You are a new “Prince”, I use quotes because it is never revealed during the game that this dude is the Prince of anything. You are looking for your Donkey full of gold (seriously), and stumble into a Princess and her epic battle against a God. From there you learn several moves to help you traverse the landscape. Most of them are parkour based, much like the previous POP titles. However, most of them have also been simplified, sometimes down to a single button press. So, large areas that would have taken the old Prince a long difficult trip have been boiled to pressing A (or X) about five times after moving your character into place. This made the game un-frustrating, but also took the focus off of the platforming and laid it directly on the combat…we will get to that later.
Since the new game in sans Sands of Time, Ubisoft Montreal had to create an alternate way of instantly saving you after you fall off a deadly cliff. In swoops Elika, the Princess (of Persia?) that you are there to save/assist. She has the ability to fly down to you and save you before death. You will die a lot in both combat and during your trek through the world, and Elika’s magic hand is there to catch you everytime. Is it a cheap replacement for the rewind capability? Yes. Does it break the game? No. Did I get tired of seeing her damn hand pop on screen after jumps that the Prince should have been able to make by himself? Yes. This magic that she possesses also is key to your battle sequences and the story itself, so while the magic’s use in gameplay may be silly, it ties into the overall story arc really well.
Now, let’s take a look at the combat. The hand to hand combat of the Prince of Persia series has always been its weak point, and its good to see that this tradition wasn’t lost on the new game. Combat is very block then combo heavy. Once you enter a battle, you are locked onto your enemy and you best start blocking immediately. Attacks are done by both the Prince and Elika, and they have to coordinate with the stance that the enemy is taking. The game tells you exactly which stances can block which attacks. The problems with the combat come from tedious button combinations.
When an enemy has you in a quicktime event, you don’t have much time at all to hit the corresponding button. This is made doubly and triply hard if you haven’t memorized the button layout of your controller and almost impossible if your audio/video setup has any kind of delay (Unlike Rock Band, Prince of Persia doesn’t have a calibrate lag screen.) When an enemy knocks you out, you don’t die because Elika saves you. While she is saving you, your enemy gains energy back. So, if you are up against an enemy that is pretty difficult, there is literally no end to how long your battle could be.
