Arhhh! I was on my way home! I had more gold than you could... I'd've had wine! Women! I'd've had carpets this thick. Now I'm stuck with an angry god and a crazy woman!
I'm a fan of all of the Prince of Persia's newer games (starting with The Sands of Time), and when I played the series' 2008 reboot over a decade ago, I loved every minute of it. It's a fantastic game.
Prince 2008 has cel-shaded graphics and it looks absolutely gorgeous, both when the city's lands are corrupted and dark and when they're healed and bright. It's just one of the most beautiful games I've played. Despite the gameplay core staying true to the classic platforming and combat formula, it feels very different this time around: all levels are now interconnected and have tons of collectible light orbs, which makes fluent world traversing so incredibly exciting. Platforming is very similar to Mirror's Edge, which btw came out at the same time. As I have fear of heights, both these games made my palms sweat like crazy. People complain about the no-death mechanic, but I think it's pretty cool, considering it is actually a mechanic. Also, I don't think the game is too easy - it was just fine for me.
Oh yeah, there's one more thing that makes this game special. It is Prince (a thief, actually) and Elika's relationship told through mostly optional dialogues. The story itself is okay, but the dialogues are where the script truly shines. Tons of hilarity, flirting, teasing, characters' backstories and just chatting - I loved it. It is what makes you care for the characters and, eventually, the story. And Nolan North, who is the voice of Prince, is the icing on a cake. He plays it exactly like he did it with Nathan Drake, which is a perfect fit for this game.
That's how I remembered Prince 2008 and all of this has still been there, when I re-played it recently. However, nostalgia is tricky - we tend to forget the bad. Lots of repetition in everything (in a way, even Prince commented on that: "Run, jump, dive, defeat. Run, jump, dive, defeat. I think I'm getting the hang of it."), many similar boss battles, trial and error traversal sections involving special abilities (seriously, fuck camera in the sprinting sections, which are also way too long at times, and fuck some obstacles in the flying sections). I've played a ton of games featuring all kinds of QTE's, but it's in the Prince of Persia reboot that I've had the hardest time with them. No idea whether the problem is within them or me, but I have failed most of them (even some of the button mashing ones, holy shit), so those were annoying as well. And the last disappointing thing I'd like to mention is the fact that despite there's one thousand collectible orbs the game doesn't let you come back and finish them after the credits by default. To be able to do it, you need to make a separate save file when you cleanse all the lands and load it later. Collecting the orbs is super fun in this game, so I wish I knew this in my first playthrough.
For a long time I've wanted to re-play Prince 2008, but not only because I loved it so much. There's a DLC piece called Epilogue, that came out about half a year after the main game, that ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Because of reasons I couldn't obtain the DLC the first time I played the game, so I've been thinking of coming back to it to see how the story ends. It's been very disappointing to play it a decade later and to find out that it has no influence on the story whatsoever. It's also significantly harder at times and the secondary boss battles have turned from simply annoying to really frustrating. And the long sprinting sections with shity camera are back as well. Overall, Epilogue was disappointing and totally not worth a decade's wait. Btw fuck Ubisoft for not releasing it on PC.
Despite all of my complaints, I still love the 2008 reboot and I wish we could have a worthy sequel to it, but we're way past that point now. Anyway, there's always a chance Ubisoft comes up with some clever idea how to bring the series back. Despite their focus on huge open-world, I'm going to stay optimistic.
