Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a side-scrolling action-adventure game was released in 2024 for PS5, PS4, XSX/S, XBONE, Switch, and PC.
It was developed and published by Ubisoft, and it makes the first major instaillment in the series since the 2010's title The Forgotten Sands.
Going back to the year of 1989, the Prince of Persia was started out as the cinematic platforming game created by Jordan Mechner, as it was first released on the computer platform such as Apple II and was ported to other platforms in one year later such as MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, and of course the console platforms such as SMS, NES, GB, TG-16, SNES, Genesis/MD, and SEGA CD.
The first game was critically praised for its innovative gameplay and realistic animation made use of the rotoscoping technique was designed for the character's movements such as acrobatic stunts was made for the platforming designs which was new for the genre that we had never seen anything different compared to the traditional platforming game of the mid-80s.
It was being credited for major influrence on other cinematic platformers such as Another World and Flashback, as well as 3D action-adventure games such as Tomb Raider which used a simular control scheme and platforming design.
The success of the first game had launched the franchise consisting of two sequels such as Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame in 1993 which also recieved simular praise as the first game and then it made shifted to the 3D platforming adventure such as Prince of Persia 3D in 1999 had recieved mixed reception making it the weakest title in the series is the reason why many gaming community had started to lose interest, until it was been rebooted by Ubisoft in 2003 with the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for PS2, Xbox, GC, GBA, and PC had gained critically acclaim and was commercially success at the release, as well as winning numerous of awards and being recognised by many gaming media as one of the greatest video game ever made.
The success of The Sand of Time had spawned numerous of follow-ups titles such as Warrior Within in 2004, The Two Thrones in 2005, and of course The Forgotten Sands in 2010 which also recieved positive reception.
The series also has second reboot with the Prince of Persia in 2008 for PS3, X360, and PC which establishing a new continuity that is seperate from other games in the series, so it did recieved positive reception but not quite as likable in comparision with The Sand of Time as an sub-series of the franchise.
Since after 2010, none of upcoming Prince of Persia games ever been made until 14 years later it finally makes the return of the franchise with the side-scrolling adventure game which is the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
As the game got released in 2024, it was generally positive by the critics and fans but sadly the it was commerically unsuccessful which sold poorly at the release which I don't understand why it never got popular since 14 years of hitatus, so I decided to give this game a worth of shot which is why I've bought the copy for the PS5 to see if it's anything good to play.
The answer will be revealed soon on this review to deliver the details of how the length, combat, pacing, story, and exploration went and goes.
So without go further do, Let's start the review.
Presentation
The game begins with the invasion of Kushan empire on the Persian territory, as the Persian Empire is on the brink of collapse until it was saved by the warrior clan known as the immortals with Sargon had managed to defeat the Kushan general.
As Sargon and the group of immortals are commended for their efforts by Queen Thomyris and Prince Ghassan at the victory celebrations event, the prince is abducted by Sargon's mentor named Anahita that led Sargon and the immortals travels to the cursed city of Mount Qaf in their mission is to rescue the kidnapped Prince Ghassan and confront Anahita's act of theachery.
The story in this game is all depends on whether you liked it or not is because it had a fine start of the introduction about the war between the two empires fighting each other and you have the protagonist and the group of immortals battling on the field which seems to be an intresting to know what's going on, but up until the part in the victory celebrations event where the prince getting kidnapped by the female general which I already thought the series had already done with the rescue stuff before like the original trilogy from the 1989 to 1999, so I have nothing to be against the idea but I was expecting something new and original that could work better on this game, but up until at the middle part of the game is getting a little bit better with the unexpecting plot twists and confrontation between the hero and villain is doing somewhat okay but not quite the best in my opinion.
I say the protagonist Sargon is decent in the game but not quite in the same level as the previous installiment's hero from The Sand of Time era, as you can see he had a ridiculous haircut seems to be out of place that didn't suit the style of the old ancient persian times, but his character's personality is what really matters the most which descibes him as being loyality to his friends, and showing his humbleness and respectful to the others is something really good about him, so thankfully it's not a let down.
It also has serveral of side characters like the group of immortals such as Artaban, Neith, Menolias, Orod, Radjen, and of course the leader Vahram which I got to be honest they are kinda generically boring in my opinion which I find these guys not quite likable in terms of their character's development and design are kinda bit lackluster at best.
As the franchise draws heavily on Persian mythology and Iranian culture, the presentation settings are looking great in many locations and areas are divided into 12 distinct regions to explore such as lower city is a hub of Mount Qaf which blends Persian architectual styles like ruined citadel aesthetics, sun-bleached stone walls, ornate columns, golden-sand, and flowing water wheels.
The hyrcanian forest appears as lush and dense jungle filled with vibrant green canopies, ancient overgrown stone ruins, and cascading water wheels.
The hidden village is a small and quiet region which has aged wooden platforms and a prominent lighthouse.
The soma tree is a vibrant and magical thing featuring purple and pink foilage, glowing flora, and luminous roots.
The depths is a dark and creepy area filled with murky stone walls, dripping pipes, narrow tunnels, and pools of green toxic waste.
The sacred archives is an imposing libary-style zone which has labyrinthine wooden shelves, rotating time mechanisms, and glowing orange and blue doors.
The upper city is defined by highly vertical, floating platforms, massive astronomical clocks and gears.
The sunken harbor is a coastal place featuring dreary maritime atmosphere filled with murky waters, rusted mechanical shipyard equipment, hanging cargo, and weathered wooden pirate ships.
The raging sea is a massive and mythical fleet of pirate ships featuring gigantic frozen tidal waves.
The tower of silence is a ice-covered mountain with snow-swept cliffs and deep chasms with falling ice boulders.
The old royal road has an ancient highway with sun-drenched sandy stone ruins, steep mountainous ledges, hanging grates, and overgrown cliffs.
The pit of eternal sands is a vast place filled with sand waterfalls, ancient ruins, and enormous fallen structures in the background.
Overall, suffered with the below average story and generic side characters, but has great presentation design.
Gameplay
In single player playthrough, you take control of Sargon in side-scrolling perspective as your main goal is to rescue the prince which was held captive by Anahita.
The game's major focus is the elements of Metroidvania in which you will fully explore around the area yourself in each location, as you will have map inventory on the pause menu screen which helps you navigate through the stage, and then you will gather a new abilities which allowing you to gain access to the unreachable places that leads you to the new location or area.
You can save the progress by going to the golden tree area which automatically saves the game when interacting, and you will also have fast traveling area which allows you to warp at different locations so that will saves you from traveling too far or backtracking.
For the controls, push the left stick controls is to move with left/right sideways, crouch with downwards, and of course navigate with upwards, and then the right-stick controls is used for camera screen movement.
Press the cross button is to jump which are used for jumping on platforms such as floating platform and wall jumps as an example, where as you can able to jump down from the platform by holding the left stick controls down then press the cross button, and then the right trigger button while holding the left stick controls down is to slide through the small bottom gap.
For the combat, press the square button is to use melee for close range attack, where as the triangle button is to use ranged attack for far distance shot.
The right trigger button is also used for dodging which allowing you to evade the enemy's ranged projectiles or melee attack, and you can also use the left trigger button is to use for parrying when the enemy's projectiles or melee attack get closer to you will deflect them away, as you will see the yellow-symbol appears on the enemies which helps you to use parry in the right time.
In case your health is low, you can heal your health by pressing the d-pad down to use health potion which also limits your potion use, so only use it if necessary.
The rest of the button layouts such as the shoulder button, circle button, and right thumbstick button which I will explain it for later on the review.
You can also re-configure your gameplay settings on the options menu for its button remapping, assists, accessiblity, and stuff to improve your playability, where as the difficulty settings will let you customise the choice of hit damage, enemy's A.I, and guides, but you might better off sticking to the preset settings instead starting from easy to hard difficulty.
After learning these basic controls, you might come across with the abilities which can be obtained by defeating the bosses, so you will have really useful abilities like the double jump which allowing you to jump twice by double pressing the cross button are quite useful for higher platforms, and you also have a air dash that allowing you to dash forward by pressing the right trigger button while in mid-air.
You will have chakram which is a spinning disc like ranged attack attached on bow which can be used for not only just combat but also solving puzzles and teleport traversal in which can be used by holding the triangle button then release it to throw it, then you will have dimentional claw which opens up portal that picks up the objects like explosive item can be used as throwing attack with the circle button, and you will have fabric of time which is a magical rope kind of thing that can be used as grappling hook with the right shoulder button that allows you to propel across gaps or pull yourself directly to flying and distant enemies, then you have shadow of simurgh which is a time powers that allow you to drop a shadowy marker in a dimention by pressing the left shoulder button and then press again to letting you instantly teleport back to that exact spot to evade attacks, solve puzzles, and recover from tricky platforming, and lastly you have clairvoyance that allow you to shift between two parallel dimentions with the right thumbstick button which is primarily used to reveal invisible platforms or navigate past glowing obstacles.
These will allow to help you getting across at the new areas and paths such as fully blocked sealed wall and unreachable platforms that are required to use these kinds of abilities to gain access through the stage.
Aside with the controls and ability, what made the game quite unique in the single-player adventure is the upgrades and enhancement system for your weapons and amulets, which means that your character's skills can be improved by upgrading your weapon attack power as well as equipping some of these enhancement items for the health or effects are also upgradable, so you will need to obtain several of the amulets which can be found on any random places or purchase it from the shop and you will also need several amount of time crystals, coins, and materials to spend through the shop that are requires to upgrade your weapons and amulets in order to improve your character's attributes such as increasing health bar and athra build-up, collect time crystals from distance, displays enemy's life bar, slightly decrease the duration of frost effect, reduces damage effects such as poison, gradually restore health, and increase attack power, so this will make your character feel strong and powerful to fight against tough enemies and bosses.
The best part of the combat gameplay is got to be athra surges, a powerful combat abilities that allow you to perform a special attack deals a heavy damage attack on enemies and bosses, so you can able to find various of athra surges anywhere in the journey and once you have obtained these abilities then you can able to equip any of these athra surges that allowing you to perform these special moves such as the verethragana's smite rush towards an enemy with a piercing strike that shatters all defenses, the shahbaz spirit launch a powerful cross slash attack above you are useful against flying enemies, the vayu's wave release a powerful wave of athra that pushes back the enemy, the bahman's breath create an explosion of healing zone that restores health, and of course the bahamut's rage unleash a large whirlwind attack that throws lights at foes in the air and then smashes them to the ground.
I say the gameplay plays it really good on the single-player adventure is because I find the controls scheme works responsively for its platforming which I can able to do lot of wall jumping, climbing, dashing, and slide it through just feels nicely tight to perform, and I also find the combat during the battle works pretty well for its multiple of combos hits and techniques to do in which I can able to slash them, dodge them, and use parry that makes the fighting control feels really great throughout the battle.
Not only the controls worked well, but I got to say that I really liked the combat system that heavily focuses on the upgrades and enhancement that helps the character's overall strength power thanks to numerous of amulets to equip on and having enough materials to upgrade weapons has a different kinds of effects that gives advantages such as increased attack power, health restoration, and reduced damage effects just works really well in the game.
The use of athra surge are also quite satisfying with amazing finishing blows on enemies and bosses which I liked the idea of building up gauge power up to 3 levels and performing some of the special attack that delivers amount of heavy damage just seem to be working effectively against the large enemies and bosses during the combat battle.
I say I mostly enjoyed exploring many areas in each locations which I love spending time of seaching around the stage like discovering hidden secrets and obtaining stuff like collectables and time crystals, as well as participating the side quests and challenges to complete various of tasks which helps me keeping busy with the game.
I also wanted to praise the overall design of the each stages are full amount of hazardous obstacles with loaded of wooden spikes and grindy traps all over the places which requires the use of jumping and dashing techniques that made the platforming quite intense to play, so I really liked having to jump on each walls and dashing through the traps which is done incredibly fine that really made the platforming game quite engaging to play.
I also liked the puzzle solving in some areas such as the cycle of three shadow clones as an example where you had to mirror the part on each shadows like the first shadow had to hold down the switch on the left where as the second one hold down on the right to open up doors and then finally the third one has to grab the tablet right at the end is something to enjoy the game with fun puzzle elements going on.
The game also has a fun boss battles in many locations which I had a fond time of playing it, so you had undead prisoner wielding a broken pillar swings around and tries to slam the pillar at you, the giant enemy crab with metal armor on one of its claws slamming the ground with shockwaves and debris damage, the erlik the boar demon charges at you across the arena and spews poison puddles from its maw, the Jahandar the manticore guardian has a large variety of attack will swipe you with his claws and sweep his long-ass poison tail at you, the Kiana the forest queen are capable of using spear-swinging techniques and attacks, and of course the azdaha the big phython will swipe you with tail, lunging you with the bite, and of course blasting the beam out of the mouth, so these bosses will require you to use strategy with the amount of dodging and parrying before making the attack at the right time is something that I liked about battling with the bosses.
Overall, it has soild combat and upgrades, fun quests and exploration, engaging platforming and puzzles, and epic boss battles.
Graphics
The graphics in this game is looking great for its visual performances and details are strikingly beauiful to look at the screen.
I just love the every details of environmental features with bold textures surfaces are stupendously sharp just looks really nice, and I also liked the in-depth details of the level design with far-distance landscape backgrounds and 3D-like layouts on the foreground parts with smooth scrolling is just looks excellent which they totally nailed the use of graphical layouts and details that made the game looked appealing on modern gaming system.
I also liked the use of special effects in some areas with glowy particles, flashy projectiles, shady-shadows, and vibrant lighting design that made the game looked colourful and bright.
I say I don't really mind the character's animation in the game in which many of you may finding it too cartoonish and goofy which I kinda disagree with you guys is because I think they wanted to make it more like a mix of anime and comic book style that adds the dynamic design choices is the reason why they chose the art direction that fits the style of the whole game is something that I finding it quite appealing to adore these visual concepts.
The game's performances and resolution is all depends on which platforms you're playing on is because I say the 9th-gen system like the PS5 and XSX/S (X model) can able to run on fully 4K 120fps if you had the 4K monitor with 120 Hz support can able to run with 4K resolution with 120fps, but unfortunately my 4KTV has 60Hz meaning it can only run with 4K 60fps which I got to be honest with you is that it ran really smoothly throughout the playthrough with no signs of slowdowns and screen tearing whatsoever which is a good news thankfully.
To keep you mind that your video display settings are automatically detect itself depending on your gaming monitor or 4KTV which means that you cannot change the video display settings on the in-game option menu like most of the games has, so if you want to change the resolution and others then you had to head to your console menu's display options to do it because sometimes it happened to me when my display resolution is set to 1080p with 120fps as an default, so I had to turn off the 120Hz mode in order to get a proper full 4K resolution with 60fps working on my 4KTV, but don't worry it won't affect your overall gameplay.
I also heard the XSX/S (S model) are also performed decently with the 1440p resolution with 60fps which are just as good as you're expecting from the low-powered model.
The 8th-gen consoles like the PS4 pro and XBONE (X model) does have 4K 60fps but the graphical details are nowhere near close as the 9th-gen counterpart, but it did performed pretty good with stable framerate, and then the PS4 (Base model) and XBONE (Base and S model) can only run 1080p 60fps which doesn't have a cleaner resolution as the pro model but then again the framerate is still remain stable.
Lastly the Switch did had a 1080p 60fps on docked mode came quite close to base model PS4 and XBONE which is fine, where as the handheld mode did ran on 720p 60fps which thankfully it's still playable.
Overall, it has stunning visual design, fine animation, and stable performance.
Music and Sounds
The soundtrack is wonderfully astonishing which I adore the middle eastern music in video games, so Prince of Persia as the series had share great original music which really fits the game's presentation throughout the adventure.
It was composed by Iranian music artist Mentrix and Gareth Coker (British game composer behind Ori and the Blind Forest) did a amazing job of creating these tracks is such an wonderful to listen such as the "Main Theme", "Wandering in the Palace", "The Old Citadel", "Heading to the Old Palace", "The Imprisioned God", "The Forest Queen", "A Valley of Thieves", "The Storm Master", and "The White Lion of Persepolis".
The sound design is done fantastic for its environmental sounds and ambients in many areas feels absolutely spot-on, so you can hear the sounds of storm passing through, the waterfalls pouring down, the sands swifting around, and stuff that you hear in each location adding a realism of the stage.
I say the voice acting for each character role is sounded a lot better with the Farsi dub which is a well suited choice that most players agreed, where as the English dub is kinda rather sounds bland in comparsion because it just sounded like the low-budget level didn't quite fit in well, so stick with the Farsi dub instead.
Overall, it has amazing music and fantastic sound design.
Special Features
The game does have various of collectables to obtain, participating the challenge mode, and of course it has story expansion DLCs titled Mask of Darkness which adds a new narrative, 4 new biomes, lethal platforming, and 3 epic boss battles.
Overall, a good pack of content.
Advantages
Great presentation design
Solid combat and upgrades
Fun quests and exploration
Engaging platforming and puzzles
Epic boss fights
Stunning visuals and amazing music
Disadvantages
Below average story
Side characters are quite generic
Final Verdict
Presentation 6.5/10 - below average story and generic side characters, but has great presentation design.
Gameplay 8/10 - soild combat and upgrades, fun quests and exploration, engaging platforming and puzzles, and epic boss battles.
Graphics 8.5/10 - stunning visual design, fine animation, and stable performance.
Music and Sounds 7.5/10 - amazing music and fantastic sound design.
Special Features 7/10 - collectables, challenge mode, and story expansion DLCs.
Overall 8/10 - After 14 years of franchise's hiatus since the 2010's The Forgotten Sands was made back then, I say many of fans were expecting another 3D action-adventure game which we never got recently, so instead what we end up which is a side-scrolling adventure game that are incredibly solid game to play with no regets whatsoever.
Even through the story and side-characters aren't the best, but at least it had really good combat and upgrades, numerous of fun quests, lot more exploration to do, has platforming and puzzles to solve through, and of course the boss battle is great that made the game quite entertaining to play.
It's a greater shame that the game had sold poorly at the release in 2024 and the plan of the sequel was completely scrapped along with The Sand of Time Remake in which we will never gonna see another series titles at the light of the day leaving the franchise closed behind doors.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is such an underrated game that could have deserve better which is why it should have never ignored in the public eye.
The cost of physical copy for all console platforms are between £15 and £20, where as the digital storefront such as PS Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo eShop, and Steam cost around £25, but you can able to play it for free under the subscription such as Ubisoft+ Classics for Playstation, and Ubisoft+ Premium for PC and Xbox (which also on game pass).
Is it definite worth of play? the answer is if you like the Metroidvania games in general then it is absoultely yes because you might likely to appreciate the game that are incredibly fun to explore, doing lot of platforming and puzzles, and fighting with bosses is something that you going to enjoy this side-scrolling adventure game, so please don't miss out this gems.
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