Glad to say that Ubisoft Montpellier delivered. After resurrecting the Rayman franchise in a spectacular fashion and then being stuck with working on Beyond Good & Evil 2 for years, they came back swing and revived another beloved franchise and ended up creating what I now consider my favorite Prince of Persia game.
The Lost Crown is a visually stunning game that manages to tell a compelling story. The whole gang surrounding main character Sargon consists of fun characters and especially for a metroidvania, a genre that isn't particularly known for good stories, it's really well done.
It seems like the developers tried to rethink some of the genre conventions and focused a lot on quality of life improvements. For example checkpoints are heavily hinted at with a golden glimmer, indicating which direction you need to go for a safe haven and there's the option to instantly restart bossfights if you end up losing, saving you potentially multiple trips.
My favorite mechanic however are the memory shards. I can't count the amount of times I was stuck in a metroidvania game and totally forgot which paths on the map needed a specific ability. In PoP you can just press a button and create a screenshot that shows exactly what 'problem' stopped your progress in an area, making it very easy to check back where to go with your new unlocked ability or gadget.
The abilities are mostly your typical stuff like a double jump and dash but there are also some creative skills that lead to interesting puzzle solving and even found their way into combat. None of the abilities feel restrictive or forced.
Which leads me to the combat, which is ridiculously in-depth for a 2D game. We're talking multiple combos, launchers, sweeps, chargables, animation cancelling, parries ... all that good stuff. There's even a training area that lets you practice combos and tutorials which reveal combat possibilities I myself have not thought of until that point.
Bosses are not always launchable and therefore it's harder to style on them, but due to the fast pacing of combat you barely have any downtime and are able to keep attacking. There are rarely phases where you need to constantly dodge to then get one or two hits in, which I was thankful for. Unlockable super attacks added a nice touch, especially since trying to fill the gauge leads to more tactical risk/reward aspects. Like parrying an attack is harder than simply dodging, but it also fills up your 'Athra' by a decent amount. But getting hit also lets you lose some of it.
The platforming passages feel very fluid and provided a nice challenge. There is even an equivalent to Celestes strawberries in the form of coins you can only collect by safely returning to a safe zone landing on your feet. The platforming might even be my favorite aspect of the game, even though the fights, puzzles and exploration are also great.
I have very little critcism about the game. I think the RPG elements, like upgrading your weapons and amulets (which are just straight-up the charms of Hollow Knight) are not really needed and maybe it could need some more bosses, but it never really bothered me much. Even the length of the game felt fine because I kept unlocking new abilities and areas feel very much different from each other. They knew how to mix things up over the 20+ hours it took me to beat the game. The side quests are also a nice touch that manage to tell some nice stories and are never forced on you.
The worst I can say about the game is probably that it feels like a "best of Metroidvania". There aren't many original aspects to the game and they happily helped themselves to mechanics of other popular games. However, it's all executed very well and never feels shoehorned in.
The 50 bucks feel like a fair price considering the quality and length of the game and it would be nice seeing this game succeed because having Ubisoft develop more AA singleplayer experiences like this would be great.
The Lost Crown is a visually stunning game that manages to tell a compelling story. The whole gang surrounding main character Sargon consists of fun characters and especially for a metroidvania, a genre that isn't particularly known for good stories, it's really well done.
It seems like the developers tried to rethink some of the genre conventions and focused a lot on quality of life improvements. For example checkpoints are heavily hinted at with a golden glimmer, indicating which direction you need to go for a safe haven and there's the option to instantly restart bossfights if you end up losing, saving you potentially multiple trips.
My favorite mechanic however are the memory shards. I can't count the amount of times I was stuck in a metroidvania game and totally forgot which paths on the map needed a specific ability. In PoP you can just press a button and create a screenshot that shows exactly what 'problem' stopped your progress in an area, making it very easy to check back where to go with your new unlocked ability or gadget.
The abilities are mostly your typical stuff like a double jump and dash but there are also some creative skills that lead to interesting puzzle solving and even found their way into combat. None of the abilities feel restrictive or forced.
Which leads me to the combat, which is ridiculously in-depth for a 2D game. We're talking multiple combos, launchers, sweeps, chargables, animation cancelling, parries ... all that good stuff. There's even a training area that lets you practice combos and tutorials which reveal combat possibilities I myself have not thought of until that point.
Bosses are not always launchable and therefore it's harder to style on them, but due to the fast pacing of combat you barely have any downtime and are able to keep attacking. There are rarely phases where you need to constantly dodge to then get one or two hits in, which I was thankful for. Unlockable super attacks added a nice touch, especially since trying to fill the gauge leads to more tactical risk/reward aspects. Like parrying an attack is harder than simply dodging, but it also fills up your 'Athra' by a decent amount. But getting hit also lets you lose some of it.
The platforming passages feel very fluid and provided a nice challenge. There is even an equivalent to Celestes strawberries in the form of coins you can only collect by safely returning to a safe zone landing on your feet. The platforming might even be my favorite aspect of the game, even though the fights, puzzles and exploration are also great.
I have very little critcism about the game. I think the RPG elements, like upgrading your weapons and amulets (which are just straight-up the charms of Hollow Knight) are not really needed and maybe it could need some more bosses, but it never really bothered me much. Even the length of the game felt fine because I kept unlocking new abilities and areas feel very much different from each other. They knew how to mix things up over the 20+ hours it took me to beat the game. The side quests are also a nice touch that manage to tell some nice stories and are never forced on you.
The worst I can say about the game is probably that it feels like a "best of Metroidvania". There aren't many original aspects to the game and they happily helped themselves to mechanics of other popular games. However, it's all executed very well and never feels shoehorned in.
The 50 bucks feel like a fair price considering the quality and length of the game and it would be nice seeing this game succeed because having Ubisoft develop more AA singleplayer experiences like this would be great.