The Prince of Persia series has a long and storied history going back decades, and I know none of it. The latest, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, from developer Ubisoft Montpellier, has me regretting that because if this game indicates what else awaits me in the franchise, I’ve clearly been missing out. The Lost Crown uses exhilarating platforming, a deep combat loop, and more to create a new Metroidvania classic. While I would like a more compelling story and a few tweaks to its systems, I struggled to put The Lost Crown down, taking my gameplay sessions into the late hours of the night. The Lost Crown is a fascinating and highly successful reemergence for the beloved series.
Notably, you do not play as the Prince of Persia in The Lost Crown; instead, you control Sargon, one of the seven Immortals, elite warriors who protect Persia, its Queen Thomyris, and the titular Prince Ghassan. However, Ghassan is kidnapped, sending the Immortals to Mount Qaf, where a labyrinthian adventure awaits Sargon and friends. The entire game takes place here, and by the end of my 21-hour adventure, I intimately knew its various biomes, secrets, shortcuts, and safe havens. One of my favorite parts of The Lost Crown was watching the foggy map of Mount Qaf reveal itself as a series of connected hallways, hidden chambers, and platforming puzzle playgrounds, in part because exploring all of it was an absolute treat. However, I would have liked a better fast-travel system, and sometimes there’s too much backtracking.
On current-gen consoles, The Lost Crown runs at a smooth-as-butter 120 frames per second, with a 4K resolution to boot. I’m not the biggest fan of its art style, which features gorgeous backdrops and painterly environments but playdough-esque characters, but it’s hard to deny how good it all looks in motion.
The Lost Crown stands tall, if not above in most instances, to some of the genre’s best. Combat starts simple, with a heavy emphasis on parrying, but grows into a deep system of extended ground attacks, air combos, projectile combo extenders, fast dash-kicks, and more. Amulets with special properties, like increased melee damage or frost resistance, for example, are hidden throughout, further adding to the customization of your Sargon. Athra Surges use special energy built up through combat and they can shift the weight of an encounter in an instant. And to round out the toolkit, Sargon collects time powers throughout the journey, which grant him powerful abilities for use in combat and exploration.
Like the various puzzles of Mount Qaf, every encounter presents its own predicament; I had to think fast and attack faster to take down new enemies with moves I hadn’t seen. And bosses are the combat’s crème
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As you make your way through Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, you’ll find that there are plenty of platforming sections that will test your mettle as a player. However, there’s one challenge in particular that will have you banging your head against the wall. It involves a room off to the side from the elevator at the Haven, and you must make it through two minutes of perfect jumps, dashes, and other skills in order to complete it and get a new skin for Sargon.
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