Ok, I know this is one of those "classic" games that I shouldn't poop on and recognize that it's an early work of amazingness...but honestly I can't for the life of me find anything redeeming in this game or the series for that matter. So on another great Steam sale I got every Prince of Persia game ever made for like $11 and of course I started with the first in the series Prince of Persia Sands of Time.
Story:
It started off compelling enough with an interesting narration at the opening and a siege with an Arabian setting. You and your father set out to overthrow a castle place thingie and take all the goodies. You come across a wizard guy who tells the Prince to activate the hourglass for some totally not sinister reason...(the wizard is a copy-paste Jafar from Aladdin). It had the makings of a really cool tale with some kind of twist involving evil hourglass sand that turns people into...mummies? zombies? zomummies? I don't know, but the story takes a huge dive from the moment he cracks the hourglass open and everyone goes all undead on you. You meet this dancer girl who has immunity to the evil plague sand like the Prince does and you traverse the castle to restore order to the chaos. Of course the very first thing you do is restore the castle's "defense system" which activates super ridiculous elaborate traps that only end up hindering you.
So from this point on the game is a huge facepalm as nearly every obstacle that you face is of your own doing because you activated the traps. Also, the story completely stops for the next 7 hours. It is entirely driven by getting to the next room, leaping around a bit, and then getting to the next room...where you leap around a bit. I was going to put that in the "Gameplay" section but since the story apparently turns into a tale about how a Prince can make ridiculous leaps all over the place...well I guess I had to mention it.
And then...you fight the wizard which is the game's only boss battle, and it's not a good one either. The wizard barely puts up a better struggle than some of the basic enemies and I'll get into more of that later. I have to instead go into super mega detail about the cataclysmic events that take place at the end. You beat the wizard and restore order to the hourglass however, that reverts everything back in time before the siege and the Prince goes to warn the dancer girl he found to prevent what just happened in the game...
And then I woke up from a bad nightmare and none of this ever happened, and I never played the game!
But then I woke up again remembering that I DID actually waste 8 hours playing this pile of poo and screamed in horror!
What a twist...
Gameplay:
Alright, so the story was a drag, big deal this game was touted as being a classic video game so the gameplay has to be great right? Well...no not really...no.
The combat is pretty awful honestly. Basically you have to get every single enemy in the game into a stun point where you can then stab them and turn them back into sand. This right here annoys the poo out of me because you have to finish off EVERY god damn enemy in the same way. Either they get knocked down to be stabbed, or you stab them first to freeze them and then slice them to scatter the sand. There really isn't any combat tactics to be had here. Plus there are only a very small handful of enemies to fight.
But that's ok, because 90% of what you do in this game is leap around a room for hours and hours on end. After playing this for 4 hours I came the conclusion that this game is literally the very worst parts of Assassin's Creed 2. My most hated parts of course being the ones where you leap around a room for an hour to collect 1 of 6 keys that eventually nets you the best armor in the game. Except...that with Prince of Persia...that is ALL you do! The entire game! Just when you think they couldn't throw another room at you to leap around in...they throw another room for you to leap around in.
It goes beyond repetitive, it gives the word repetitive a bad name. It took me a lot longer to beat this game than it really should have because after a while I could only do one room at a time before I got a headache from sheer boredom. I mean the worst part of it is probably that every room is nearly identical to one another, you really start to lose track of how many times you solved a "leaping puzzle" the same way over and over again. There's only SO much creativity that can be thrown around with leaping to one unassailable ledge to another.
Alright, I also want to take a small jab at the logistics of all of this too. I get this is a video game, I know it's not meant to be realistic in any way...but HONESTLY how the fuck do normal human beings traverse this castle? If you've played this, you should immediately understand where I'm coming from. It's not like this castle has been destroyed or maimed in some way, but EVERY single god damn room appears entirely unpassable unless you have a time rewinding device (which the Prince has) and cat-like or god-like jumping and wall running abilities (which the Prince has). Any normal dude would walk into one of these rooms and say, "Where the fuck are the stairs?" Like is this some kind of fucking joke? Who built this god forsaken building? HOW did they build it when there ARE NO STAIRS! Literally, there are no stairs in any of these rooms. The only way to get around anywhere to flip on poles, run on walls, and climb very out of place ladders. Even in the FUCKING courtyard just getting up to the fucking gazebo is nigh impossible! Also...WHERE ARE THE TOILETS?
Ok...I went too far there but you get my point. Still, one last thing to mention gameplay wise is the device that lets you rewind time. This is a pretty pointless tool honestly. The game works and acts much like other fail 3D platformers where your next leap is not only obvious, but totally staged. By that I mean, you point him in the right direction and press "jump" and he'll go there and never miss. This isn't Mario where you have to have skills, and practice, and know your distances. You know...an actual platforming game? So the time re-winder lets you fix your mistakes if you happen to leap like a freak to your death.
That's the game though...dancer chick tells you what you need to do in a room, you do it, move on, partake in a terrible combat system, lather rinse repeat for 8 hours.
Sound:
The voice acting was good, and a few lines actually had me laughing. I mainly enjoy how the Prince looks down on the dancer chick and acts all high and mighty. What I found strange though, is how he jumps back and forth from empathizing with her to condescending her. And I get that it should be a character arc thing where he progressively warms up to her...but like I said, he randomly jumps back and forth with it. In one room he will scoff at her and in the next want to make sweet sweet love to her...then in the next he wants to leave her behind... It doesn't progress well...sorry erm...off topic now...
The music is ok I guess. It's very..."Arabian" and let me tell you it sounds EXACTLY like you think it will.
Graphics:
I can't complain here, it's an older game so yeah it doesn't look great but it doesn't look bad either for it's time. There are no glitches, everything runs smoothly and is textured well enough. The camera can be awful at times but is more often than not good enough. I know that should go under gameplay but I ranted enough there =)
Multiplayer:
None. And that's a positive honestly.
Conclusion:
To be perfectly honest, I would have had a less scathing review of this game if I hadn't also played the very latest game from the series Forgotten Sands. I put in maybe 13 minutes so far and that game...is...exactly...the same as Sands of Time. Now I'm all for a successful formula returning for new and exciting challenges in an updated game but MY FUCKING GOD it's literally the exact same game. You enter a castle under siege, some evil sand causes the undead to uprise, and then a guy turns on the "defense system" **they actually call it that in both games** and you have to avoid these traps. But not only is the setup exactly the same as the first game, but the "traps" are EXACTLY the same. Giant swinging logs with spikes? Check. Wall pole-axes swinging down at you? Check. They are all there, and all avoided the same way as the previous game.
There are very minor improvements to the wall running...but the combat is largely the same only improved by the fact that I don't have to dagger stab every enemy I see. It's still really bad though.
So yeah, playing 13 minutes of the newest Prince of Persia makes me hate the oldest one even more. To see a series go through like 5 games to have THAT much stagnation shocks me to the core. I mean yeah, Mega Man had 10 games where they were all exactly the same, the difference there is that gameplay didn't need improvement. Prince of Persia needs TONS of improvement. It just wasn't fun...ever. Not a single leap fulfilled me since they are pre-programmed jumps, not one battle was satisfying in the way God of War or Devil May Cry satisfies me, and the story was garbage. It was a trial to go through to say the very least.
*...changes are coming*
