Gameplay

Well, actually, you’re not in for much of a fight at all when you stop to look at how the game works, really. Unlike in the earlier Prince of Persia games, combat isn’t as important here.

In stead of giving players hordes and swaths and floods of enemies to wade and battle and push through, the focus in Prince of Persia is more on one-on-one battles. Well, actually two-on-one, if you count Elika. Fighting is more evenly spread throughout the game, with regular mini-bosses so that each battle feels more like a duel than a brawl.

Not an entirely fair brawl admittedly because by pressing the ‘Elika Button’ the Prince can call his Princess into the battle and let her hit the enemy with a quick burst of light-magic. Using Elika at the right moment can open up some very powerful and beautiful combos, utterly disinfecting the evil corruption in a matter of button presses.

The Elika Button is, like most of the other button controls, totally contextual though. Combat in Prince of Perisa is totally distinct from the exploration-platforming side of things and each facet of the game calls for different actions from the players. Hitting Y in combat may make Elika fight, but do it when standing still and she’ll cast a Compass spell to show you where you need to go next. You can even use it mid-jump to lengthen your leap so that you can pounce higher than a cricket and fly farther than a firefly.


Elika’s huge range of abilities and attacks are part of what makes her such a likeable and interesting character, easily on par with The Sands of Time’s Princess Farah, but the Talk Button also plays a huge role. So simple, but so effective, the Talk Button does exactly what it says, prompting the Prince to have a conversation.

Again, the Talk command is mostly contextual and is often limited to the Prince giving a quick whinge, one-liner or complaint, but there are some highlights. Having a conversation before a boss fight for example will get you a bit of backstory or info on your enemy, while some far longer conversations are opened up in some levels as the Prince discusses with Elika the merits of philosophy, drama and opera.

Progressing through the levels though is an utterly open-ended affair, so the dialogue is carefully constructed in order to ensure there’s no pre-emptive crossovers or mention of things that haven’t happened yet.

Prince of Persia is again different to the previous games in the series in that it doesn’t use a totally linear path through the story, but instead uses a hub-based system. The hub in this case is the Temple which Ahriman has partially escaped from, with each level being set in a different part of Elika’s ruined city and focusing around a specific plot of land. These lands are called Fertile Lands and each one feeds the Temple with life-force, powering the godly prison.


Using the Temple map, Elika and the Prince must decide how they want to tackle the Fertile Grounds, freeing up areas one by one as they push deeper into Ahriman’s ichor-covered territory. Each time a Fertile Ground is freed the world becomes littered with Light Seeds too, the collection of which will allow the Prince and Elika to unlock new abilities at the Temple.

Then, you know the deal; new powers allow you to find new and previously inaccessible areas which let you get new Light Seeds which let you get new powers which let you get... and so on.

The powers themselves keep with the overall feeling of the game and edge more to the fantastical – especially the Breath of Ormazd ability, which lets the Prince run indefinitely up walls – than many series fans might be a fan of, but they are generally OK and fit well within the game world. Certainly a lot better than the Sand Wraith mask from Warrior Within anyway, which was a painfully obvious and unimaginative way to write the story out of a dead end.

Unfortunately though, not everything in the game has been approached with an equal amount of imagination and creativity, with large portions of the game being based around some more conventional and annoying gameplay ideas...