Review: PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE LOST CROWN is a Fun Game That Runs Fantastic
In January, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This is a new game in the popular franchise and is a bit of a reinvention of said franchise. It returned to its 2D platforming roots, but added in a splash of Metroidvania. Ubisoft was kind enough to supply me with a code on Xbox for this review, but all thoughts below are my own. You can purchase your own copy of the game now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4/5, and Xbox consoles (affiliate link). Physical copies are also available from your favorite retailers including GameStop (affiliate link).
In the game, you take on the role of Sargon, a Persian Immortal. The prince is kidnapped after you have secured a victory against invaders and your mission is to go with your fellow Immortals to explore the mysterious Mount Qaf and bring him back. It sounds pretty straightforward, but there are some twists and turns that make it more interesting.
People have been loving this game and it’s not hard to understand why. Before I delve into the wins for The Lost Crown, I do want to discuss some less flattering items. First, I started playing this game on Normal difficulty and I found the enemies to be a bit too strong. A single, simple combo was never enough to defeat an enemy. I typically had to do a minimum of two full combos per enemy even with some upgrades to my damage. I’ve put several hours into the game and still do not feel like I have any kind of upper hand. This is especially true when you still have three health segments and even the most basic enemies can kill you in about two hits.
Second, I stumbled across a pretty bad bug. There’s one side quest fairly early on that broke my game. Every time that I would attempt to get the Moon Gatherer side quest, my game would just stall at the end of the dialogue. It wouldn’t freeze, but it would be like the conversation ended but I could not regain control of Sargon. This was frustrating as I thought maybe it was a one-time thing due to Quick Resume or something and nothing I did would fix it.
That’s about it for my complaints. Visually, the game looks fantastic. I’m not the biggest fan of the art style, but it’s done really well and the textures and geometries all look great. Also, while the style isn’t my favorite, the overall designs of the characters, creatures, etc. are really cool. There’s some stylizing in combat moments that feel very comic book. Once again, not my favorite thing but it’s implemented well. In terms of performance, the game runs brilliantly on the Xbox and I want to give the team huge props as the Switch version will run natively at 1080p@60fps while docked according to Digital Foundry.
One small detail that I really liked was that you can set your audio language to Farsi (online manual says Farsi, in-game says Persian). This was really cool in my opinion because I’ve really been enjoying media in its native (or as close to it as I can perceive) language. As I said, this is a small thing, but I’ve greatly enjoyed having the audio in Farsi with English subtitles. Most, if not all, of the cutscene dialogues happen via text box anyway so I do not get annoyed at feeling that I’m missing a detail in the video because I’m reading.
How does Sargon feel to play? Overall, pretty good. There are still timing mechanics that I’m working out, but overall, you get what you press. I wouldn’t say there’s significant lag at any point. Also, the combat feels pretty basic at first, but there’s a lot of depth that can be explored if you’re willing to put in some work learning it. Thankfully, your main base, The Haven, has one of your pals who will let you do training sessions to learn and practice the different types of combos.
As previously hinted at, I am enjoying the story. I don’t want to go into it too much, but there are plenty of mysteries to unravel as you navigate the cursed Mount Qaf. I think I’ll leave things at that.
My final pro for The Lost Crown has to do with accessibility. There are tons of options to help people with disabilities enjoy the game/ This includes different contrast modes, toggling on whether you want helpful icons and information on the map, an option that lets you bypass difficult puzzle sections, and more. In addition to the different difficulty settings, these options let you fine tune your gaming experience to help you have the most fun.
Overall, I neither hate nor love The Lost Crown. I do enjoy it, but I have found that I need to play it on easy difficulty. That said, it’s still not a breeze. I really do love how the team worked hard so that the game would perform well on all platforms and that deserves a huge shout out in a world where many will do the bare minimum to get their game on a given platform leading to terrible experiences. The gameplay is solid and you really benefit from taking the time to know the deeper combat mechanics. In addition, some puzzles require very tight timing, so be aware.
