Prince of Persia
by UBI Soft
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Prince of Persia
Customer Review: Beautiful visuals, tired gameplay and story, worse dialogue
Summary: 3 Stars
This game has been out for a long time, so I wont give background or context for what the game is about, just my thoughts.
I think everyone agrees, the visuals are beautiful. Much thought and care has gone into the art style and it shows. The scenery is beautiful, especially when the world is "healed." The characters and animations look great.
Gameplay is rather repetitive and uninspiring. Initially, there is a wow factor with prince's acrobatics, running on walls and such. It gets old pretty quickly when you realize that the timing is very loose and the whole game you are pretty much just triggering actions over and over with the same poles, ridges and randomly suspended rings in the wall. Puzzles are very surface level and serve just to break up the gameplay once in a while.
Combat is, in my opinion, the worst part of the game. It is just not fun at all. The prince just feels really clunky. You can either mash on one of the face buttons, or time it (similar to the acrobatics) and press one of the face buttons when the screen tells you to. I definitely used all the different combos, but I don't think it really increased my enjoyment. All the creatures you fight, including bosses are exactly the same. I actually said "this is just not fun, its boring" out loud during many of the combat moments. you will not find unique boss battles here.
Elika's powers are all really the same thing. The four powers are mainly there just to act as a barrier to unlocking different worlds. They don't really give you different functions that you can use in-game, though it sounds like the would. They are all activated by colored power plates, and basically do the exact same thing -- whisk you away to another power plate. This is definitely not like a zelda or a metroid in that sense.
The dialogue is also a point of blah-ness. The prince is a really annoying character. He is supposed to be sarcastic and funny, but the humor just isn't working. There is also this attempt at building a relationship between the characters through random dialogue, which again just seems off. For example you are about to go to a boss, when you are prompted to press L2 and the prince will ask Elika if she can guess what he is thinking of or who her last boyfriend was. Pretty silly.
Strange technical issue that I think is purely at random is frame rate drops. About 3/4 through the game it started to jitter and the frame dropped significantly. After saving it stayed that way all the way through beating the game. Still very playable, but less smooth and just a bit bothersome.
The story is standard -- similar to Okami or many other games, but with less ethos and spark. It did not bring me to care about the characters much, like some others game have been able to do. I don't want to cause any spoilers, but the ending was very disappointing. The final boss level was a tad cool, but then after you beat the boss you have to run around and do more boring stuff just to see a terrible ending. ok, rant over. Also, I have checked and there is no alternate ending after you collect 1001 light seeds. Apparently you can buy the epilogue for [...], which sets the game up for a sequel...
Overall, I would say this game is definitely worth a play through just to experience to beautiful visuals and the occasionally fun acrobatics. I would rent or borrow, not buy like I did.
Customer Review: Its good but whats up with the talking?
Summary: 4 Stars
Beautiful graphics, nice gameplay, but why the talking, I hated talking to the princess over and over and over and over and L2, L2, L2, talk again. Should I continue with the review? no, press L2, lets talk, talk. Did I make my point? its an action game, I wish the princess was MUTE. For the rest, I enjoyed it a lot !
Oh, and did I mention press L2? talk, lets talk !!!
Customer Review: Good/bad
Summary: 4 Stars
Good:
1. Graphics
2. Controls
Bad:
1 stage is the same as any other.
Just a game about jumping really. You can't die so the fights are no challenge. Also, it tells you what buttons to push during the fight and stops the gameplay long enough to do so. It also does that on some of the jumps, the ones you don't need any help on that is. Some of the jumps are ridiculous while the game itself is pathetically easy.
It is good at first, but just feels like one long stage of the same jumping and jumping.
Customer Review: Beautiful but oh so repetitive
Summary: 2 Stars
having played the previous PoP games on PC, i was looking forward to seeing how this game had translated to the newest generation consoles. style-wise it's artistic and strikingly rendered - i was impressed.
unfortunately, i couldn't get over the gameplay. unlike past games, the platforming here is not particularly challenging or fun. and while combat has always been sort of a problem in PoP, i found it to be especially dull and repetitive here. you enter this straightjacketed focus mode when you near an enemy that feels like you're walking around in a vat of honey. the intuitive qualities of prior games is absent here. as is the cool music. and the middle eastern atmosphere that made Sands of Time so dreamy and fairy-tale like. not sure why they never try and re-create the success of that game.
the other major problem is the highly repetitive game structure: platform through world. kill some random creatures. platform some more. do environmental puzzles. kill boss. collect globes of light for your sidekick. move on to next world. rinse and repeat. i did this for 6 or 7 levels and couldn't take it anymore.
this might have been tolerable but for the obnoxious dialogue you are forced to endure. the prince is a bro-dude from a college frat house wandering around the desert wrapped in scarves. wha? some of the dialogue between you and your life-saving (and consequence-removing) pal is necessary, but most of it is just plain stupid. but you can't skip through any dialogue. you must listen to all of it, if you choose to obey the flashing dialogue indicator. do not do that.
all in all, give this a rental, and see if you can tolerate it for more than a few hours. someone out there might have the attention span to get farther than i did, but if i were you i wouldn't risk a purchase without a preview.
Customer Review: A great PoP series game!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a long-time fan of Prince of Persia games (since the PC version of the original in early 90s). This game is a great addition to my collection. What some the critical reviews say is correct: this game is dumbed down somewhat compared with Sand of Times and other games. But that doesn't make it any less fun. Personally I would prefer to be able to turn off the "no-death" mode which takes much of the stress out of the game, but it is not a great deal.
I got the game four days ago and my 12-year-old son and I have been playing the game almost non-stop since then. The game is not very long and both of us are am getting close to the end. But it is worth the money for the four days of fun.