The Sands of Time was released last year as a breath of fresh air to the Prince of Persia franchise. The 1999 attempt at a three dimensional Prince of Persia ironically ended up flat and feeling like a poorly made Tomb Raider clone that substituted smart puzzles and enjoyable action with clunky controls and action that wouldn’t entertain a toddler. The Sands of Time was an excellent game on pretty much every count. Its graphics were superb, making full use of the now overused bloom effect and the gameplay was just as awe inspiring. The game placed you in the role of the “Prince of Persia” (who would have guessed?) who mindlessly got into things he shouldn’t have, namely the sands of time. These sands granted the Prince extraordinary powers over the course of time, allowing him to slow it down, or even turn it back to remove himself from danger. The Prince never thought to read the fine print unfortunately, as anyone who touches the sands is marked for death. The original game’s ending was open to the point where you didn’t really know what kind of life the Prince would lead after his adventures with the Sands. Warrior Within shows us that his life took many turns for the worse. He has been through wars, lost loved ones and knows that death is truly after him in its true form. Yet the prince decides to defy his fate to the last inch of his ability and he will use anything to his advantage. The result is a game that matches the quality of the original, but slips in a few small areas preventing it from being a step above. 

The Prince journeys to a set of ancient ruins where the Sands of Time was formed. When he reaches the ruins, he discovers that he can go back and forth through the past and present. The Prince will do anything to stop the sands from being created, which would undo the dark events of his past and allow him to live his life without death crashing down on him at every corner. The Prince will meet several characters during his journey through the ruins, but as with before, the emphasis is on the gameplay, not the drama.

 

The Sands of Time was one of the tightest games in this generation in terms of controls and Warrior Within continues that title gracefully. The Prince controls magnificently and always responds to proper combo entries and acrobatics. The Prince happens to be very agile, and it’s required since about half of the game is made up of integrated environmental puzzles. The puzzles often consist of the prince having to make it from the base of a tower to the very top by hopping from tree to tree and side stepping ledges or things like moving a set of levers to make the proper path. This is one game where the puzzles feel natural and not forced. The Prince can grab on to ledges, shimmy, climb, backflip, tightwalk, and even toss swords with the intent of decapitating enemies. His arsenal of moves is vast and whether it be combat or puzzles, the Prince always has something up his sleeves for every situation. The puzzles in the game range from challenging to mind warping but there is almost always a clue in the area you’re in to keep you from pulling too many hairs out. Once the proper sequence of a puzzle is mastered (after trial and error) the execution looks like something out of a Hollywood action movie.  

The enemies the Prince faces are pretty much all made of sand. Yes, you heard it, sand. This doesn’t mean they are any less dangerous as the AI in Warrior Within aims for the offensive almost all the time. If you make one wrong move you can be sure they will be handing your ass to you in several packages in less than a minute. Any combo you pull off, they can surely do it ten times better if you don’t properly combine blocking and counter attacks. This also happens to be where my one nitpick comes into play. Sometimes there is a great distance between save points and you will have gone through a puzzle, a horde of enemies, another puzzle and then when your health is at pretty much nothing, another group of enemies. It’s almost impossible not to slip up on the defensive every once and awhile and when this does happen, starting over again, is not a pretty thing. What comes off as passable for puzzles, is simply annoying with combat. Boss battles were particularly underwhelming in The Sands of Time and its obvious after playing Warrior Within, they really wanted to fix that. To some degree, they did, but the end result often feels forced. You will encounter a few mini-bosses on your journeys including a suspicious crow demon that just doesn’t want to die. When you notice the Prince setting his eye on a particular demon for too long, you can anticipate a big drama scene and then a full on sword fight. So, there are more battles, but don’t expect to have much fun with them. If you let your guard down once, expect to be obliterated and if you defend too much, they will always find one move to rip you out of it. The result is longer battles caused from a constant cycle of “you hit me, and then I counter” fare. Don’t worry though, the feeling of satisfaction after finally defeating your foe is priceless and its only lasting negative effect seems to be on affecting your decision to play the game over. Well ok, that could be pretty bad if you happened to have a nightmare of a time with them, but the game is so solid everywhere else, it’s pretty forgivable as the game leads on.