At the conclusion of the sands of time trilogy, Ubisoft had a brave idea: to reboot the series again, keeping the parkour elements of the previous games, but changing just about everything else. The result is Prince Of Persia, a game that is given far too much of a bad reputation.
You play as a character called The Prince, though it is unknown if he actually is a prince or just someone else, as he never refers to himself as such during the game. The Prince is out in the desert looking for his donkey, amusingly named Farah, when he is run into by a woman named Elika who is running from soldiers. The Prince decides to help her get to a nearby temple. Along the way she discovers that she has some limited magic powers, such as recovering The Prince from falls. Arriving at the temple they are too late to stop Elika's father from cutting down the magical tree inside, which begins the process of unleashing Ahriman, and ancient evil god. The Prince and Elika set off to heal the lands from corruption by making it to several 'fertile grounds' and using Elika's magic to remove the land of Ahriman's evil. Along the way they must fight four of Ahriman's most loyal soldiers, these being The Concubine, a trickster who relies on illusions; The Hunter, who uses vicious blades and traps; The Alchemist, who controls large amounts of corruption and The Warrior who is too powerful to fight head on. Along the way Elika gains several new powers and learns that she died and her father released Ahriman to bring her back to life. Upon healing all the lands they journey back to the temple, where they must fight Elika's father, who is now overcome by corruption and through Elika's magic they manage to seal Ahriman away once more. However victory comes at the price of Elika's life. The Prince carries her out of the temple and then, almost without thinking cuts down the magical trees and releases Ahriman once more so that Elika could live.
The story was very strong, with the new characters having good emotional development over the course of their adventure. And even Elika's father was a very understandable villain and was made quite sympathetic.
The gameplay is interesting, there was an open world set up where you could choose your own path of the story, and while this gave a certain freedom to the player, it caused the biggest problem, there was no difficulty curve so it was all too easy. The combat was also less than great, with the previous fluid style of the old games pushed aside for a blocky uninteresting style. That said the real joy of this game came from exploring the world after you'd healed the lands and there were no enemies to fight and the parkour was just as fluid as ever and the cell shaded look of the world is absolutely gorgeous.
To sum up, this is a good game, with clear flaws that Ubisoft should have stuck with and tried to improve with sequels. It is truly a horse of a different colour and should be treated as such, and just enjoyed for what it is, not criticised for its lack of similarities to the previous series.
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