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Prince of Persia is a very long lived gaming franchise going all the way back to 1989 with Prince of Persia for the Atari and NES.  The series was revamped from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional game with the trilogy from Ubisoft, subtitled The Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones. Once again, Prince of Persia has been reinvented by Ubisoft, introducing an entirely new art style, while still holding to the spectacular acrobatics made popular by The Sands of Time.  

Prince of Persia, as the name implies, follows the wayward Prince on another one of his many adventures.  The Prince comes stumbling out of a desert storm searching for his donkey, Farah (chuckle), who is loaded down with gold from his last adventure.  Gone are the Sands of Time, and the Prince is once again just a regular guy who can run on walls.  Unfortunately, he stumbles upon the temple in which the vengeful, evil god Ahriman is imprisoned.  Even more unfortunately, the god may be about to escape.  Enter Elika, one of the Ahura, an ancient race who keep Ahriman safely locked away.  Of course, the Prince is swept up in the celestial battle to keep the god at bay, and embarks on a journey to, once again, save the world.  With a hot chick.  Again.

Elika, looking way too stylish in the desert.

The gameplay is similar to the Sands of Time trilogy, while adding several new elements.  The world is mostly freeform, and you can move through it in whatever path you choose and go back to any area at any time.  Movement through the world is based on spectacular acrobatics such as wall-running and column jumping.  The controls are very smooth and responsive, allowing you to string together amazing sequences of moves as you move from one rooftop to another.  Anyone who has been playing the Sands of Time trilogy will have to do some unlearning for this game.  Movement in the Sands of Time was based largely on shoulder buttons, while the new game uses the action thumb buttons.  At least a few times, you’ll run towards a wall and hit right bumper to wall-run and find yourself just running off the edge.  But don’t worry, it’s easy to get used to it.  Elika and her magic are very useful throughout the game, and, as a buddy, she is drastically more useful than Farah ever was.  She is almost entirely controlled by you, and using her is another thing that will take a little getting used to.  Elika can be used to buddy-jump longer distances and to use several “power plates” that allow you to cover very long distances.  A couple of the plate powers are a little….odd, but they are certainly effective.  You will also spend a decent amount of time picking up glowing orbs called light seeds, which gets a little repetitive.  Luckily, when picking up seeds, you at least can access areas that were blocked off when you first went through the region.

Elika and the Prince using a long-jump plate

Another ability of Elika’s magic is that she can save you if you fall.  In fact, she will always save you if you fall.  The Sands of Time trilogy gave you the ability to rewind time to save yourself, this game gives you Elika. There are both bonuses and drawbacks to Elika’s autosave ability.  Since she will swoop in to catch you every time you miss your wall-run grab, basically, you cannot die.  This eliminates the compulsion to save your game every five minutes, since you no longer have to return to your last save point when you die. Elika also removes any element of punishment for failure, which allows you to experiment more when moving around.  If you think you might be able to jump to that column, you can try it without any adverse effects.  On the downside, when Elika saves you, you do not return to what you fell from, you return to the last solid thing you were standing on.  Using the Sands of Time in the previous trilogy, you were able to rewind time to the exact point in the wall-run that you botched, allowing you to re-execute one movement. On the downside, if you did not time the rewind right or were out of sands, you were screwed.  Elika will save you every time for sure, but if you have just perfectly executed a 15-move string along walls and through plates, and mess up on the very last move, you might cry a little.

The combat system is well-developed and very nicely flowing.  You will, unfortunately, never face more than one opponent at a time, and the game is based around boss battles.   Mastering combat means mastering combo moves, and most of all, mastering using Elika.  Wailing away on an enemy with your sword will probably eventually kill it, but to truly appreciate fighting, you have to mix Prince and Elika attacks together in devastating and graceful combos.  Reaction commands are also integrated, forcing you to have quick reflexes.  Again, if you are about to die and fail to save yourself, Elika will save you, at the cost of restoring some life to your enemy.Using Elika in combat is certainly more effective than going it alone

The story of the game will not be winning any awards any time soon, but it is enough to keep you interested while you enjoy the gameplay itself.  It pulls most of the plot from real Persian mythology, centered mainly around the twin gods Ormazd, who is good,  and the evil Ahriman.  More effort certainly could have been devoted to the story, and the end certainly may leave you a little disgruntled. The Prince is a purposefully a mystery with almost no backstory other than being an adventurer.  Most of the story time centers around Elika and her past. Optional conversations allow you to learn as much or as little about Elika and the city in which she lives. The Prince in this game is certainly an improvement from the Prince of the Sands of Time trilogy.  The new Prince has one crucial characteristic that the angsty Prince of the previous games lacked: a sense of humor.  Through the misfortunes in the game, the Prince is always more likely to crack a joke about something than to lament his lot in life.  Though some of his jokes don’t fit in the era and some of them are, well, they’re not funny, it is still very refreshing to have challenges met with jokes rather than anger and complaining.

Where Prince of Persia really shines is in visual effects.  This game goes in a completely different direction graphically than the Sands of Time trilogy.  The game was animated using a technique called cel-shading, which has previously been used in games such as Sly Cooper, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Viewtiful Joe.  It is not intended to be photorealistic, and makes the game look more like a moving comic book.  Prince of Persia uses cel-shading to fantastic effect.  The characters look amazing, and the world looks beautiful.

The old Prince (above) and the new Prince (below).  I know which one I’d go for….

Great effort has been put into making the characters look fantastic.  Their facial expressions are well done, and their movements are even better.  The animators have managed to make every move made by the Prince and Elika amazingly graceful.  The combos in battle with the Prince and Elika together are flawless and amazingly smooth.  The enemies are also very well animated, though purposefully ugly.  The environment is clear and sharp, and every region has it’s own distinct architecture.

The old world and the new world animations.

The sound effects are very good and the music suits the game.  For the most part, the voice actors do a good job.  Mostly though, everything pales in comparison to the visual effects, which is just fine.

Reccomendation:

Overall, I would reccomend this game.  The story is a little lacking, the dialogue is rather juvinile, and it gets a little repetetive, but the visuals of the game are phenomenal.  The character design for Elika and the Prince is excellent, and the world design is equally flawless.  And, even with it’s flaws, the game is still fun. After all, running on walls and doing flips is just kind of intrinsically fun.

Prince of Persia

Systems: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC                                                                                   Developer: Ubisoft Publisher: Ubisoft Montreal                                                                                                    Find: Amazon - Gamefly - Goozex All reviews are based on final retail code unless otherwise noted.

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