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Notes

I've already played this on my PS2 when I was a kid, so my experience may differ from someone playing the game for the first time.

Overview

This is a game I played long ago as a kid, when I saw it on Steam I end up buying it to play it again, and it was really fun, especially seeing how some parts that took me ages to go through as a kid are actually pretty easy for me now. It's not the best game of the franchise, but it's definitely a great game in many aspects. It's kinda difficult to describe the plot without giving spoilers, but you basically control a prince trying to reverse the effects of the quasi-apocalypse caused by the Sands of Time.

Gameplay

It's a 3D adventure game with a lot of platforming in the form of parkour, there are some puzzles and timed sections as well as fights, which have a very interesting mechanic, you are much faster and more acrobatic than your enemies, but they are very good at blocking your attacks and won't stop fighting until you use a finishing move (which may be used when they are down or when you "freeze" them). The game also gives you some degree of time control, so you can reverse and slow down time, which may come in handy during the parkour and battles.

Graphics

The game features 3D graphics, they aren't super realistic, but they do look pretty decent and well done if you consider this was originally a PS2 game, there are also some pretty nice scenarios through the game.

Audio

There's no music during gameplay, only during cutscenes, battle sequences and some special levels and actions, the rest of the time you will only hear ambient sounds, which actually fits well with the atmosphere of the game. The sound effects are well done. There's also a really nice song in the credits.

Price

The game has a fair price for the content it provides.

Difficulty

It's not particularly a difficult game, but it has some unique mechanics you'll have to get used to. The puzzles are simple, but some may take a while to figure out what you have to do. There's a lot of parkour, especially wall running, but it's not really difficult and you can literally reverse time if you make a mistake. The fights are different from most hack 'n' slash games, since enemies will frequently parry your attacks and won't stop fighting until you use a finishing move in them, they are slow but they always attack in groups and surround you, so you'll find yourself having to parry their attacks too, once you get used to it, it becomes rather easy. However, I do remember that as kid I had a lot of trouble with the parkour and fights, and I did play other Prince of Persia games afterwards, so maybe I just think it's easy because I already have experience with it.

Duration

The game is short, especially if you have no problem with it's parkour system.

Replayability

You may want to play again to find life or sand tank upgrades you may have missed, but otherwise, there's not much reason to replay.

Achievements

There's none.

Problems


The plot feels a little rushed.
Next to the end, when you are going after Farah, there's a bug where she'll be just standing in a platform, where you can even attack (and kill) her, this doesn't affect the game and she's seen somewhere else in a further cutscene (I remember this bug also happened on the PS2 version)
The secret wall that unlocked the original Prince of Persia in the "Above the Baths" chapter seems to have been removed in this version.
When jumping, the prince may collide with something and float for some seconds.
No Steam Cloud save.
The game wasn't able to detect my gamepad, to solve this I had to go to its settings on Steam and manually enable it, and even so the gamepad was only detected during the gameplay, but in the menus I had to use the mouse.
The tutorial buttons only show buttons for the keyboard, even if you are playing through a gamepad.