Prince of Persia, the last highly anticipated game to come out this holiday season was released a week ago. The Prince is joined by a new ally, Elika. She assists the Prince throughout the game by using her magical powers and always aiding him when he fails. Another huge change to the series is the use of cel-shading. Does the Prince have what it takes save the kingdom and the series? Hit the jump to find out.

The new Prince of Persia is a reboot to the action-adventure series. The game follows a new Prince on a quest to look for his donkey named Farah (a wink to the fans of the previous game, The Sands of Time). This is when he encounters Elika, a mysterious magical Princess, who’s trying to run away from her father and his goombas. After this sequence, you won’t see any other humans other than the Prince, Elika, and her father. It turns out that Elika is trying to stop a dark god from being unleashed, thanks to her dad. She convinces the Prince to help her quest because what’s the point of finding your donkey if the dark god overtakes the world?

Gameplay

The gameplay for the majority of the game is very enjoyable and smooth. You’ll feel like an acrobat jumping from pillars to ledges to walls. You better enjoy this aspect of the game because this is what you’ll be doing like 90% of the time, which can get old after awhile. They’ve made jumping and climbing user friendly. Not as easy as Assassin’s Creed acrobatics but it comes a close second. When the Prince jumps towards a pole, vines, or ledges, he’ll automatically land them if you’re aiming him towards them. Most of the time, you’ll make a mistake is if you press the wrong button, and those mistakes will be plenty. That’s why the game introduces a cool new checkpoint system in the guise of Elika saving you and bringing you back to your last safe spot. You can never die and it makes the game more fluid by never interrupting your flow by loading to a checkpoint.

Since jumping from pole to pole is a cakewalk, Ubisoft added other challenges in the acrobatic department. One example is by adding rings on walls, which can propel the Prince further, which you have to do by pressing a different button, and interacting with magical plates has you pressing another button, kind of like Dance Dance Revolution.

There is a very annoying part in the game where you have to do an excessive amount of acrobatics without a checkpoint, and when you fail, you have to start all over again from your last checkpoint. It’s time consuming and when you fail, you have to repeat it all over again.

The other 10 percent of the game involves puzzles and combat, which is far and between. The puzzle element ranges from really easy to tedious. The tedious ones are trial and error until you get the puzzle right.

The only enemies in the game that somewhat poses a threat are the bosses, and you’ll be fighting them at the end of each fertile land that you need to heal, which are 16. There are four fertile lands to an area, so that means that you’ll be fighting the same boss four times, and after that, the main boss battle is unlocked, making it a total of five battles with the same boss. This gets repetitive and annoying because you’re only left with a total of four types of bosses to fight in the fertile lands. The regular enemies don’t really count because you can destroy their corruption before they come out of the ground.

Graphics

The graphics is another main draw of the game. The choice to make the game cel-shaded is a bold choice. After the initial shock, I grew to admire the animation and style. The game borrows from a lot of different games. The Prince has a scarf that reminds me of Shinobi. The enemies remind me of the enemies from Zelda’s Twilight Princess and the Darkness from Kingdom Hearts, with their black ink-like tentacles and smoke. And the background reminds me of Okami, with brushstrokes being its influence.

Music and Sound

The music for the game is beautiful, from the dark ambience of the infected lands to a warm feeling of light when curing the lands. The moment that the land is healed, you feel rewarded with the sense of safety and tranquility from the music. The sound transition is really cool too. For example, when you travel from a healed region to an infected one, you can sense the changes in the environment. Birds chirping and plants brushing against each other brings life to the healed regions, while old creaking wood and the corruption oozing brings moodiness to the infected regions.

Conclusion

With the addition of the princess, Elika brings another depth into the game and makes you care for her because she always with you until the end without slowing you down. Combat and puzzles are few and kind of disappointing, and acrobatics, while fun, can run out of steam near the end of the game. It isn’t the game to redefine the genre, but it’s a worthy addition to the Prince of Persia saga.

Grade: B-

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