Prince of Persia (X360)

“Beautiful graphics, decent story, more platforming than combat, lack of death makes game to simple.”

“Beautiful graphics, decent story, more platforming than combat, lack of death makes game to simple.”

“love this game, fast action and fantastic views”

“love this game, fast action and fantastic views”

“A beautiful and fun game in a stunning environment..”

“A beautiful and fun game in a stunning environment..”

“I like Prince of Persia games. They generally have an interesting blend of puzzle-platforming and combat. Some games have skewed one way over the other, and this is one of the ones that skewed towards being mostly puzzles. This is far from a...”

“I like Prince of Persia games. They generally have an interesting blend of puzzle-platforming and combat. Some games have skewed one way over the other, and this is one of the ones that skewed towards being mostly puzzles. This is far from a downside, as combat has generally been the weakest point of the games, even Warrior Within whose selling point was a huge combat system.

This is no Sands of Time-style game, so you might be disappointed if you're expecting it. Instead, the Prince's magical galpal Elika saves him from falling off ledges. There's also no time powers at all, but it's made up for. In a Sands-series PoP you'd need those time powers to recover from (among other things) getting swarmed by gangs of monsters, but there are none of those in this game, either. You face around seven unique enemies in the whole game, and each level is a massive platform puzzle just to get to the boss of that zone. You do get special powers which are unlocked by collecting Light Seeds, and while each boss' set of levels requires two of the four powers to complete, you can tackle those levels in any order you wish. These powers are only usable on special devices set into the floors and walls, allowing you to fly, run up extreme lengths of wall, and so on.

Combat is much simpler than Warrior Within or Two Thrones, but not as simplistic (and aggravating) as Sands of Time. The Prince can block with his sword, punch people in the face, grab and throw them, do sword attacks on ground or in the air, and even Elika is mapped to a button. All these attacks can and should be chained together for some tasty combos. My favourite involved blasting an enemy with Elika's magic, jumping on their head, having Elika hurl me into the air, then falling straight down for a final slash of the blade.

This game, more than any of the previous, really captured the sense of intense lonliness someone would feel wandering a blasted, devastated land. Ironic, since for the first time in the series, you have a constant companion who the Prince talks to and gets to know. It's not a love story, but when the end game goes down, you do understand why the Prince does what he does.

As usual for PoP, the level design and music are gorgeous. Definitely the kind of game you should play just for the craftsmanship.

Clearly, you should buy this game. Not enough people did when it came out, and a lot of people bitched to Ubisoft about "a bloo bloo bloo, this is not my Prince, wahhh" so it hasn't got a sequel and Ubisoft cranked out a new Sands game instead. There's a DLC pack with some new levels or something, but I've never played it. We'll probably never get a sequel to this Prince, which is sad. He's basically Han Solo, and who doesn't love Han Solo?”

“I agree with a lot of the reviews out there that disliked some of the elements of this PoP venture. Still, I really enjoyed the title and had a lot of fun with it. Having two characters (the prince and Elika) at the same time was an interesting...”

“I agree with a lot of the reviews out there that disliked some of the elements of this PoP venture. Still, I really enjoyed the title and had a lot of fun with it. Having two characters (the prince and Elika) at the same time was an interesting change...sometimes it was annoying, but generally it was done well and added to the story/gameplay such that I liked it.

The environments were gorgeous though sometimes repetitive. I liked many/most of the puzzle-platforming although again, sometimes it felt a little strained. The various 'magical' elements that you used to move differently were pretty cool.

I also enjoyed the Epilogue (though I haven't finished it).

I need to play through it again to wrap up some achievements. I'm not a fan of the 'collecting' achievement as there are some light seeds that I just can't see how to get. Oh well, eventually I'll get them. :)”