Prince of Persia – Replay Review

I have this game in my collection for like two years now. I bought it in 2008, played a little, and got quite bored of all the jumping and running from place to place gathering seeds of light and so I moved to a new game.

Last week searching thru my ps3 games for a game that I haven’t completed yet I found Prince of Persia and I started playing it with the clear goal to bring it to the finish.

So let’s start with the review and let the complaining for others…

We all heard of Prince of Persia franchise…it’s huge, and from what I read on different sites it will need a boost because people are quite bored of the same jumping action over and over. This is what Ubisoft tried to do with this new prince of Persia …a reviving of the franchise…beautiful graphics, a new prince, a new story line and a totally new environment and as a bonus: a pretty nice companion that goes under the name of Elika.

The game starts with the Prince wondering thru the desert searching for his donkey Farrah that got lost during a violent sandstorm. Instead of finding Farrah the prince ends up with a princess in his arms that falls on him while she was running from some guards.  Of course like every main male character that respects himself he starts to defend the princess from these guards. Trying to escape them, the two road companions arrive to a temple which is beautifully covered by a tremendous tree. Elika here tells the story of the dark evil god Ahriman that is trapped by some kind of magic under this temple, and that Elika and her people swear to protect the world from this evil, and ensure themselves that no one will break the sigil that could release Ahriman… thing that happened anyway, once you encounter Elika’s father, the King of this land which after you give him a fighting lesson will break in his madness the sigil …releasing the corruption all over the world.

Here your adventures begin…where you will have to take Elika and reach to all 4 areas where healing grounds exists…fight some corruption monsters, even some annoying bosses…some kind of Ahriman protectors…and of course to heal the healing grounds…task that is in Elika’s power  to do.

Elika is the appealing part of the game…without Elika this Prince of Persia will be just another wall to wall jump till you fall asleep. The fact that she will never let you die, never let you fall or get killed by your enemies makes Elika the best and most important skill of our prince.

Elika in reality is not something new…we played lots of rpg’s  or action games where our character has some magic abilities …but this time, the magic abilities of your main character came under a girl form, even better: a princess.

The game itself it’s not hard for experienced gamers.  We all played lot of action games, so it’s actually no surprise here…all you need to do in order to actually have a fluent gameplay experience is to relax and enjoy the game…this game is not a button smasher even when it comes to fighting, it’s just a matter of timing and smooth coordination in order to get rid of the enemies in a short amount of time.

I did actually encounter some issues when it comes to gameplay. After your first gameplay hour you will think yourself as an artist at jumping…(and you would probably be right),  because the game is so well build that will give that impression to every experienced gamer that you can do tons of jumps continuously that will be leading to a more faster game experience… which most of the time is true, but honestly I found myself failing some jumps when I encountered poles. When it comes to poles I strongly advise you to take your time because rushing it will result in jumping in a totally wrong direction.

The combat system is actually not an enjoyable feature for me. I’m more of a free will fighting system fan…here the fighting system is quite predefined…that meaning attack with the gauntlet when the monster takes this form, attack with Elika when it takes the other form and so on…which actually didn’t give us much choosing to do… oh, and another thing, it let me the impression that in this game I have used the block button more than in any game I played, which should tell a lot about the fighting system.

The most challenging feature in Prince of Persia is Elika’s powers. After you played a little you will see that you will have to gather an amount of seeds of light in order to unlock the remaining grounds. Once you unlocked your first areas you will see that you gain access to some plates that Elika can use in order to go further… Two of these powers are identical and requires no skills at all. The other ones requires some skills, and not because they are hard to complete, but because there are some long sequences in the game when you will have to run from plate to plate and failing or hitting an object will bring you back to the start. The dash power sends the Prince running up walls. Though you’re on a track, you will need to move left and right to dodge obstacles and corruption traps. The flight power follows the same principal, only Elika takes the Prince in the air. You must dodge left, right, up and down as you soar through the air.

The puzzles in this Prince of Persia are quite few and not even worth telling about them, because with some patience every player can figure them out. I actually liked that there are less puzzles that in other’s POP games because it gives the impression of a more active gameplay.

What I really enjoyed about this game was the beautiful artistic environment that you will be able to see after Elika manages to heal certain grounds…the game artists really did a great job with this one…

Closing comments

The first time I played this game I was not captivated at all by it…probably because at sometimes it gets a little boring…now when I replayed it with the clear goal to bring it to the end it was quite likeable. The game can be finished in around 10 hours of gameplay (that if you don’t gather every seed of light ) and it’s a game that deserves the money..It’s a quite fun and enjoyable experience…I will not recommend this game to everyone though (it requires some patience and perseverance sometimes), but for the action games fans is a must play.

MMOGAMESVS.COM ratings

Story line – 8 – The story line of the game is actually ok…the thing that’s missing is the more appealing love story between our prince and our princess. When you play a game with two characters, male and female, as lead characters, you expect a strong relationship based on the feelings that our characters have for each other…Sometimes you just get the feeling that the prince is accompanied by his sister instead of an attractive princess.

Sound – 9.5 – The soundtrack of the game is amazing… the voices are good but sometimes the lines are cheesy…

Gameplay – 8.5 – When it comes to gameplay, besides some minor glitches (the jumping from the poles issue that I mention) the gameplay is actually good…the problem is that for more inpatient players this can get boring sometimes (happened for me) …

Graphics -9.5 –Well, when it comes to graphics the game is a piece of art…the environment (once the grounds are healed) is actually breathtaking…only for this feature and the game is a must play.

OVERALL – 8.5 – Great game

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