Prince of Persia: Lost Crown review

Out of all the games developed by French developer Ubisoft, I've found their series of reinvented Prince of Persia games to be the most consistently compelling. That said, I was wary going into Prince of Persia Lost Crown, as it is a game that ditches the 3D puzzle-platforming that made the modern titles so successful and instead opts to be a metroidvania. This transition isn't without its problems, but Prince of Persia Lost Crown ultimately still captures the spirit of its predecessors better than expected.

The first thing I'll say about this Prince of Persia game (which is also true of all the other games in the series) is the story here is basically irrelevant. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that the narrative is so poorly told it doesn't feel worth paying close attention to. The big story beats do enough work to make the things you are asked to do make sense, and those things all happen in Mount Qaf, a place full of hidden mysteries and a lost prince you're questing to save.

This is your excuse for both going on a grand adventure and having said adventure leading you to discover and learn new traversal-based powers. In a nod to the series's time-manipulation systems, there's also some of that sprinkled around the environment and story. If you've played a metroidvania before, Lost Crown is very much one of those, but it's a game that leans very heavily on the blend of platforming, puzzling, and combat that has come to define the Prince of Persia games over the past couple decades.

When I say this game leans heavily on Prince of Persia-style mechanics, I really mean it. Almost immediately in your first combat encounter, you are taught a 2D version of the parry-and-dodge-heavy fighting system which is then only broken up by stretches of needing to chain together wall jumps and perform other acrobatics to unlock doors, reach hidden areas, etc. This game also adds its own systems and gameplay flair like a necklace with equippable charms to slightly modify your character's abilities, but outside of the excitement of collecting and upgrading these things, I did not swap any out in my entire playthrough. It just didn't seem important or worth it.

What was more important (and increasingly so as I got further in) was my ability to execute long chains of platforming essentially perfectly, which I had a grand time doing as a long-time Prince of Persia sicko. I wasted no time connecting a bluetooth controller and then spending sometimes what felt like a half hour trying to get between two rooms with a valley of spikes between them. What helps make this tough level of challenge tolerable (and even a bit compelling) is how Lost Crown wisely opts to instantly respawn you at the start of a failed challenge so failures--while still annoying--don't feel too punishing.

As much as I would say I enjoyed my time with Lost Crown, I must say the parts of it that deviate the most from other Prince of Persia games felt like the places where the game felt at its weakest. The nonlinear traversal that comes from being a metroidvania could feel aimless, the equipment system didn't seem to matter all that much, and combat failures--unlike platforming ones--led to game over screens that took you to your last save point, and those did feel overly punishing.

There are also a few tricky bugs to deal with here, which I'm not sure are specific to the iOS version of the game or not. The fast travel menu has a habit of bugging out and not letting you choose points that you've unlocked, certain cinematics have a tendency to freeze up, and there were a couple times where certain mechanisms just didn't work unless I re-loaded my save. None of these stopped me from seeing Prince of Persia Lost Crown to the end, but they definitely hampered my desire to try and find more secrets before the end (it also doesn't help that this game is entirely too long).

I'm surprised and delighted that Prince of Persia Lost Crown isn't just a metroidvania capitalizing on a recognizable name. To be clear, it is definitely that, but it is also a game that has more success feeling like a Prince of Persia game than I could have imagined. This comes at a cost, and there are some other issues to hold the game back, but the things it gets right about its namesake are so good that I can and did look past most of these issues and had a great time.