Prince of Persia
I am sure most have you have played the older Prince of Persia games, everyone I know has at least given Sands of Time a run through. Although I have played the ancient games (The Sega Mega CD/PC/SNES games), I unfortunately haven’t had the pleasure to experience Sands of Time and its few sequels firsthand. I really enjoyed Prince of Persia for the 360, although I must say that some friends who were fans of Sands of Time did not enjoy this latest iteration of the series as much. General review and commentary is first, Achievement tips follow.
If you like free running adventure/exploration games, this one is definitely worth a rent. Two great parts to this game are its openness and the option to choose how much story you “get”. There are very few actual characters in the game, all of whom are met within 10 minutes of playing. I will try not to spoil anything story wise, but be careful, there might be a few teensy reveals.
All of the story and background information are told to the player through the interactions of the Prince and Elika (the Princess). Although every now and then a dialogue will be brought up that you cannot skip (such as after a boss fight), all the rest of the story is told by hitting LB/LT whenever you’re standing still, which initiates a conversation between the two. There is a lot of story that takes place this way, with usually about 10-15 minutes of this ‘extra’ dialogue that can be heard in each of the 24 different areas. If you don’t care about what’s going on, you can easily run through the game without even touching the back left part of your game pad, which I admit is fantastic as it keeps the game’s pace relatively fast and fluid. On the other hand, for those more into background to the plot and info on the world, this system allows you to learn more at your own pace. One you figure out a complex puzzle, take a minute to talk with Elika about it. I’ve played the game once each way, I loved it each time, although I must say the second time through it felt very repetitive, I don’t think there is much replayability to be had with this game.
The exploration aspect of the game is well done. If you played Assassin’s Creed they are very similar (they are even using the same engine), except I feel Prince of Persia picks up a bit of Assassin’s Creed’s slack. I found the battles in Assassin’s Creed to be very repetitive and dull, and while I get a similar feel from Prince of Persia, there are far fewer battles so the action is preserved and does not become boring. The extensive combo system is also very fun and adds some flavor to the fights, both in that it makes each fight seem “fresher” and that the combos also look fantastic when properly executed (my favorite is the XXX-YXYA-YXYB-AYX, which if you pull off will net you 20G and take out at least half on any enemy’s life). Defense in battle is taken care of solely through quick time events. If you get attacked more than once or twice in a short period of time, be prepared to hit a randomly selected ABXY button. If you fail this, the enemy will regain some health. Note that it is actually impossible for you to actually die, and eventually the enemy will lose its ability to regain its hit points back. Once you realize this (and you decide not to go for the Achievement for “dying” less than 100 times throughout the game), the game loses almost all sense of challenge. Battles are still fun though.
Prince of Persia does not have nearly as “open” of a world as Assassin’s Creed, although it gives the player a great illusion of openness, which isn’t a bad thing. The world is made up of 24 distinct areas, broken into 4 different “realms” or 6 areas each. These 6 areas include 1 introductory zone, connected to a larger circular area made of four more zones, and then a boss zone that opens up when the rest of the realm has been “healed”. Each zone is an essentially linear track towards a fight with the boss character of said realm, who always ends up running away until you actually get to the boss zone. While each individual level is fairly simple and linear, it is the manner in which they are all connected that gives the game its openness. Each zone is, on average, connected to 3 others, and the player is allowed to pick where to go whenever they want. There are 4 “powers” to be unlocked (which help you explore the different areas), and each power makes 2 zones in 2 different realms accessible (you are free to run through any zone to any connecting one whenever you want, but you cannot access the fertile ground to heal the land without the respective power). This freedom is really what helps to make the game great.
The actual exploration is also done really well. Running, jumping, wall running, climbing, and swinging off objects are all very fluidly connected, and quite fun. The game slows down a little bit whenever you start to climb up patches of ivy, as even though Elika is perfectly suited to all the other tasks you do, she apparently has an irrational fear of plants and as such hops onto the Prince’s back while he climbs, which, for me, became aggravatingly slow and annoying very fast. Also, there is a bit of delay coded into the button presses in general, which can serve to mess with the player. If you are climbing up a column and press A to jump off, it takes a few seconds to register. Also, if you happen to hit left or right while on said column, the game remembers that you wanted to jump, but will decide to trigger the jump AFTER you’ve already moved to the side of the column that faces the bottomless-death-filled pit. The engine also does a very poor job of deciding what direction you are trying to rotate around columns, so take a second to make sure when you press Right the Prince actually shifts 90 degrees to the right, and not the left.
Overall Prince of Persia is a very enjoyable game, with a good enough story to keep you interested. The ending is definitely a set up for a sequel, which if done will hopefully iron out a few of the glitches and control issues, and perhaps flesh out the battle system and include a larger world. If you take your time to explore and listen to the story, this game is about 12 hours long. It can definitely be run through quicker, but expect to take a good 3-6 hours extra the first time you try to collect all the lightseeds.
Achievement tips:
This game is fairly straightforward Achievement-wise. A majority are unlocked by simply progressing through the story. There are a few simple battle achievements for beating each of the 4 bosses in any of the battles against them both by doing something special (like deflecting 5 of the Hunter’s attacks). These are the 4 [X] Special Achievements, one each for the Hunter, Concubine, Alchemist, and Warrior, [X] being the respective boss’s name. The Warrior’s is obtained through dodging 20 attacks in one battle (hold the Left stick in a direction perpendicular to the way you are facing and press A to roll, simply roll under his attacks and eventually it will unlock), defeat the Alchemist without using the A button, and defeat the Concubine without using the B button. These can be done in any battle, but is easiest early on in the game when the fights are slower and easier. I would recommend doing this in the first encounter with every boss except the Concubine, as the first fight with her is the easiest opportunity to get the 14-hit combo Achievement (see above section on battles). As for finding every combo, simply open up the options menu and take a look at the combo list. You must individually perform every move pictured there (about 63 in all). Take note that B is used to start every lift combo, Y for every Elika combo, and A for every acrobatic combo. AB is used to start off throw combos, while BA starts off aerials.
There are a few timed races to be done; this is best accomplished once you have healed all the lands as there will be no interference from enemies and you will have multiple paths available to you. Simply look at the Achievement description, place a marker on the end spot, teleport to the beginning spot, and run. The race is from one fertile ground to the next, make sure you run INTO the blue column of light to end the race. You have plenty of time, don’t worry if you fall a few times.
The rest of the Achievements are fairly straight forward, and if you need help most are a simple youtube or Google search away from answers. The only challenging Achievements are the lightseed collecting ones because the process is very time-consuming. There are a few youtube videos up that completely detail some individual areas, although I did not find one for every single area.
Once you heal a land, lightseeds appear. I think the best way to collect them is to purify an entire realm, and start from the beginning of the “bottom-most” area of the realm and proceed in a circle through all the others. About half the seeds are along the path from the beginning of the zone to the fertile ground, and then the short path that takes you back to the beginning. There are also always 5 seeds in every zone that can only be obtained by using a power plate, sometimes hidden very well, that is different from the one required to get to the fertile ground. The other half of the seeds are spread out along the paths connecting the areas together (including the paths that connect realms together). Take these paths slowly; use the camera to look above and below you whenever you get the chance, especially when hanging from fissures or ivy. There are many places where even though you may be walking from left to right to cross a chasm, but there is a specific spot where you can climb up the wall to another fissure/ivy patch, where a few hidden seeds await. These “hidden” seeds almost always come in pairs, as in there will be two right next to each other. Occasionally there will be 3. If you can ever see seeds far off in the distance or in a seemingly unreachable place, try to either spot a fissure on the structure the seeds are located on (or a neighboring one), or try tricks like continuous wall jumping (remember Super Mario 64?) to climb up to them. After a while you should have collected 900 seeds from the individual zones, and the 4 boss zones each automatically award you 25 seeds upon completion. The last light seed is given to you when you finish the game, it cannot be missed.
I hope this was helpful for those looking for some help with the game or those determining whether or not to pick it up. See you next week! ~Kaz
