occasionally the fights look quite epic, but mostly they turn monotonous. Luckily you can end about half the fights quickly by pushing your adversaries over the edge, and many semi-random spawns you can even prevent from appearing at all if you get there fast enough. There are a few puzzles to be solved, but there's really only one or two that I had to reflect on for a minute. This game is all about the platforming. One thing I love in that regard is that the levels become quite different after defeating the local boss, enabling you to discover the beautiful areas all over again while collecting (obligatory) orbs. Another review mentioned there's a missing DLC and that this leaves the story unfinished, but actually I was very pleasantly surprised by the indeterminate ending. I fear a DLC could only detract from it. Oh yeah, one last thing. That not being able to die thing you might've read is complete bogus. Especially as you progress there are plenty of annoying opportunities to have to have to redo larger amounts of jumping and running just because you mess up near the end. Only you get a helping hand animation instead of gruesome death porn.

As a proof of concept this game is very well done, however it lacks polish, patches (from console version) and DLC (also from console version). The traversal is quite relaxing, never challenging, but quite frustrating on few occasions. The most of these frustrations are because of the delay of your actions being performed by the Prince, it takes a while for him to start running and other actions too. The worst of these is probably pole climbing as you cannot ascend or descend while changing direction, which you could in the previous games. The second worst are probably the vines, after you get on them you have to wait for Elika to reach you, at which point she jumps on your back, this gets less annoying over time as it's one of the ways Prince and Elika connect. Actions which were not performed are usually stored in a queue, which is good and bad. The combat could've flown together really well, if it wasn't for the QTEs during bossfights, which sometimes just don't stop, stopping you from getting to the actual combat of flowing through combos and parrying. The arena's end corners function as activation points for enviromental attacks, which for bosses means, that they'll either teleport back, when it's corruption or you get to throw them back in the middle, when it's not corruption. These do trigger even if you're in air doing combos, this frequently interrupts the combos, because the arenas are relatively small. QTEs, enviromental attacks and attack range are probably my only and biggest complains about combat. The story isn't the best, but the storytelling is well done and interacting with Elika is well executed. As character Elika can be interesting, it's just that she is also used as a wiki for exposition, which always kills her personality. Overall gameplay is too restrictive with its mechanics leading to some frustration, but it's permissive enough for it to be fun. I recommend that you get hotkeys for rapidly pressing keys for the fullest enjoyment.

While this game contains some beautiful environments and music it's gameplay is quite restrictive and repetitive, sometimes it can even feel like the game is playing itself. the combat in this game is really simple and even though you can use different types of attacks it seems like the only difference between using your sword and using magic is the animation that plays, platforming in this game is also simple and doesn't require many inputs from the player. The game also forces you to replay the previous levels to collect light orbs that are necessary to progress the story. But in the end this game is still enjoyable and you will probably still like it for its world, music and a fun dynamic between the main characters.

It's a fun and pretty game, but to get it running right requires a 'fix'. The Launcher that tries to run the game REQUIRES the Visual C 2005 SP1 library installed, and doesn't include it as part of the install. The launcher is required to set any of the game settings, otherwise it runs at 1280x768 at low detail.

I picked this PoP episode 'cuz I thought it will be the same hack-and-slash platformer as the former episodes ( Warrior Within for eg. ) and because I loved the graphics. Colorful, vast and brings that eastern-stlye. Well I was right but only partially. If you expect the same fast-paced fight and finger numbing jumps you will be very disappointed. The jumps and fights become too easy when you get use to it. It's like pressing the button which lights up on Simon-says. On the contrary the game looks nice the puzzles are okay and the characters are lovable. It has its own flaws and nice things. If you have time and you like an easy-going somewhat artistic game you can pick this.