Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands might be the most utilitarian game I played in a while. Following the half disaster that the reboot was Ubisoft probably felt the need to slow down with the IP and make something safe, hence this being a prequel, which has to be the number 1 sign that a developer doesn't really know what to do with a series.
There aren't many novelties to mention here, they reworked the combat for the 4th time in this five game series, going for functionality over originality. It's probably the most straight forward and functional combat the series ever had, but I think they lost a lot by turning it into a standard hack n slash game, making it especially jarring since the Prince will suddenly become a lot less mobile during combat.
There's also some PoP 2008 DNA still in this game, mainly in the controls and animations which don't quite feel right. It's not that it plays badly, but a lot of the weight that the Prince's movement and actions used to have isn't really here, instead favoring the 2008 approach of making it look nice instead of making it feel particularly good.
Outside of this there isn't much to say. There's a couple new platforming mechanics which are interesting and make things fun and varied, even though one of them comes into play too late into the game, and all in all this is pretty typical Prince of Persia fare. It's the kind of game that will provide entertainment if you decide to engage with it, but you don't miss much by not playing it, which would be fine if this was some sort of filler game (which seems to have been the original intention for it) but as of this review they haven't made a new Prince of Persia game since, and there doesn't seem to be anything new on the horizon either.
Then again, if Prince of Persia was about to become a series of entertaining but unexciting games like this one, maybe it's for the best.
There aren't many novelties to mention here, they reworked the combat for the 4th time in this five game series, going for functionality over originality. It's probably the most straight forward and functional combat the series ever had, but I think they lost a lot by turning it into a standard hack n slash game, making it especially jarring since the Prince will suddenly become a lot less mobile during combat.
There's also some PoP 2008 DNA still in this game, mainly in the controls and animations which don't quite feel right. It's not that it plays badly, but a lot of the weight that the Prince's movement and actions used to have isn't really here, instead favoring the 2008 approach of making it look nice instead of making it feel particularly good.
Outside of this there isn't much to say. There's a couple new platforming mechanics which are interesting and make things fun and varied, even though one of them comes into play too late into the game, and all in all this is pretty typical Prince of Persia fare. It's the kind of game that will provide entertainment if you decide to engage with it, but you don't miss much by not playing it, which would be fine if this was some sort of filler game (which seems to have been the original intention for it) but as of this review they haven't made a new Prince of Persia game since, and there doesn't seem to be anything new on the horizon either.
Then again, if Prince of Persia was about to become a series of entertaining but unexciting games like this one, maybe it's for the best.