I figured since it’s one of the more original games that I’ve played in some time, Prince of Persia deserved a deeper look. While a surprise to me that a reboot has happened so soon to this franchise, I was caught off guard as to how much I actually ended up liking this game.

For those of you who were/are fans of the “Sands of Time” trilogy, you may find the game’s setting and character development quite different than you are used to. Here, we have a totally new Prince (if you want to call him that - he is never referred to by name or title), a new world and a new story, which is a very welcome change after the wrap up that was The Two Thrones. We find our “Prince” stumbling through the desert and quite literally falling into the storyline, which I will not reveal in depth lest people with to play the game, but you’re trying to trap away a God. You are acompanied by Elika, the new Farah replacement who you could easily warm up to if she were to decide what kind of personality she has (more on that later).

The gameplay is quite the same as in the past Persia games. Run, jump, wall climb, swing, repeat…but that’s not a bad thing. The Persia platforming model works great, and there's no reason to fix what isnt broken. Over the course of the game The Prince learns new abilities, which throw a bit of a new twist on the game every now and then, but overall you are able to do almost every move from the moment the game starts. What is drastically different from the other Persia games is the fighting system. Every fight in the game is now a one-on-one fight, and technically speaking you only need to fight 23 times in the game in order to beat it (its easy to count once you play it), and you fight as a tag team of The Prince and Elika, which works most of the time. Combo stringing is the name of the game, and when you DO put together a good combo it feels great, but most of the time you’ll find yourself on the defense. This is helped out quite a bit by the game slowing down and blatantly telling you when to block each time the enemy attacks. Also, some of the bosses are MUCH harder than others, but that really doesn’t matter, because you CAN’T DIE. Also returning are the quick-time events made so famous by God of War, and for the most part they are simple and work.

The game tries to present itself well as a free world, start-where-you-want type of adventure, which seems like a good idea at first but quickly falls apart in the middle of the game. Unless you pick up items that appear in every zone after the boss is beaten right after said boss fight, you’ll find yourself doing quite a bit of backtracking. Also, the storyline of the game doesn’t seem to make sense because the writers had to take into account that the player can decide to go anywhere at any time, so the story’s progress isn’t exactly linear. As such, the characters seem to change personalities depending on which area of the game you are in; Elika seems flirty in one area, and suddenly turns into “the woman scorned” in another. The Prince, overall, is pretty much the same guy throughout the game: a snappy, witty guy who tells very little about himself (that is, if you decide to actually perform the conversations between the Prince and Elika, which are totally optional). There are honestly some funny parts of the game, and I enjoyed the banter between the two characters, but there were times where the dialogue just felt too…modern, like there were too many things said that just didn’t fit the setting.

Overall, I was quite impressed by the game’s visuals. Running off of the same engine as Assassin’s Creed but with the added colorful flair of cel-shading, PoP its quite a thing to look at. The colors in the game are quite varied and the character designs are very interesting, especially the four main bosses you will fight. The four main sections of the world all have their own visual styles and architecture, so there is plenty of variety to go around. Plus, when you get somewhere really high up, the surrounding areas look absolutely stunning. If you dont like cel-shaded games, you probably aren’t going to get this game, but if you’re willing to take a chance at a game that is artistically unique, this is as good a place to start as any.

I was very impressed by Prince of Persia. I went into this game almost expecting a mediocre experience and came out of it with a pleasant smile. The storyline, if you care for it, is entertaining, the gameplay is smooth for 90% of the time, and the artistic direction is absolutely great, both in sound and visually. This is a game I’d high recommend buying, simply to support the developers of the game to make more quality games like this. And now, numbers.