Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (2024)

This game has managed to strike the right balance for me of Metroidvanias. There are enough places to search and areas to explore to gain rewards even before you have acquired all the powers. Once you have acquired all the traversal powers it makes some, but not all, of the challenges easier to get through. I repeatedly backtracked to a number of areas after getting a singular upgrade and was usually rewarded in a handful of cases of being able to finally get the small treasure that was inaccessible before.

Overall, I think the platforming is the strongest element for me. The mini-challenges with instant death if you make a mistake were greatly rewarding even when I didn’t make it through. I actually wish the game did more with the timed, challenges where you had to setup ghost runs of yourself to activate all the switches or pressure plates you needed to get to the end.

Having a ton of fun with the exploration and platforming. Most of the platform sequences are extremely difficult but the respawns are quick and feel like it is just a limitation of your own abilities. The parry and dodge system combining with chained combos are fantastic and so fun to take out an enemy before he touches the ground again. All of this reminds me a lot of Guacamelee, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

My big gripe is with the mid to late game bosses. They are just cheese and trash design to beat down the player. Mechanically enemies begin to have nothing but unblockable moves eliminating the extremely satisfying parry mechanic that allows you a better sense of control and getting in hits. Worse yet is they give them attacks that take up the entire screen and then proceed to have 5 second cutscene animations to rub in the fact that you messed up the torturous sequence of moves to dodge the thing. They rarely have any counterable moves to give you a satisfying moment of stunning the boss. Lastly, after two of the boss fights, Orod and Azdaha, they just simply shrug it off and basically say “I was just testing you.” This extremely lame story beat undercuts the satisfaction of a hard fought win.

That being said, I still like the game and will see it thru.

Although I agree with the premise of the article that we need AAA studios taking risks on smaller well designed games that aren’t GAAS, I do find it hard to shed any tears for Ubisoft, over anything.

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Feels Like A Repeat Of Guardians Of The Galaxy

What those of us celebrating The Lost Crown's genius didn't realize, however, is we were singing its praises inside of a bubble, and a pretty small bubble at that. The newest Prince of Persia sold just 300,000 copies out of the gate.

What gets me about sites like The Gamer is that if they really care about smaller well made games, maybe they should focus on publishing reviews for games like Ultros, a Metroidvania that runs circles around The Lost Crown both thematically and mechanically, and boosting indies to their audiences rather than focusing all their attention on AAA games and worrying quite so much about studios that regularly crunch and abuse their employees. I get that we want change at the top, but maybe it’s time to shift the message away from a discourse almost exclusively about the big players.

Ok, putting my issues aside and accepting that the moment-to-moment action can be fun, I’m still struggling with some of the takes on this game. I was just reading an article arguing that The Lost Crown does something unique with the way it implements the double jump.

One of my favorite things about Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is that up until I unlocked the double jump, I didn’t know that was going to be one of the game’s upgrades. Part of me expected it, because it's such a staple of the genre, but it comes so late in the game, and I had accomplished so much without it, that I didn’t think I actually needed it. The brilliance of the way The Lost Crown buries the double jump is the way it convinces you that it’s unecessary, but then quickly reveals how important it is once you have it.

This made me scratch my head a bit because during the opening tutorial sections of the game, when the game demonstrates the photo function of the map, the tutorial specifically highlights a chest that you can’t reach without a double jump. My very first thought was precisely the opposite of this author’s. I knew I’d need a double jump and that it was being foreshadowed.

The article goes on to say:

You get the double jump, called Gravity Wings, after defeating a snake boss called Azdaha in the Pit of Eternal Sands. This is the lowest biome in Mount Qaf, and it's no accident that this is where you earn the double jump ability. As you exit the pit and travel up the tall corridor that connects it to the Sunken Harbor, you’ll find yourself in one of the main thoroughfares that you’ve traveled through many times while collecting the keys to access Azdaha. There isn’t anywhere new to go here - the next step is to explore the four corners of the map with your new power - but as you exit the pit you’ll feel the power of the double jump immediately.

It was very clever of Montpellier to make the air dash the first upgrade you find, because it satisfies the need for an early mobility upgrade, and makes you forget all about the double jump until you finally find it much later. The combination of air dash and double jump is also where the platforming in The Lost Crown hits its peak, and the game gives you plenty of time to get comfortable with air dashing before introducing the more complicated relationship between the two abilities.

Again, scratching my head, I couldn’t help but think “gee, all of that sounds familiar.” And maybe it’s because I just played Hollow Knight and maybe I’m attributing too much to similarities but let’s lay this out:

The Lost Crown has a double jump received late in the game (but not last among the abilities) called Gravity Wings. You earn them at the lowest spots on the game map and when you receive them they trivialize the trek back up the mountain that was previously perilous.

Hollow Knight has a double jump received late in the game (but not last among the abilities) called Moth Wings. You earn it at one of the lowest spots on the game map and when you receive them they trivialize the trek back from the Ancient Basin that was previously perilous.

The air dash is the first traversal skill you receive in The Lost Crown which serves as a mobility upgrade that makes the double jump less necessary until later in the game.

The air dash, or Mothwing Cloak, is the first traversal skill you receive in Hollow Knight serves as a mobility upgrade that makes the double jump less necessary until later in the game.

The article concludes with an argument that the game’s final upgrade is fairly conventional, which makes the Gravity Wings standout even more as something clever that Montpellier did and closes out, saying

There are a lot of wrong ways to do the double jump, but luckily, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown does it right.

That could very well be, but I think a lot of design originality is being attributed to a game that clearly borrows ideas directly from other Metroidvanias. That’s not a bad thing, games don’t have to be completely original to be fun. And I think it’s fair to give this game credit for feeling polished and fluid. But originality is not something that it impressed on me throughout the sections I played so far, despite what this article seems to want readers to believe.

Big points for allowing me to play in Farsi.

But then the game commits the number one faux pas for a 2D platformer: no d-pad control movement control. I guess that could be remapped on PC, but since I won’t give Ubisoft money I won’t be buying a digital copy. Used physical is my only option. Shame about the poor control choice and lack of customizability on console.

I don’t love the art design. It has that same sterile plastic look of games like Fortnite.