The Two Thrones gets Price of Persia back on track
You have to love it when a developer listens to their fans. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was an unmitigated success, and stands tall as one of the greatest games in recent years. Unfortunately, Ubisoft tinkered with the franchise a bit too much in their sequel, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. By taking the series in that dark direction, full of decapitations, trash talk, and heavy riffing guitars, the players' perception of the Prince changed, and not for the better.
The Two Thrones picks up right where Warrior Within left off, and eventually meets back up with SOT, so if you haven't played either of those games, you'll have a hard time following much of the story. You've arrived back in your city of Babylon after your harrowing experience on the Island of Time to find your utopian civilization razed to the ground, with the good people of Babylon chased from the streets by hordes of disgusting monsters. You immediately set off for the palace seeking out your father. Of course, with all of the damage this is hardly a stroll down the street. You'll be running along rooftops, dodging enemies, and clawing your way back to your family.
Thankfully, the "extreme" theme from WW is no more. While the Prince still looks much like as bloody and dirty as he did in WW, his permascowl has been softened up a bit. He's a man seeking revenge, but it's tempered with his love of Babylon and, over time, his acknowledgement that bloodthirsty revenge may not be the answer to all his problems. This softening is also evidenced by the music, which went back to the eastern-style from SOT. The heavy rock guitars from WW have been completely ditched. Also, you deal a lot more with very bright environments. The Prince is traveling through Babylon, which was supposed to be an idyllic city. You'd expect a lot of outdoor markets, nice fountains, and the like. In this game, that's how Babylon is presented.
However, the combat still retains most of the previous game's conventions, though some new tricks have been thrown into the mix. As you confront the monsters that have destroyed Babylon, you'll spin, flip, hack, and dice up any and all enemies using a variety of attacks. You can still pick up secondary weapons to lay even more waste. As the story progresses, the darker parts of your soul take over, transforming you into a monstrous killing machine equipped with a nasty chain which helps you reach new areas, as well as putting a major hurting on any enemy foolish enough to get close.
The best addition to combat are "speed kills." If you manage to sneak up to your enemies undetected, you can quickly dispatch them with a series of one or two button presses. Speed kills look similar to the finishing moves of God of War; they're flashy and require some precise button presses to pull off. This new feature really shows an understanding of the Prince's character. He's one of the most acrobatic heros that we've ever controlled, so it makes a lot of sense that the Prince's preferred method of dispatching an enemy is to pounce from behind, go for the throat, then bound out of of sight before anyone is any the wiser.
The rest of The Two Thrones focuses on the jumping and timing puzzles that PoP is known for. You'll cross pits, move levers, open gates, flip over bars, and run along walls. There's a few new twists, mostly involving your chain-wielding alterego, but most of the obstacles are familiar and the solutions relatively straightforward. If you have experience with getting the Prince from point A to point B then you won't have much difficulty. Fortunately, the controls feel very tight, and the camera is usually positioned well, which drastically reduces your need to rewind time and retry a jump.
Your trip through Babylon will be very brief and linear. It should only take you about seven hours to complete, maybe less if you skip some optional fights and puzzles. This isn't such a bad thing, though. You can only fight so many monsters, cross so many rickety beams, and climb so many dusty walls before this type of game gets old. By the time you wrap up the Prince's journey, you'll feel like you've played enough for this game to be worth your hard-earned money. It may not be long, but The Two Thrones is fun.
