Prince of Persia

Ubisoft's latest non-Rabbids, non-Petz, non-Imagine title is yet another total reboot of the Prince of Persia franchise. The game makes some bold changes, featuring new character designs in an open-ended cel-shaded world. The game also has a controversial death system, in which the Prince's female companion, Elika, saves him from death every single time he makes an impossible jump or nearly has his throat slit. Do the changes pay off, or did we end up with a lesser Prince of Persia?

What I loved...
-Innovative cel-shading style. No game looks quite like Prince of Persia. Even among the great cel-shaded games like The Wind Waker, Dragon Quest VIII, and Okami, Ubisoft has produced a stand-out visual presentation. Every scene looks like it leaped into motion straight from a concept artist's illustration. When I think about it, shouldn't more games look like that?
-Healed lands. The goal of Prince of Persia is to purge the game world of Ahriman's "corruption." Corrupted lands are not appealing to look at. Healed lands are incredibly beautiful. The main difference is a simple contrast between faded and vibrant colors, but what a difference it makes. When the whole world is cleansed, it's easy to got lost in its beauty.
-Simple, effective controls. The control sheme has been streamlined a bit from last gen's Prince of Persia trilogy, and it still works excellently. Sometimes the Prince didn't do what I expected him to do, but for the most part platforming is a smooth process.
-Excellent orchestral soundtrack. Especially in the healed lands. Love that music.

What's alright...
-Combat is pretty good. Too bad there's so little riding on it without death. For all the God of Wars, Devil May Crys, and Ninja Gaidens, my favorite swordplay in all of gaming remains with the Zelda series. That's why Prince of Persia's exclusively one-on-one combat sounded great. And for the most part, it's pretty well-done. Combos are intuitive, and damage stacks ever higher with each hit. Getting into a groove of perfectly deflecting attacks and counter-attacking is fun. The combat system feels totally separated from the acrobatics system, however, and I miss that somewhat from Sands of Time, which allowed you to launch off walls and such. Enemies will recover health when Elika saves you from death, and sometimes this can be over half of an enemy's total health. Combat is fairly infrequent, but I think some people will really get a kick out of it.

What I didn't like so much...
-Collectathon and... Backtrathalon? It sort of boggles my mind that Ubisoft took two of the most criticized elements in game design and put them into a series that previously had neither. When an area is healed, light seeds appear scatted throughout the land. These are more comparable to notes in Banjo-Kazooie than stars or coins in Mario. There are 1001 of them, and they are required for unlocking new areas. Also, due to the fact that light seeds appear in lands that you previously traversed in their corrupted state, you'll backtrack and repeat much of the exact same platforming to collect these seeds. Personally, I can weather these elements better than most gamers are willing to, but neither are preferable, even for me.
-Stripped-down and unchanging. It hardly matters that you have to retread old ground, because all of the platforming challenges are essentially the same anyway. Run along the wall, double-jump with Elika's help, swing on a poll, climb on vines (can't we come up with a new one?), and so on. Nothing really ever changes, and it's dreadfully obvious what you need to do at all times. In addition to this, so much was taken out of last gen's Prince of Persia trilogy. Where are the traps? The puzzles? There are maybe three or so puzzles, and none are very good. The platforming is stripped to Prince of Persia's most basic core and nothing new ever comes of it.
-Power plate abilities are poorly implemented. The reason you collect light seeds is to unlock power plates, which can be used to launch you to new heights and find new lands to heal. There are four power plate abilities, and they all feel like last-minute bits of programming. You only ever have actual control with two of the four abilities, and while one is decent (the green plate), the other is so bad it's almost funny (the yellow plate).
-Elika is just too danged helpful. Sometimes you'll have pretty long bits of platforming, and those can be intense. Elika only brings you to the last solid ground you were on, so sometimes you have to redo a lot. Ultimately, I don't think Elika is as much of a culprit in making Prince of Persia easy and boring as is the exceedingly basic and samey platforming throughout the game, but she certainly doesn't help things.
-I never cared about any of the characters or the story. One of the best parts about Sands of Time was that it had an incredible fairy tale-like story along with Farah and the Prince, both of whom were characters I really cared about. I think they were trying to recreate that magic with the new Prince of Persia (the graphics would lead you to believe they were), but sadly, it just doesn't work out. I've heard people say that caring for Elika was one of the best parts of the new game, but she didn't really seem all that interesting to me. Both characters have dialog straight out of a bad summer movie that thinks it's a great summer movie, and it's completely out of place in the incredible fantasy world they inhabit.

I gave Prince of Persia a 2/4 stars rating for "decent" on my Backloggery. I thought it sounded like a game for me. An open world platformer with one-on-one combat and incredible cel-shading? Sign me up! Unfortunately, things didn't work out. Despite its very heavy shortcomings, I found myself strangely enamored with the beautiful world once almost all areas were completely healed. I acknowledge that this is a pretty lame reason to continue on toward completing a game with such dull gameplay, but it has compelled me enough. A player's love for this new Prince of Persia will probably be related almost entirely to the visual presentation, especially for those who know that better platforming exists elsewhere. I'll keep my eye open for the next game in the series to see if there are any advancements in gameplay. Stay away, unless you just have to see the graphics, or stale, exceedingly forgiving platforming is your thing for some reason.