Following the canonical ending of Warrior Within, where the Prince kills the Dahaka and leaves the island of time with Kaileena and the two become lovers on the return voyage to Babylon. However, their arrival is greeted by attack and Kaileena is captured. The Prince rushes to action to save her, journeying through the emptied streets of Babylon and wondering how such a thing could have happened. When he finds Kaileena, he also finds The Vizier from the first game, who is alive; since The Prince stopped the sands from ever being created, he never released the sands, which means he never reversed time to before he released the sands, and therefore never killed The Vizier. The Vizier has overrun Babylon after also having conquered The Maharaja's kingdom. He ritually sacrifices Kaileena with the dagger of time, releasing the sands; in the process The Prince is infected through a wound by the sands, but manages to grab the dagger of time and as such is protected from being completely turned into a sand monster. He must now set out to kill The Vizier, starting his most personal adventure yet, because this time it is his people and his kingdom that are in danger. Whilst journeying, The Prince learns that the infection is turning him into sand monster, called The Dark Prince, at times of stress and that the Dark Prince is talking to him in his mind, The Dark Prince is more vicious than The Prince and is pushing him to his murderous goal. Along the way The Prince is reunited with Farah, who has been captured by The Vizier when he conquered the Maharaja's kingdom. Farah of course does not remember The Prince as their adventure in Ahzad never happened, but The Prince remembers it all, giving him deep conflicted feelings for Farah. The two journey and defeat The Vizier who has become a sand monster with godlike powers, winning the hearts and minds of the people of Babylon along the way. But then the Prince must overcome the Darkness within himself and stop The Dark Prince from conquering his mind. He then takes charge of his kingdom and tells Farah the story of their first adventure. Ending his story for good.
This game felt like a solid conclusion to a great series. The story had a fair bit of the dark edge of the previous game toned back, but still had some similar elements to that, for example The Dark Prince felt similar in many ways to The Sand Wraith in terms of tone.
The characters had good arcs, with The Prince feeling extreme guilt as his actions caused the attack on his home, albeit indirectly, and if he had simply allowed the Dahaka to take him then many more lives would have been spared. However his guilt is not enough to stop him from setting it right.
The gameplay is as strong as ever, with platforming containing new elements and combat being incredibly fluid. Though now a focus was put onto stealth, which felt fairly organic to The Prince's athleticism. The only slightly bad bits were a couple of Chariot race sequences which didn't quite feel like a Prince of Persia game, but by no means ruined anything.
To sum up, this was a good game to end the series on, probably second best out of the original trilogy and I would highly recommend playing it.
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