Game review 11 January 2024, 08:55

author: Paul Musiolik

Grand Return of the Prince! Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Review

The Prince of Persia returns after a 14-year hiatus. This is a return in glory and splendor, accompanied by the... crackle of broken gamepads. It's almost hard to believe Ubisoft suddenly pulled off such a good game.

The review is based on the PS5 version. It's also relevant to PC, XSX, XONE, PS4, Switch version(s).

Ubisoft's love for open-world games made me slowly forget about the legacy of this company. When the announcement of the new Prince of Persia game surfaced, I turned up my nose at the graphic style on one hand, and was shocked that we were getting a two-dimensional platformer mixed with metroidvania on the other. However, I didn't expect that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown would turn out to be such a good game! If this is to be the benchmark for the whole of 2024, then we have a wonderful 12 months ahead of us.

Back to the roots... sorta.

The last installments of the Prince of Persia series were games set in a three-dimensional world, focusing more on exploration (The Sands of Time, PoP 2008) and on combat (Warrior Within, The Forgotten Sands), abandoning the series' two-dimensional roots (not counting the remake of the original from 2007). It would seem that after fourteen years, in the era of open worlds, Ubisoft would head in this direction. Fortunately, someone came to their senses and allowed the team from Montpellier, who created the fantastic, 2D Rayman games, to create this title in their own way.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a proper two-dimensional platformer with plenty of combat, and features of a typical metroidvania mixed in, producing a game as good as mentioned Rayman titles, if not better. The only difference from the originals is that we don't play as the titule Prince, but rather Sargon, one of the Immortals, whose task is to protect the heir to the Persian throne.

Of course, the creators didn't forget history and other elements characteristic for this brand, although they were adapted to the gameplay style, so that it all remains very fresh in 2024.

An adventure full of twists and turns

As I mentioned, the main character is Sargon, one of the Immortals. These are elite warriors serving the queen of Persia. The game begins at the moment of an attack on the kingdom – after quickly dealing with the enemy forces, the wheel of destiny is set in motion. The prince gets kidnapped, and we set off for the mythical mountain Qaf, where it quickly turns out that time flows completely differently. And this is just the beginning of events that will push us into the whirlwind of incredible adventures and impressive locations.

The story is usually unnecessary in platformer titles, but in the case of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, it serves as a foundation that justifies all the running around and backtracking. With each new skill and power, we meet more characters who shed more light on the mysterious place where Sargon finds himself.

Both the main character and the supporting characters create a credible bond, without losing a hint of mystery, they broaden our knowledge of the world around us. A great advantage that helps to get into the atmosphere of the new game is the option to turn on dialogues in spoken in Farsi.

Broken umbrellas

But story aside. The core of the game, i.e. platforming, combat and bonding elements, are the assumptions of the metroidvania genre that work best here and elevate Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown to the title of a fantasy game. At the very beginning of the game, Sargon's repertoire of moves is not very extensive – he can handle simple obstacles, defeat less advanced enemies, but many locations remain off-limits. The further we push the plot, the more abilities our hero receives – dashing in the air, double jumps, entering other dimensions.

The locations are very polished. We can feel the progress we make. At the very beginning, the challenge is negligible. Its growth in the main storyline is steady and fair, the adventure begins only when we step off the path for a moment and start visiting side rooms in search of treasures. Firstly, there are many of them and they're carefully hidden, and secondly – reaching many of them requires extraordinary dexterity and coordination. For the most demanding players, an additional location has been prepared, where they will be able to test their patience – and controller durability. I also have to praise the developers for a fantastic solution that improves backtracking. By pressing the down arrow, we can mark the current room on the world map along with its screenshot. This way, marking off-limits places and returning to them later doesn't involve blindly running around and wondering what we missed (which happens in many metroidvanias, unless you have good memory).

The combat in the platform segments looks quite simple. The standard difficulty level imposes a challenge, but at no point does it make us feel frustrated. A healthy dose of diversity of enemies scattered across locations requires us to adjust our tactics. However, when we become stronger, it quickly turns out that what previously caused problems, turns out to be trivial. If, for some reason, you're having trouble with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the menu provides the option to adjust the difficulty level of individual aspects of the game – amount of dealt and received damage, targeting of attacks, and even bypassing selected platform segments. Although I should note here that this applies only to those related to the main story.

A game that won't let you get bored

The creators inform that completing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown should take us about twenty hours. And that's roughly how much time you actually need to reach the final location and see the end credits. However, if we want to do everything in this production, get ready for several additional hours of fun, or even more – everything depends on your manual skills.

In addition to previously mentioned collectibles and secret rooms, there are plenty of side quests waiting for us. We'll breeze through some of them, pushing the story forward, but most of them require us to check out everything this title has to offer. Besides, there are hidden levels waiting to be discovered, which have not been added just to give the game more content. In essence, there's plenty to do in this production and you shouldn't feel bored with the gameplay loop even for a moment. Sometimes I had only 15 minutes of free time and I still launched Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown to jump around another level for a while.

When you look at the price of this game, you will notice that it's slightly lower than other AAA premieres. Don't let this fool you – the latest Prince of Persia in no way falls short of its high-budget counterparts! Indeed, I suspect it will provide you with even more fun than many a blockbuster.

Love at second sight

As I wrote in the introduction, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown did win me over me right away. I was fooled by the rhetoric suggesting that this is another title dumbing down the formula for a while. The graphic style, which I initially didn't like, grew on me over time. A huge part of this is due to the fact that the whole thing is stylistically consistent and it's clear that the developers deliberately use various graphic techniques.

And it's hard to ignore the fact that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on PlayStation 5 can run up to 120 frames per second at 4K resolution, which ensures extremely low latency, which is so crucial in platform segments where jumps have to be perfectly timed. The soundtrack also deserves praise, skillfully shaping the scenes, with an appropriate touch of oriental sound scapes. It's hard for me to complain about the voice acting as well. I played half of the game in English, the other half, as an experiment, in Farsi. I had to get used to the the exotic language because of the tone of the characters (Persian Sargon sounds much gentler than his English counterpart).

Ultimately, it's hard for me to believe not only that I just played a Ubisoft game. It's also hard for me to believe just how much I liked Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This is not a good game. This is an excellent title, one of the best in its genre, and if it's not a candidate for the game of the year, it should certainly be nominated as one of the biggest surprises, but from the pleasant category.

Buy it, play it, you won't regret it. This year is starting off fantastic!