Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

A Superb metroidvania amazingly balanced. It can conquer newcomers and leave a sweet taste in the mouth of those who really love these kind of labyrinths with platforms, action, habilities and puzzles.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown makes it difficult to put down the controller. The fluid action, the beautiful animations and designs, the creative levels and ways you can use the map... I could go on and on. Platforming and action are masterfully balanced and braving the game world and its secrets is as challenging as it is rewarding. There are some bugs here and there during boss fights, and the occasional lack of button responsiveness, but that really doesn't make the game any less fun. This is the Prince of Persia game we deserve in 2024.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a successful reinvention of the dormant franchise that carves out a marvelous new identity, one that clearly has a bright future. While it doesn’t revolutionize the Metroidvania genre, it certainly elevates it to new heights by refining it and blending in the best aspects of previous Prince of Persia entries. Combined with a terrific soundtrack, a stylish aesthetic, and an intriguing narrative that avoids the pitfall of becoming too overbearing, The Lost Crown marks an excellent start to 2024.

The Lost Crown doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it does an excellent job of implementing the gameplay loop of exploration, character improvement and progression.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a good Metroidvania and a welcome return for this long dormant series. We just wish it had dynamic difficulty as some bosses are just that bit too tough. There’s only so many times we can face failure.

Fluid, well-paced, easy to handle and with multiple settings to adapt to all ways of playing, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown sets the bar high. Relying on the best references of the genre at the risk of not letting its personal touch twirl, the app ticks all the boxes of a very good action adventure platformer. Ubisoft has created a Metroidvania that meets the specifications, clean, without major burrs, but also without a little something that makes it as unique as a legendary gem. If you like the genre, go for it.

In its combat and tricky platforming sections, The Lost Crown is mostly a blast. The problem is that it’s surrounded by dull exploration, frequently underwhelming bosses, and enough small frustrations to keep it from greatness. I’m baffled at how little it dives into its unique frozen-time premise, because the moments where it does are the best parts of the game. The Lost Crown’s high points are enough to recommend it to anyone looking for a good action platformer, but if you want a game that scratches the itch for satisfying exploration, you may walk away disappointed.

A triumphant return for the franchise. The Lost Crown nails everything a great metroidvania needs: tight combat, inventive time-based platforming, and a world that rewards exploration. Criminally underrated.

7- Great One of the great metroidvanias and a triumphant return of the Prince of Persia series, the Lost Crown knows where to distinguish itself amongst its genre contemporaries and where to adhere to tried and tested tradition. The game nails the fundamentals of combat and platforming and actually surpasses any other metroidvania in its robust accessibility options and QOL features that make it the smoothest experience in the genre. Combat is delivered in a unique flavor approximating Super Smash Bros of all things, with the ability to have directional attack inputs, charge attacks, combo extenders, and enemy juggling that puts the flow into the players hands and allows you to combo difficult foes to death with attack chains- if you’ve got the skill to pull them off. There’s an impressive boss lineup that really pick up in the latter half of the game where they’re genuinely great and require you to use your whole attack and movement arsenal. Beyond combat, the PoP series was always known for its creative platforming, and Ubisoft Montreal have once again delivered on this front. Though the act of platforming is not as hard as a game like Silksong, platforming puzzles are deep and can prove to be real head-scratchers. The negatives of this game are in its storyline and artistic presentation. This comes down to taste, but the Riot Games-like visual style is not to my liking, and some of the characters voicing felt off to me. Sargon’s voice was really well done but again seemed an odd fit for the character. The music is serviceable but not memorable, and the storyline lost me at various points. Though the events were exciting on the surface, there wasn’t really emotional or thematic underpinnings to said events to give them the weight they needed. All in all, the Lost Crown successfully brought Prince of Persia back from hiatus and back to its 2D platforming roots with great finesse. I strongly recommend it.

Gameplay : 7 Graphics : 6 Story : 8 Sound : 8 **********************************************************************************Overall : 7 (not finished)

You can just spam the attack button through the map and just not die. Game is not very fun imo but maybe I was just spoiled by Hollow Knight.

Overpriced, overhyped, overtuned, and poorly optimized. Playing on PS5, there is infrequent but consistent frame hitching that can severely impact gameplay. The game requires very precise timing and spacing for both platforming and combat and these things can be adversely affected by an inopportune hitch. Post release of the DLC, the additional content is made available within the core game far too early and can result in the player being waylaid into an area where abilities and upgrades are completely independent from the main game and very little carries over when returning to the campaign. The gameplay content of the DLC area is significantly more difficult than the main game and can lead to undue frustration by funneling players away from the experience they were enjoying only to present them with with lengthy, overly complicated puzzle-platforming challenges for virtually no discernible reward. It’s an absolutely mind boggling decision on the part of the developers to, for all intents and purposes, force relatively new players into this content that was clearly intended for players looking for a more hardcore challenge. This mode does include some additional storytelling but it revolves around a character that, at the point the mode becomes available, has appeared for perhaps a total of two minutes and uttered three sentences. Again, why the developers thought it was wise to position a lengthy, frustrating mode about a character the player knows nothing about and therefore cares little for so early into the game is baffling. I’m continually convinced that the art of game design is concept that is all but lost on today’s developers. Once, game design revolved around finding ingenious ways to create new and exciting experiences within the limitations of the hardware. Now, the only limitation (excluding time and money) is that we still can’t quite achieve truly believable, photo realistic human characters. With so few limitations, most developers don’t have the restraint to achieve what I’d call elegant game design. Because they can do everything, they will. The Lost Crown’s combat noticeably suffers from this failure of conceptualization. The most basic fodder enemies have numerous attacks, counters, and evasive maneuvers. This is true of all enemies in the game, including the very first that you encounter. Basic enemies that have projectile attacks can hurl them in any direction they choose. Tools that make implementing these actions simple means that they’re included with little consideration for why they’re being included. Because they can, they will. Almost all enemies are overtuned in this way, with the even lowliest grunts having nearly as many offensive and defensive options available to them as the player themselves. This means that combat can always be fun and exciting… or frustrating. Running around, exploring and platforming can be brought to a halt in an instant by a single, stubborn enemy grunt. It affects the game’s pacing in a way that, while not ruinous, is not ideal. This unnecessary complexity, incorporated without consideration for how it affects other aspects of gameplay, is mirrored in the DLC’s tediously lengthy and complicated platforming challenges. In the DLC, your playtime will be padded with lengthy treks and numerous difficult jumps and dashes from a faraway checkpoint to the spot where failed by the slightest mistake, only to fail again a few steps past that. These puzzle-platforming challenges are designed in such a way that you can never see what’s ahead so your progress is limited to extremely small gains that you only achieve by doing the preceding segments countless times. I found it maddeningly unfun. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown retails for $39.99. ($49.99 for the Complete Edition) While Metroid Dread might have justified its $60 price tag, I do not feel that PoP:TLC justifies its asking price. The core game is competently made aside from the poor optimization on my platform of choice but it lacks some of the polish and charm of better games in the genre. I believe that it also loses sight of what makes a truly compelling Metroidvania; atmosphere. The map layouts and design are fine but lack the character to be truly memorable or immersive. The backgrounds look decent but they’re just kind of there and don’t really draw you into the fantasy as much as they could and fail to create any real intrigue. I paid $15 for The Lost Crown new on disc and an additional $5 for the DLC at a 50% discount, which was a savings of $30 from the initial asking price and still $5 cheaper than the current sale price of buying both as digital copies. I think this range of $20-$25 if a fair price for anyone interested in playing this title. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND postponing the start of the DLC until some time after it becomes available as attempting it that early greatly diminished my enjoyment of the game and irrevocably damaged my opinion of the game as a whole.