The game essentially is about collecting over 500 light orbs in some semi-open world. It's like Pacman in 3D, only much worse. After just an hour or so, you have essentially seen everything that there is to see. The map is laid out in a way, and the orbs are placed in such a way, that you have to traverse the same sections again and again. It's awful. The story is simple, but intriguing. The characters on the other hand... I mean, they aren't quite as awful, but the "Prince" is too much of a modern hipster. The character and relation development doesn't really feel natural. But to be honest, they are quite forgettable. Combat is... bad. Just bad. It's stiff, unresponsive, too "cinema-like", full of QTE and insane button mashing, and fights can either be over in seconds or last for a (literal) eternity. That's one of the worst regressions I have ever seen. I have really tried to like this game. It has so much untapped potential and is, in principle, a welcome change. The visuals look astonishing. The acrobatics feel great and Elika is such a wonderful addition. It's quite delightful seeing them working together to overcome obstacles. But in the end, it's just a tedious chore. With quite a daring bitter sweet ending, I might add.
If I were to describe T2T in one word, it would be ugly. It just lacks any style. It looks considerably worse than its predecessors. And excuse the pun, but T2T is speed killed by its new Speed Kill mechanic. It's just lame QTE over and over and over again, but the whole gameplay and architecture are designed with this mechanic in mind, brain dead AI included. It's awful. And there is absolutely no variety in enemy types, and they only know a single attack pattern. The plot and its execution are just bad. Just avoid it.
Warrior Within has a fantastic story and one or two brilliant plot twists. Nonetheless, the biggest issue is that in the second half of the game, it starts to drag on, as nothing really interesting happens and you mostly visit locations you have already navigated once or twice. This is a common complaint. Also the combat tends to become unfair and more chore-like the more you progress. The game world is designed to be semi-open. Unfortunately, sometimes you just don't know where to go. This is also a very common complaint. It also leads to unevenly placed save points, which also replenish your health. Between lengthy sections, there might be additional checkpoints, but those often turn out to be quite useless when you have only little life points left. There are some pathological sections, which are just frustrating, and unfortunately, there are no cheats and you can't change the difficulty level mid game. On the other hand, WW has few, but great boss battles! They are infuriating. But great. Apropos combat: the Prince has a *huge* selection of combos, which is quite overwhelming, and I am still unsure if that's a pro or con. In reality, you only need a handful of those, and the lengthier ones are quite useless, anyway. But their timing feels really off. Most of the time it's way easier and less time consuming to just abuse some overpowered attack moves. But it's quite common that the Prince behaves in unexpected ways *because* he is so agile and many of his moves are context dependent. Yeah, a feature can be so great that it becomes it's own biggest weakness. Apart from struggling with bad camera angles, acrobatics feel great, and avoiding traps is a lot more challenging. But what I really miss are the puzzles and distinct rooms from SoT. It should be mentioned that WW's tone is much more darker and not a-thousand-and-one-night like.
I get what people love so much about this game, what makes it an all time classic; the character and art design make sure of that, no question. And for that, I really tried to like the game. But alas, I don't, and it has all to do with the terrible controls and flawed game design. The camera and controls are -- excuse the pun -- beyond good and evil, and I don't think that's an exaggeration.. Espicially boat rides can be ridiculously frustrating. The game map is super not helpful; I spent too much time figuring out where to go and what to do. Also, there is quite some boring filler between story missions.
PoP SoT is said to be one of the best all time classics, and for good reasons. It has aged very well, and it is astonishing how fluid combat and acrobatics feel in a game nearly 20 years old. In that regard, I would argue that it can keep up with most modern titles like Assassin's Creed. The atmosphere and quality of environmental puzzles are great. So before going into SoT's flaws, I emphasize that I absolutely recommend playing it, just like the rest of the trilogy. It is a treasure. Combat can feel tedious. It is never really challenging as all enemy types can basically be beaten with the same tactic. Also quantity of enemies is obviously chosen over quality, and often you must beat multiple waves. SoT actually has quite a clever, intuitive combo system, yet it is never explained in the game itself, and it is barely explained in the manual. I would definitely recommend looking it up. Only pain point: counter-attacking. Not only is it also not properly explained, it is also completely useless as hit-and-run tactic is way more effective. Every action in this game has a luxuriant reaction window, only counter-attack has a 1 ms window which is set to the most awkward point possible. In effect, nobody counter-attacks. There are many weak enemies put into the game, like oversized birds, bats, and bugs, which are only there to annoy the player. They are not challenging, they don't do much damage, they are only annoying. Obviously I stress combat so much because it is such a huge part of the game. The camera can be a pain as well. It gets blocked by obstacles in combat, and it makes estimating angle, height, and distance difficult at times. Most of the time it isn't a big issue, though, and the ability to reverse time certainly reduces frustration by a good amount.
You get constantly overwhelmed by uninspired enemies (aka cannon fodder) in too small arenas. The gameplay is tremendously repetitive and there are nasty difficulty spikes. Outside of combat there is nothing to do but to look for hidden chests in corridor like levels. Choices don't really matter in the end, and if you really want to see each possible outcome you replay the same levels again and again. The premise is really interesting and the technical implementation is solid. Also I enjoyed the combat system itself; it is very simple, yet very flexible and evolves. But all in all, all fights play the same and half through the game just loses its breath.
