Prince of Persia is not THAT easy

Posted by Kazona (2991 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Nope, not gonna do it. No matter how much you beg or plead with me, I will not make a GOTY blog! However, if you feel like trying to bribe me into posting one I'm not going to say no to that. Won't mean I'll actually make a GOTY blog, but hey, you can try (I hope .

All kidding aside, I wanted to post a little blog entry about my experience with the new Prince of Persia game, which I finished a couple of days ago.

I've been a huge fan of the Prince of Persia games ever since Ubisoft made Sands of Time. And despite Warrior Within not being the most stellar way to give the prince a new image, I still enjoyed playing through it quite a bit. So naturally when this new Prince of Persia game was announced I was pretty excited about it. The art style struck me as odd at first, but only for a moment, and it wasn't soon until I totally fell in love with the new direction the game was taking. Even when people bitched about never being able to die, I still saw nothing but pure awesome in this game. And well, it delivered on my expectations in every way.

At the risk of sounding like a wannabe gamer, I actually found the game to be more challenging than I expected it to be. Having read several reviews, and partially having watched the Gamespot marathon I expected this game to be one of the easiest games I had ever played in my life--easier than Fable 2 even. But far from it. The game isn't the most difficult game either, but it is definitely not as much of a cakewalk as so many people made it out to be. Yes it is true that you can never die, and yes the game gives you a buttload of visual queues, and it's even easier if you leave the tutorial on (which I turned off as soon as I got a hang of the basics . But despite those visual queues I missed far more double jumps than I expected to miss, and I got my ass knocked down by a boss more times than I thought I would as well. You see, the whole thing about never dying is grossly making the game too easy is grossly exaggerated because what it is plain and simple a checkpoint system in the form of a companion. Sometimes this mean you'll have to redo a small part of a jumping, wall running, etc sequence, and at other times you'll have to redo larger parts. And as the further you progress, the longer and more intricate these puzzles become, which means that if you fail you'll have to redo larger sections.

The one thing I can kinda agree on is that the boss fights are too easy because of the Elika system. If you get knocked down and you miss the on-screen prompt, Elika will save you every single time. But the boss will NOT regain his health every single time, which was kind of dissapointing to me. But even so, I still found the boss fights to be sufficiently challenging for the simple reason that I didn't want Elika to need Elika to save my ass. Every time she saved me, I knew it was because of my failure and that alone was enough for me to try my best in defeating each boss with as much skill as possible. And man do I love the combat system. The way you can string your moves together, and can discover new combos by experimenting, was pure joy for me. Anyone who says that the combat is just a one button affair either hasn't played the game or never bothered to try out different button combinations. I mean there is an achievement for getting a 14 hit combo for christ sake! And I really do mean a combo because hitting X 14 times in a row ain't gonna cut it. The fun thing is that getting this achievement does not require a specific combo--I have seen several variatons on the web from people who've gotten the achievement.

Ok so this turned out to be more of a rant against people who claim that the game is too easy and therefore crap. But the challenge the game provides was simply something that pleasantly surprised me, and to see that people still say that there is zero challenge to the game just baffles me. I am not the most hard of hardcore kind of gamer, but I am most definitely not a casual gamer either. And I got plenty of challenge and satisfaction out of Prince of Persia. Even the story kept me thoroughly entertained althroughout. It didn't quite capture me as much as Sands of Time did, but I'm not sure any other PoP game ever will. I will say though, that this new PoP provided more of a challenge for me than Sands of Time ever did. Story-wise I'd say it's either my second or third favorite (can't decide whether I like Two Thrones better or not .

Alright, rant over! Feel free to throw your hatred my way now.

#1 Posted by Kazona (2991 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Nope, not gonna do it. No matter how much you beg or plead with me, I will not make a GOTY blog! However, if you feel like trying to bribe me into posting one I'm not going to say no to that. Won't mean I'll actually make a GOTY blog, but hey, you can try (I hope .

All kidding aside, I wanted to post a little blog entry about my experience with the new Prince of Persia game, which I finished a couple of days ago.

I've been a huge fan of the Prince of Persia games ever since Ubisoft made Sands of Time. And despite Warrior Within not being the most stellar way to give the prince a new image, I still enjoyed playing through it quite a bit. So naturally when this new Prince of Persia game was announced I was pretty excited about it. The art style struck me as odd at first, but only for a moment, and it wasn't soon until I totally fell in love with the new direction the game was taking. Even when people bitched about never being able to die, I still saw nothing but pure awesome in this game. And well, it delivered on my expectations in every way.

At the risk of sounding like a wannabe gamer, I actually found the game to be more challenging than I expected it to be. Having read several reviews, and partially having watched the Gamespot marathon I expected this game to be one of the easiest games I had ever played in my life--easier than Fable 2 even. But far from it. The game isn't the most difficult game either, but it is definitely not as much of a cakewalk as so many people made it out to be. Yes it is true that you can never die, and yes the game gives you a buttload of visual queues, and it's even easier if you leave the tutorial on (which I turned off as soon as I got a hang of the basics . But despite those visual queues I missed far more double jumps than I expected to miss, and I got my ass knocked down by a boss more times than I thought I would as well. You see, the whole thing about never dying is grossly making the game too easy is grossly exaggerated because what it is plain and simple a checkpoint system in the form of a companion. Sometimes this mean you'll have to redo a small part of a jumping, wall running, etc sequence, and at other times you'll have to redo larger parts. And as the further you progress, the longer and more intricate these puzzles become, which means that if you fail you'll have to redo larger sections.

The one thing I can kinda agree on is that the boss fights are too easy because of the Elika system. If you get knocked down and you miss the on-screen prompt, Elika will save you every single time. But the boss will NOT regain his health every single time, which was kind of dissapointing to me. But even so, I still found the boss fights to be sufficiently challenging for the simple reason that I didn't want Elika to need Elika to save my ass. Every time she saved me, I knew it was because of my failure and that alone was enough for me to try my best in defeating each boss with as much skill as possible. And man do I love the combat system. The way you can string your moves together, and can discover new combos by experimenting, was pure joy for me. Anyone who says that the combat is just a one button affair either hasn't played the game or never bothered to try out different button combinations. I mean there is an achievement for getting a 14 hit combo for christ sake! And I really do mean a combo because hitting X 14 times in a row ain't gonna cut it. The fun thing is that getting this achievement does not require a specific combo--I have seen several variatons on the web from people who've gotten the achievement.

Ok so this turned out to be more of a rant against people who claim that the game is too easy and therefore crap. But the challenge the game provides was simply something that pleasantly surprised me, and to see that people still say that there is zero challenge to the game just baffles me. I am not the most hard of hardcore kind of gamer, but I am most definitely not a casual gamer either. And I got plenty of challenge and satisfaction out of Prince of Persia. Even the story kept me thoroughly entertained althroughout. It didn't quite capture me as much as Sands of Time did, but I'm not sure any other PoP game ever will. I will say though, that this new PoP provided more of a challenge for me than Sands of Time ever did. Story-wise I'd say it's either my second or third favorite (can't decide whether I like Two Thrones better or not .

Alright, rant over! Feel free to throw your hatred my way now.

#2 Posted by ZombieHunterOG (3528 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Holy thats a mighty wall of text

#3 Posted by RHCPfan24 (8608 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

ZombieHunter said:

"Holy thats a mighty wall of text"

Indeed.

#4 Posted by Kazona (2991 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

RHCPfan24 said:

"ZombieHunter said:
"Holy thats a mighty wall of text"
Indeed."

If this is already two much text for you two to read, then I'm guessing you don't read much.

#5 Edited by Rowr (4855 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Great Blog. I agree with the difficulty thing, i found the game mostly challenging enough. But then, im not a competitive high score gamer.

Kazona said:

"But even so, I still found the boss fights to be sufficiently challenging for the simple reason that I didn't want Elika to need Elika to save my ass.."

Yeh i found that aswell. I felt failure enough with that, I didnt need the game to punish me further. In some ways it worse than some sort of in game punishment, especially with the tendency GAME OVER screens and respawns tend to take you out of the game.

If there had been some sort of small bit where you could see she was dissapointed with you, i think that goes a whole lot further than some arbitary gameplay punishment, and is a concept i would love to see pushed further in games.

also, dont listen two the above two noobs who need to learn to read. Your blog is bite size compared to some, and thankfully you used paragraphs.

#6 Posted by Dudacles (1400 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

I haven't played this game yet, but I kinda feel the same about Fable II. Everybody told me the game was pathetically easy, but I actually died like 10 times over the course of the main storyline. I think, due to the fact that you can't die and lose alot of progress in both of these games, you actually become reckless. I'd think that if all that happens when you miss a jump is that you get put back at the cliff, you become hasty instead of carefully plotting out what you are going to do. Much the same in Fable II; I never resorted to health potions because there is absolutely no penalty for death aside from a 1000 or so experience points, and because of that I died rather alot.

Also, the two first posters don't understand the meaning of "wall o' text". If you use paragraphs, it's not a wall o' text. And this wasn't even all that big a blog.

#7 Posted by ArchScabby (5809 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

yes it is.

I don't get why that's a bad thing though. I play most games for the experience, not to get frustrated by it's difficulty.

#8 Edited by Kazona (2991 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Rowr: Glad to see you agree with me on the boss fights. Although like you said, it would've been cool if there'd been something that showed her dissapointment in you. Some of her comments when she saved you from the brink of death were kinda heart warming, though, which I liked as well.

Oh and your quote helped me discover a typo!

dudacles: In comparison Fable II is actually quite a bit easier than Prince of Persia, but I do agree with you that it makes you alot more reckless if you can never die. Whether or not that's a good thing is something I'll leave up for debate. But one good thing about it is that it allows you to experiment without having to constantly worried about being punished. I myself did use potions regularly because like in PoP I simpy do not like the knowledge of being bested. And while the losing of XP doesn't really bother me much (yay for XP potions , I didn't want my character to become horribly scarred, so I did my best to avoid getting knocked down.

And thanks to the both of you for the encouraging words regarding the two previous replies.

ArchScabby: Guess we disagree on that front then. But at least we agree that we both play games for the experience, and not the frustration.

#9 Posted by daniel_beck_90 (3159 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

ZombieHunter said:

"Holy thats a mighty wall of text"

but it got point and I totally agree with Kazona

#10 Posted by LiquidPrince (14653 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

The game is fantastic. The instant reload system is quick and painless, and integrated perfectly into the story.

#11 Posted by Gigastormz (208 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

#12 Posted by Kilzombie (407 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Gigastormz said:

"
I've never played a Price of Persia game to completion, would you say this is a good game for newcomers to the series? Do you need to know the stories of the past games? The only PoP game I spent any time with was Sands of Time. I didn't get too far and I think I was put off by the combat a bit (if I remember right anyway). I actually own Sands of Time and Warrior Within because they came in a lot of Xbox games I won on Ebay. I haven't gotten around to playing them again though.
"

This game is great for newcomers to the series, it's a totally new prince with a new story, so you'd be fine.

#13 Posted by TwoOneFive (9449 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

if thats one long argument defending PoP, then i have no interest in reading it. the game sucked.

#14 Posted by atejas (3057 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Combat is horrible. I stand by this statement.
Platforming is incredibly fun, as is trying to collect the light seeds.
I like the no-death mechanism.

#15 Edited by AvD (288 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

I am only a few hours into the game but I can safely say that when dying has absolutely no consequence (and redoing 30 seconds of gameplay is not one) it detracts from the overall experience of the game. No fear of dying removes any fear, tension, thought, etc. because you know that it is not a big deal...

See also: Bioshock.

#16 Posted by PureRok (4230 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

I find Prince of Persia extremely easy. Although, it is really annoying having to collect all of that junk. So if how annoying something is is = difficulty, then yes... this game is really hard.

#17 Posted by pause422 (6068 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

Yes. Yes it is. Maybe you just suck at games in general.

#18 Posted by Kazona (2991 posts) - 4 years, 4 months ago

pause422 said:

"Yes. Yes it is. Maybe you just suck at games in general."

So I assume you got the "Be gentle with her" achievement/trophy then? And I guess you also never got knocked down by one of the bosses?

Prince of Persia

A 2008 entry into the Prince of Persia franchise titled simply "Prince of Persia", this game stars an all-new Prince as he teams up with the mysterious Elika to fight Ahriman and cleanse the world of his corruption.

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