For the visual presentation alone, 'Prince of Persia' is worth it

Prince of Persia–like Batman Begins or Casino Royale in the film department–is a reboot of a series that has been around since 1989, but most notably throws out the characters and story elements featured in the Sands of Time trilogy, which began just a little over five years ago.

This time around, the Prince isn’t a prince at all, but is instead an adventurer who has lost his thousands-of-gold carrying donkey when he has a chance encounter with a young princess named Elika as she makes her escape from her father’s guards. A startling series of events unfold, and suddenly the Prince and Elika find themselves battling against a dark God named Ahriman and struggling to prevent his escape into the world.

The story is very generic, but has some entertaining and very charming moments. The exchanges between the Prince and Elika are usually amusing, and their mutual attraction is extremely obvious as they play off of one another in witty dialogue sections.

The game never focuses on the plot for too long, hastily dropping the player back into the action before the dialogue or cutscene becomes too dry. Since the story isn’t all that incredible, this isn’t such a bad thing, dishing out the charm of the characters in small enough doses to keep it fresh, but in large enough ones to cover up the generally uninteresting events transpiring.

The platforming mechanics in Prince of Persia are extremely well-designed, taking a simple, fluid approach to

jumping and running across chasms and walls. Most of the maneuvers found through the game offer little to no challenge, and while this should be a bad thing, it keeps the game fun and fluid, making the acrobatically adept Prince’s movements actually look and feel like the character himself knows what he’s doing.

Because of the general simplicity of the platforming, this also leads to the game utilizing a simple control layout, which (for us, at least) led to quite a few deaths caused by the fact that we just felt that there should have been more to it. Thankfully, this isn’t too much of a detriment to the enjoyment of the game and is fairly easy to kick off once you’ve gotten over the game’s small learning curve.

An addition from previous entries in the Prince of Persia franchise is the introduction of the new female protagonist Elika, who accompanies the Prince through the entirety of the game. Elika provides a lot of support through the game, becoming heavily involved in both the platforming and combat aspects of the game.

During normal game play, Elika will most often be used for two things: a directional assistant and a double-jump mechanic. Using her compass ability, Elika will be able to send out a spirit orb that will leave behind a glowing trail to lead the player in the direction of their destination, which is set in the map screen. While adventuring through the game, the Prince will often be required to call upon Elika in order to toss him across gaps that he couldn’t otherwise clear. While these are things that could have just as easily been included in a single character, these things do help the player feel as if the two protagonists are bonding and working in harmony, ultimately strengthening the character-driven narrative of the game as a whole.

Elika’s magical powers are required to traverse the world by other means as well. The player unlocks various powers within Elika as the game goes on by collecting Light Seeds. These powers are used only at different colored power plates and often send the player speeding through the world and entering otherwise impassable areas.

Elika also exists to serve as the game’s death mechanic. In Prince of Persia, the Prince can never really die, and

there never really is a “game over.” Instead, whenever the Prince misses a step or a jump, or simply does the wrong thing at the wrong time, Elika will use her magic to save him and return him to the nearest stable landing. This does subtract from the challenge and make the game considerably easier than it could have been, but it also adds to the fluid feel of the Prince’s acrobatic prowess and chooses not to punish the player for screwing up when attempting to fly through the motions.

Combat has been completely redesigned for this installment in the franchise, featuring a sort of one-on-one confrontational dueling system. While there isn’t a whole lot to it aside from chaining button presses together to forge various combos, and attempting to parry various attacks, combat has a sort of extreme cinematic feel to it. This is only enhanced by a multitude of quick-time action events requiring the player to perform specific button presses in a limited amount of time, otherwise they take massive damage.

While there are a few minor enemies placed in a few locations throughout the game world, combat mostly centers around four boss-style creatures, all of them popping up in various areas in the world that are associated with them. Each one of them has a unique fighting style or combat mechanic, usually forcing the player to change up the Prince’s tactics as the game progresses.

Elika is also a large part of the combat experience. Using her magic, she can be launched at an enemy to begin or continue combos, an attack which is required when enemies change forms and become impervious to physical contact.

Much like the platforming section, the Prince cannot die in combat. Instead, he is forced into a quick-time event. Failing the event results in Elika saving the Prince with her magic and enemies regaining some fraction of their health, while succeeding results in the Prince regaining all of his and pushing the enemy away.

Prince of Persia features a very beautiful, stylized graphics engine, backdropping three-dimensional animated environments against heavily cell-shaded character models. While jumping and climbing through the world, it’s hard to find a part of the game that isn’t aesthetically appealing.

Prince of Persia has a lot of what should be considered flaws for most games. Instead, most of these things build a fun, fluid and relaxed platforming adventure that’s just long enough to warrant spending a weekend with. We definitely recommend it, though we’re just not sure how much time it’ll last once the credits roll for that first time.