The key tenet of a Metroidvania game is that you backtrack – you go back to areas you’ve explored and use your newfound powers to carve out new paths, reach new ledges, and backflip into areas containing treasure. Covert passage. It’s part of the game; intuition and self-awareness, and the clever developers leave bread crumbs for you to slowly nibble on as you return to the beginning of the game, your avatar’s body filled with newfound power. Along the way, you may discover more – secrets, more hidden paths, vengeful enemies reborn – and you’ll be distracted and pulled off your circular path.
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Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown masters this ebb and flow, deftly guiding you around its vast map with an almost sadistic hand-waving. The story, while cheesy and contrived, is about humans pretending to engage in politics at the behest of an absent god, and that’s how you feel as a player, once again trudging from east to west, manipulated by the ropes of deification. Developer Power. Why? Because you have to, because you crave power, because you want to make things right.
But the story isn’t why you’re here, is it? Metroidvania games have never really been great at story unless you’re eager to understand the subtext and lore hidden within Hollow Knight’s Hallownest and told in the margins – it’s best to keep things simple: go here, Do this and win. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s biggest failure is its attempt to weave a complex narrative together, and does so through overbearing dialogue and Saturday morning cartoon visuals.That’s all a bit much. But it’s the real star of the show: the map’s set.
Yes, map. Tangled passageways give way to dense collections of trap chambers that open to vast ocean vistas overlooking towering buildings and forbidding mountains. With few checkpoints made up of Wak-Wak trees and woven together with savvy shortcuts, this map instantly rivals some of the best Metroidvania maps you can think of – evoking memories of Hollow Knight ”, “Oli” and the evocative names given to the genre’s dual eponymous classics.
Well, unfortunately, fast traveling is a chore. With rare tombstones strangely clustered in certain parts of the map, the flow of your adventure will sometimes come to a screeching halt when you need to retrace your steps – well, that’s the game – but by following a particular route, you’ve done So many things left boot marks on the marble floor. You sighed and started to do it, only to find that you needed to go back again. Christ. Well, this time we’re going up, and at least I can see there’s a fast travel terminal up there – oh no, I can’t access it yet. Come down and let’s go.
But for every moment of frustration that The Lost Crown throws at you, you’ll get a double dose of surprise. Like powers—double jump, rewind, “time knives,” short-distance teleportation, similar to Devil May Cry’s “demon messenger”—The Lost Crown’s best ideas are scattered among the four winds, Hidden in the corner. its world. Whether it’s a giant dial that requires three puzzles to work (which is then itself a puzzle to operate), or a room full of deadly, crashing blocks that can be used by savvy platformers to reach the doomed The Dark Corner Tomb of Failure, the game keeps surprising you even if you think you’ve reached the top.
Just spend those open hours. They may crawl. An underpowered protagonist (Sargon, his name is here) isn’t interesting at all, and everything feels a bit silent and choppy until you start gaining your powers.However, as you approach the second half of the game’s 25-hour runtime, you’ll gain a strong sense of what Sargon is capable of real Indeed, the game shows its true colors: a rainbow-colored cornucopia of creativity and ingenuity. Using up to five different powers to flip, jump and slide your way through challenges – just to pick up a measly collectible coin – isn’t irritating but empowering. The Lost Crown often has a way of making you feel like a genius, and that’s platforming catnip.
Inexplicably and incongruously, encounters with bosses have opposite effects on your brain chemistry. There are some nice ideas in these big fights, but some of the attacks aren’t conveyed well – and it’s unclear what you need to do to counter certain moves (which isn’t ideal when they take up the whole screen or stun locks you ), or can kill you in one hit). Any goodwill and momentum you build as you grind your way through bosses quickly evaporates and turns into painful frustration within minutes. More than once I found myself needing to fight my way through a boss fight to continue exploring the fantastic caves of Mount Kraft.
But at least there are some accessibility options that allow you to bypass or downplay the worst parts of the game. Stuck on the platforming section? Turn on the assist device and go through the portal to the end. Tired of that giant, anchor-wielding bastard on a pirate ship? Lower the difficulty slider and reset it when finished. The dedication to letting you decide the challenge and pace of your adventure is something to be admired—hell, it should even become an industry standard. Ubisoft has found something magical here, and The Lost Crown will be praised for it for years to come.
Regular combat is more fun. You might be tempted to simply break your basic attacks, but if you think of the game as a 2D fighting game (more like BlazBlue than Street Fighter), you’ll quickly start to appreciate Ubisoft’s approach to its Depth at the core. The low attack is linked to a launcher where you can manipulate the bow, launch special attacks, create your own “shadow”, release the attack, then rewind and perform it again! ? Puvol. It makes you feel…well, like a prince. How apt.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a puzzle game that makes you feel smarter. This is a metroidvania that learns from the best, but doesn’t sacrifice any element of its own personality – for better or worse. Behind the gorgeous graphics and cheeseball story lies a hardcore platformer heart wounded by brutal combat. Mediocre boss design aside, this is a game you can easily sink 30 hours into. When you leave, you’ll feel smart, powerful, and agile.
