I love the Prince of Persia series. Traps, platforming, sunny colour combos, flared trousers, fun combat... Top stuff. Sands of Time is an all timer for me and I've played most of the games either side of it.
So after the positive reviews, I was keen to try this. However I'd say that 15 hours into this game, I was slightly willing it to end. It felt too big, padded, happy to borrow ideas from other games and with a story that's frankly not overly interesting.
Fast forward another 20, and I'm completing the game at 92% completion, waxing lyrical about it to others, seeking out almost every last treasure and putting it in my top 3 Metroidvanias ever.
It's up there with Metroid Dread and Hollow Knight for me. It has the slick movement and levelling up of the former and the challenging combat and exploration of the latter.
The only thing that arguably stops it knocking those off that pedestal is a very slight lack of it's own identity. It handles the series' core conceit of manipulating time really smartly in ways I've not seen before, but shall keep quiet for spoiler reasons; there are several abilities here I've not seen in 2D games before, and they're executed brilliantly.
But there were a lot of moments that broke the immersion and reminded me of other games. A lot of character interactions and treatment felt ripped off of Hades. The combat is pure Dead Cells. The platforming at its toughest reminds me of Celeste and Guacamelee.
But when it's good, man it's good. The abilities you unlock are really great. They forced me to tackle bosses and navigate sections in ways no other games of this type has ever asked me before. The combat got more and more layered, the bosses as tricky as you'd find in a Souls game, the secrets as devious as you'd find in any decent side scroller and I found myself wanting to see every last bit of the map.
I gave up on a few of the stupidly hard trap platforming bits, but on the whole I loved almost every section. The rush I felt for clearing the harder parts was immense.
And the game does have some of its own ideas, from placing screenshots on the map (to recall previously visited areas) to levels frozen in time via capabilities that will become staples in lesser platforms for years to come. By the end of the game, I had mastered the moveset and felt invincible.
It's one of the best reimaginings of a game series I can think of in years, and I hope it gets the success it deserves. All in all, this is exactly how you bring back a long lost series and find a new audience.
So after the positive reviews, I was keen to try this. However I'd say that 15 hours into this game, I was slightly willing it to end. It felt too big, padded, happy to borrow ideas from other games and with a story that's frankly not overly interesting.
Fast forward another 20, and I'm completing the game at 92% completion, waxing lyrical about it to others, seeking out almost every last treasure and putting it in my top 3 Metroidvanias ever.
It's up there with Metroid Dread and Hollow Knight for me. It has the slick movement and levelling up of the former and the challenging combat and exploration of the latter.
The only thing that arguably stops it knocking those off that pedestal is a very slight lack of it's own identity. It handles the series' core conceit of manipulating time really smartly in ways I've not seen before, but shall keep quiet for spoiler reasons; there are several abilities here I've not seen in 2D games before, and they're executed brilliantly.
But there were a lot of moments that broke the immersion and reminded me of other games. A lot of character interactions and treatment felt ripped off of Hades. The combat is pure Dead Cells. The platforming at its toughest reminds me of Celeste and Guacamelee.
But when it's good, man it's good. The abilities you unlock are really great. They forced me to tackle bosses and navigate sections in ways no other games of this type has ever asked me before. The combat got more and more layered, the bosses as tricky as you'd find in a Souls game, the secrets as devious as you'd find in any decent side scroller and I found myself wanting to see every last bit of the map.
I gave up on a few of the stupidly hard trap platforming bits, but on the whole I loved almost every section. The rush I felt for clearing the harder parts was immense.
And the game does have some of its own ideas, from placing screenshots on the map (to recall previously visited areas) to levels frozen in time via capabilities that will become staples in lesser platforms for years to come. By the end of the game, I had mastered the moveset and felt invincible.
It's one of the best reimaginings of a game series I can think of in years, and I hope it gets the success it deserves. All in all, this is exactly how you bring back a long lost series and find a new audience.