A beautiful game in every sense of the word.
I go way back with the Prince of Persia series. I played the SNES port of the original side-scrolling game, and I absolutely hated it. Then I played Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for the PC, and I was absolutely blown away. Superb graphics, beautiful art-direction, and a great story-book plot made The Sands of Time a great game. Then, Warrior Within came along. I started playing the game when it first came out, and I stopped as soon as that terrible hard-rock guitar music kicked in. The direction they took Warrior Within in was not suitable for the series. I skipped The Two Thrones because it seemed like it's more of Warrior Within. But the new Prince of Persia sounded promising to me from the first day; it seemed that they have realized their mistakes and have took an approach similar to The Sands of Time, both gameplay-wise and art-wise. I purchased this game, among few others, on the first day that I bought my PS3, and I am absolutely glad that I did.
The story of the game is fantastic. It feels much like a great fantasy novel, in a way that the mythology always has a great back-story and that we actually care about the main characters. I absolutely loved the introduction of Elika's character, and Prince(?)'s reaction. There is a little bit of foreshadowing at the beginning of the game, which can be appreciated once you beat the game. Without giving anything away, a thief lost in the desert accidentally meets a princess running away from her father's guards. Princess Elika's father, the king, has set Ahriman, the god of darkness, free. I prefer not to talk about the plot too much, because the last hour or so of the game is where most of it happens and explaining more would ruin it for you.
The game is an open-world game, much like Metroid is an open world game. You can travel anywhere at any time, but you need certain powers to access a few certain places and it is consisted of levels that once upon, the scripted events kick in. I could have done without the open-world, because all it did was to add more repetition. Yet the world is so fully realized and fantastic to look at that going through the same platforming sequence over five or six times does not feel tiring. Combat is always one-on-one and very cinematic. The first few encounters, all I did was to hammer on the square button a bunch. But once I got a hang of the combos, and the overall pacing of the combat, it felt awesome. The combat is very rewarding once you get a hang of things, and so is the platforming. Once you figure out the cues, and understand when button to press what button, it feels very natural and exciting. I would say that the game nails both of its main aspects, platforming and combat. The puzzles are very clever too, but not as challenging The Sands of Time's puzzles.
There are two things that set the game apart from other similar titles. First one is the high production-values. The orchestral score is fantastic, and maybe the best piece of music I have heard this year. The voice acting is great, the writing is good for the most part, and the animations are even more fluid than Assassin's Creed. The second one is the great story. This game was a four-star game for me until the very last twist, and that plot-twist alone redeemed all the little flaws with the game for me.
Overall Prince of Persia is my 2008's Game of the Year, and I am sad that it was underseen among games like Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3. While the latter deserved the attention, the former did not. From the high production-values, to the great story, to the fantastic world, to the fully-realized characters, to the fluid gameplay, and finally the beautiful art-direction, this game was fantastic all through. I was hoping for a full sequel after the ending, but it seems that the game has under-performed and Ubisoft has wrapped things up with the DLC levels. I will review Prince of Persia: Epilogue in another time.
