Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a great renewal of the classic
POP franchise. Ubisoft created an instant classic by bringing us a rich
game world, a very cool main character, and fun platforming. While the
game is on the short side, it's a fun ride while it lasts.
The first thing that you'll notice about SOT is that it looks great.
The Prince narrates the story in the past tense throughout the game.
Following along with that theme, there's a sort of warm glow over
everything that gives the game a storybook feel. Characters are
animated nicely, and the creatures all look grotesque in their own way.
You'll run through dank caves, waterfalls, towers, and gardens. Each
looks unique and is wonderfully realized.
The Prince himself is also very well done as a character. He's
generally noble, but he also carries himself with a lot of arrogance
and pride. This is what you would expect from a crown prince. The
Prince is also the most acrobatic character that you'll see in a game.
He can run up or along walls, jump and swing across rooms, climb poles,
and flip all over the place. There's a real fluidity to his movement.
By the end of the game, you'll see sheer vertical walls and insanely
hard jumps. However, you'll never doubt that the Prince can get through
it without any difficulty.
Sometimes, though, you will miss a jump. This is where SOT's unique
time powers come into play. Throughout the game, you gain powers over
time that aid you in combat, platforming, and puzzle solving. This
includes being able to slow time to get a jump on your enemies,
speeding yourself up, or reversing time to retry a mistake. The rewind
time power is invaluable and is more useful than any other power that
you get. It's implemented really well, and hard to cheat with.
Over the course of the game, you'll rely on those powers more and more,
as the platforming throughout the game becomes more and more difficult.
You'll have to find your way through massive rooms by running on
ledges, flipping over bars, and running along the walls. By the end of
the game, these sequences become very hard. However, you'll always be
shown exactly where you need to go and what you need to do, making it
more of a problem of execution than planning. I would like it if I had
to figure out where to go, instead of the game telling me.
While the Prince has a lot of moves to get around with, he doesn't have
a lot of combat abilities. Fighting in this game is pretty simplistic
and very repetitive. You have a basic slash combo, and can flip over
your enemies to attack from behind. However, you'll find out which
attacks work on which enemy and just use that repeatedly. It would've
been nice to have a little more variety in this area. Also, the last
boss is an absolute joke. This was a bit of a letdown, as getting to
him was very difficult, but he was a total pushover.
Despite the simplicity of the combat, POP:SOT can be recommended
without question. It is one of the best action games to come along in
years, and combines a great visual presentation with an insanely cool
main character and very satisfying gameplay.
