Reminiscent of the past, but underwhelming in total
Ubisoft’s reinvention of the reinvented Prince of Persia series struck a resounding chord amongst gaming society last holiday season, prompting some sizeable downloadable content to satiate the hunger for more. This content comes in the form of the Epilogue pack, which sports brand new powers, combat abilities, and picks up right where the original storyline left it.
If you haven’t finished the game, you may want to stop reading now. Up until this point the Prince, coming off his tree deforming, dark god freeing antics, brings the weakened Elika to an entrance that leads to the Underground Palace. Fortunately, Ahriman’s powers haven’t quite reached their zenith, giving the Prince and Elika the time to make their way through the palace in hopes of finding refuge. But while down Ahriman certainly isn’t out, and sends corrupted out to delay the duo before they pass beyond his ever growing reach.
Much of the DLC is familiar territory, what’s not is the new environment that completely does away with the open world. Instead you’re confined to the dungeon-esque palace that’s remarkably reminiscent of the last-gen Prince series. It’s also worth mentioning that the platforming sequences have grown in length, providing more of a challenge and consequence for erring. While I miss the open environments, the decision to move toward a darker more ominous territory makes perfect sense. There were a few segments that caused frustration due to their length, but for the most part provided to be a nice nostalgic slap across the face.
Something also notable is the fact that the land can no longer be healed. That’s right; you won’t be able to see this underground territory in warm fuzzy colors nor collect light seeds around it. This time there are hidden frescos, which are glowing paintings that are littered about the palace’s most abstract locations. The frescoes provide something fun to achieve while exploring the depths of the palace and work well as a substitute for the light seeds.
The new dash attack, which allows you to close the distance to your foe quickly, is a welcome addition that feels as though it should have been implemented in the full game. As long as you’re uninjured you can rush toward an opponent and stun them which sets them up for an easy combo. Elika also has a new power called Energize. Energizing works much like the Step of Ormazd but materializes walls and other solid mass that allows the Prince to continue forward. It’s very flashy and makes for many interesting moments when you’d otherwise be leaping to your death.
As big of a fan as I am of the game, I’m not too happy with the boss fights this time through. You end up fighting against two semi-new enemies, Elika’s fully corrupted father and a shape-shifter who mixes between the Warrior and the Hunter. The epilogue is very short as a whole so you’ll be encountering these two bosses often. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were like the other bosses in the original game who changed things up by performing new moves. Every fight is the same and since you’ve already fought the Warrior and Hunter six times a piece enough is enough already.
My biggest qualm with this DLC is its viability. Now I’m a gamer who likes to experience pretty much everything a developer throws at me, especially for games I love. Going through it very casually, I was able to clear the game in well under two-hours. Not only that, but the way the game ends, the new ending, isn’t nearly as satisfying. I also encountered glitches that definitely weren’t present in the original game. One allowed a non-stop high-pitched whistling that could only be corrected by shutting off my console. Another made climbing in the floating corruption have no effect, diming or anything, on my screen. Paying $10 for under two-hours of semi-new, semi-irritating content isn’t something anyone should be enthused about.
It’s hard not to recommend a game like Prince of Persia, but the epilogue is definitely questionable. Fans who enjoyed the game as much as I did will find it difficult to pass up the extra content, but everyone will feel somewhat robbed when the credits roll. Only if they put a little more imagination behind the structure would it have held up better.
