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Completely average in every way.

Published August 21, 2018
3 out of 5 starsScore: 60/100

The first thing you should know is that this game is so easy, particularly towards the end as you become ridiculously overpowered, and there's no option for higher difficulties beyond "Normal." God knows what "Easy" difficulty is like, I can only assume the game plays itself. Honestly, I am not the kind of person to crave difficult games, but this one is truly a breeze to play though. Combat is very focused on large groups, but they are completely unthreatening as you slice through them with ease. The mechanics of combat aren't very enjoyable either because it's much more simplistic than the older PoP games, and at the same time feels quite stiff and uninvolving. You get a bunch of new powers to use in combat, but they feel uninspired and don't really add much to the game beyond making it even easier.

The platforming is in better shape, but it's not on par with the older games either. You're constantly moving forward with few moments to stop and take in your surroundings, as everywhere you need to go is made abundantly clear to you, so there's no need for exploration. You get a few new platforming powers, the most interesting of which is the ability to freeze water sources and then run and climb across the water, but it's overused so much that it gets old very quickly. The game has a real problem with repetition like that, and with the environments feeling very artificial, like they didn't really attempt to hide the fact that it's just a playground for the player to navigate through (Two Thrones had a similar problem in my opinion, but it's blatant here). Your movements while platforming are unnaturally slow, particularly evident with wallrunning, which can often break flow just because of how sluggish it is. This is really jarring if you're playing it straight after the SoT trilogy, which I just did.

Following established Prince of Persia traditions, the camera is a dickhead. It works hard to position itself in awkward ways so you can't see what you need to see, will mess with the angle of your movements and jumps because it refuses to coordinate properly with the controls, and constantly locks itself into position; stubbornly snapping back into that position when you try to move it. The camera in PoP has never been good, but at least the other games allowed me a greater degree of control over it. This one just does it's own thing a lot of the time and doesn't really care for my opinion on the matter.

The nicest thing I can think to say is that visually, the game has aged surprisingly well. It's nearly 8 years old at the time of writing, but the art style is quite nice and the lighting and animations are good. It's not exactly going to impress you with its graphics, but it's pleasant to look at. Apart from that, the game is completely average in every way. The only reason I got enjoyment out of it is because I'm a sucker for parkour-style platforming.

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