Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is 2024’s first hidden treasure
11.01.2024 - 19:23
/ videogameschronicle.com
What was once a stalwart of Ubisoft‘s release schedule, spawning well-loved games like The Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones, Prince of Persia’s fortunes declined almost in parallel with the meteoric rise of Ubisoft’s biggest franchise, Assassin’s Creed.
The series’ influence on Assassin’s Creed is unmistakable, but from a Ubisoft perspective, the success of its biggest franchise has made Prince of Persia somewhat irrelevant. It doesn’t help that the currently in-development remake of The Sands of Time has seemingly faced such difficult production.
Enter Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a side-scrolling Metroidvania entry in the PoP series developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, the team behind the Rayman series, including the seminal Rayman Legends.
That Rayman influence is keenly felt in The Lost Crown, as while, unlike Ubisoft Montpellier’s original hero, your main character has limbs connecting his appendages to his body, the fast-flowing movement, exciting platforming, and excellent level design is all present and correct.
The Lost Crown is a Metroidvania. You explore a large world full of blocked paths, which will later become accessible thanks to powers you’ll receive later on your travels. This is well-worn video game territory, and in recent years, there has been a slew of high-quality entrees in the genre. Games like Dead Cells (which was so faithful it later received official Castlevania content) and the excellent Metroid Dread lead the pack for recent Metroidvania’s, but we’re happy to say that The Lost Crown isn’t all that far behind.
In one crucial way, it actually surpasses those titles, and it’s by fixing one of the biggest annoyances of the genre and putting guide writers out of work all at once. As mentioned, the game is full of hidden paths that are only unlockable with powers found later in the game.
Suppose you run into these problems before you have the power you need. In that case, the game will let you take a screenshot of the area and place it on your map, meaning that later, when you start unlocking powers, you can check if it’s the correct mechanic you need to solve a puzzle without having to haul yourself back to that first area.
Nothing has made us more motivated to actually go back and collect everything in a game in quite some time. It’s innovative, simple, and completely alleviates the possibility of returning to an area only to realize you have the wrong power, which is crucial on a map this big.
Speaking of the map, the world of The Lost Crown is sprawling and hugely varied. Just as we thought we were getting to the point when we’d wrap around to the start of the game again to finish off the loose threads, a new huge chunk of the map opened up, sending us down a