This game sets out to be a bigger and better Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PoP: SoT) but falls flat in many ways. Not all of the new features are particularly bad ideas. In fact, the idea behind the game itself isn't bad. But the execution is poor on account of rushed development. It had NO OVERSIGHT by the lead designer of the earlier Prince of Persia games, and it shows. Yes, they basically hijacked his game without even telling him! This is the METAL GEAR: ZOMBIES of Prince of Persia. He was very disappointed with the state of this game when it released. I avoided it for years and now I understand the drama surrounding this game. You'll see many reviewers say the controversy and outrage about this game was how it became so much darker. They couldn't be more wrong. In the mid-2000s, Goth and Emo were in style. Nobody cared it was following a trend. They were let down that it was a poor sequel riding on the success of Sands of Time, which was a trailblazer of a game! They even made sand powers more limited and shortened combos in this game. Combat is overall much worse as a result, now you just stunlock and execute helpless enemies. And what about the new features? Boss fights: Bad. They add nothing to the game. They're just health sponges that take forever to grind down. Fighting them is repetitive. Dual wielding: So-so. Using the dual wield combos is usually the easiest way to win against a group of enemies but it's not exactly some high risk, high reward thing tactic that's fun to use. It's just a circumstantial bonus. The Dagger of Time was cooler. Collect-a-thon: Bad. Who decided it would be cool to collect artwork and make the sand tank upgrades automatic? Boring! Level design got worse, backtracking sucks. The HUD got worse, it lost clarity and gained visual glitches. The simple fact is this game lacks the polish, the character, the aesthetic of the first game. You'll first notice when the bland soundtrack begins that something is missing.
