Prince of Persia

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.

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.