I’ve never played aPrince of Persiagame, butThe Lost Crownintrigues me. The initial narrative cutscene shown in the Ubisoft Forward livestream didn’t grab me, but the platforming pulled me in. It had shades of Hollow Knight and Ori, and while I’m not comparing a trailer to some of the best examples of platformers ever made, that compels me to check it out, despite any other reservations I may have.
I’m a big platforming head, although I often forget it. I get bogged down in hours of clicking heads inApex Legends, spend my free time reading miles of text inWarhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, and constantly attempt to whittle down my backlog ofRPGs, so I forget how good a really well-designed platformer can be. I wonder if it goes back to Super Mario Advance 2, which (along with Pokemon Silver) was one of the only two games I owned for the Game Boy Advance I won in a competition.
Related:Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Lets You Reverse Time
I spent hours in this game, except I couldn’t get past a tricky level on World 2. That didn’t stop me, so I just played through the first world enough times that I reached an impressive million points, which was equally impressive and confusing to my Proper Gamer friend when I asked him to jump that hurdle for me. Some of my favourite games in recent years have been platformers too, like Celeste and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which both redefined the genre in different ways.
I’m not expecting Prince of Persia The Lost Crown to rewrite the rules of platforming, but the gameplay in those sections looks great. The time travel mechanic combined with protagonist Sargon’s acrobatic archery unlocks doors, drops bridges, and allows him great freedom to traverse the levels in fresh and innovative ways.
The time travel also affects combat, encouraging you to create baffling combos to take out numerous fantastical enemies, from skeletal soldiers to floating harpies. This extends even further to the bosses, which are brilliantly designed manticores and giant cobras. However, this is where I’m not sure if The Lost Crown is for me or not.
The large combat encounters aren’t interesting to me. They don’t repel me, but they don’t capture my imagination in the same way that the platforming sections do. Performing combos and jumping through time and space to decapitate an ogre is something that feels more Mortal Kombat than Celeste, and I don’t know if it will put me off the whole game.
The Lost Crown is set to release in January, so there’s a whole lot of time left before I have to make up my mind, and hopefully we’ll get to see some more gameplay from both the platforming sections and the boss fights before then.
I’m in quite a good place, all things considered. Having never played a Prince of Persia game before, I’m not caught up in those questions of whether or not The Lost Crown captures that ‘true’ Prince of Persia feel. I have no expectations going in, and therefore I can’t be disappointed in the same way longtime fans of the series can be. I’m being open minded about what I’ve seen so far, but I hope it’s more clever jumping and puzzle solving than boss slicing and button mashing.
