an old hero from the 80s, who is now suddenly kind of colorful Fortnitefigure running around in childishly stylized environments? The reactions to the announcement of the game Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown were quite divided. Yes, it was time to modernize the classic series. But for some this felt very cynical.
The beloved by children Fortnite seems miles away from the slow and very difficult jumping and climbing game Prince of Persia, which frustrated and fascinated gamers in 1989. The prince had been thrown into a Persian prison, he had to escape. Achieving the jumps required razor-sharp timing.
The atmosphere and difficulty ensured that the series stuck with young gamers: exactly the kind of brand awareness that can be exploited for decades to come. This is what happened in the noughties, the heyday of the three-dimensional, aggressive brown-haired male game. In Ubisoft's vaunted The Sands of Time (2003), the Prince suddenly became a muscular stud who attacked enemies with a sword. He could also manipulate time to solve puzzles.
Yet the Prince eventually ended up in mothballs. Now he is once again entering a new era. A more complex era, where gamers are no longer necessarily young and three generations of gamers have different expectations. For the oldest, the game is again in two dimensions, for the youngest there is Fortnitesauce, highly stylized and full of color. In between lies an at times old-fashioned, spicy game, which draws inspiration from its predecessors and recent hits such as the difficult one Dark Souls. The fundament? The very old, but now completely hip Metroidvania formula, in which you have to gather new forces to make previously inaccessible areas accessible.
Such a mishmash of influences could easily have disintegrated into an expanding collection of parts without vision. However, Ubisoft Montpellier tightens the design well. The game loses some depth, but everything falls into place.
Rarely a gram of fat
You can already notice that tightness – rarely an gram of fat – in the story. You play Sargon, the youngest of a group of Persian warriors who call themselves the Immortals. One day the prince of Persia is kidnapped. The Immortals have to chase after the kidnapper, and end up in a magical maze where time behaves in strange ways. Walking through this maze you will meet older and younger versions of the different characters. The archetypal characters are charming, the light sauce of Persian culture is fascinating, and no one has boring speeches ready. Fine, but not very complex.
Furthermore, a solid game follows that is Metroidvania by the book. In principle, the maze is free to explore; only in the beginning you regularly encounter walls that cannot yet be broken and ravines that are just too wide to jump over. You climb, clamber and fight through thirteen varied and beautifully designed areas, which are then neatly filled in on the map you carry with you. Along the way you will find new powers: suddenly you can jump over that ravine with a burst of extra energy. Then you run back to old areas to find out what secrets lie on the other side of the gorge.
It's a classic formula because it works. Because the player is given more and more options, the puzzles can also gradually become more complex. Every time you think you have mastered the game, you are challenged again. There is little as wonderful as the feeling when you finally understand how to use a certain power to solve a puzzle – you have that often here.
The combat system is also well put together, although it never reaches the same heights as some puzzles – it is too simple for that. You have a bow, you have swords with which you can also repel attacks, and occasionally you can use a special fighting power. Bow, swords, powers can be enhanced or slightly modified by the right craftsman or amulet, but that's it.
There is also a small point of frustration here. The difficulty sometimes bounces up and down, fights against bosses suddenly become very difficult compared to all the other fighting work. While the puzzles give you the feeling that you are being trained to understand increasingly complex machinery, you jump The Lost Crown too hard here from 0 to 100. The intention of the creators is palpable: see, with this fight you are forced to learn to use this power! It just doesn't really work in relation to the whole.
Yet it also secretly brings back memories for this nineties child. In the original game you had to struggle to get through every screen, let alone an entire area. And so it is The Lost Crown maybe just what it wants to be: a solid game for two generations Prince of Persiafans – and a Fortnitegeneration that can become a fan.
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