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StarTopic Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown |ST| The Franchise Formerly Starring Prince

ngpdrew

ngpdrew

From the Rafters
Moderator
Pronouns
He/Him
Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none that you have ever heard.

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Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Release Date: January 18, 2024
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4|5, Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows
Standard Edition: $49.99
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
Genre: Metroidvania, inexplicably


So, where were we?

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Ah, yes, that's right.

Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am and why I say this.

Wait, what? That's not the right story? Okay, okay. Let me try again.

It was the worst of times and the worst of times for the Persian Empire, that is until a legendary group of soldiers known as the Immortals arrived and felled invading forces from the Kushan Empire. Their celebration is cut short by the sudden abduction of the titular Prince Ghassan! Thus begins a trek to Mount Qaf to rescue the prince and discover the motives behind his sudden kidnapping.

Wait, who am I?

You would have good reason to look at a game entitled "Prince of Persia" and suspect that you, the player, will control the Prince of Persia. I mean, you did in 2010! And before that in 2008! Then before that in 2005, 2004, and 2003! Heck, you played as the Prince of Persia all the way back in 1989!

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Alas, wanderer: In Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (A Ubisoft Original), the player takes control of Sargon, a member of the immortals whose mentor, General Anahita, is responsible for Prince Ghassan's disappearance. Sargon is the youngest member of the Immortals, but with his trusty dual blades Qays and Layla he is far from green on the battlefield.

What am I going to do now?

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Why, save the Prince of Persia, of course! To do so, you must navigate the sprawling Citadel with its many spikes, holes with spikes, flying logs with spikes, vertical surfaces with spikes, and, of course, spike pits (with spikes). For the first time in the franchise's storied history, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a Metroidvania, or Search Action game if you're nasty. Progression consists of navigating the Citadel, identifying points of interest for current or future exploration, and unlocking numerous abilities to aid in said current or future exploration. And I do mean numerous! Like, seriously. The control mapping screen consists almost entirely of text boxes saying "Unknown Ability". Not to mention all the amulets and Simurgh abilities you can earn or purchase from a merchant.

So...is it any good?

Hell yeah.

Sorry. It's just been a long time...

"The Prince of Persia series has a long and storied history going back decades, and I know none of it. The latest, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, from developer Ubisoft Montpellier, has me regretting that because if this game indicates what else awaits me in the franchise, I’ve clearly been missing out. The Lost Crown uses exhilarating platforming, a deep combat loop, and more to create a new Metroidvania classic." - Wesley LeBlanc, Game Informer

"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" - Michael Damiani, Easy Allies

Current Aggregates
Metacritic (86)
OpenCritic (86)


I'm in!
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Good! There's a lot to learn in Sargon's debut adventure. Stay tuned as I update this humble |ST| with tips, tricks, and temper tantrums as I miss another parry to meet an early death.
 
Ah it's finally here! That title is genius! :D

Anyway, I really wished the demo would've given you a bossfight as a taster... because holy shit is the game kicking my ass. Though it's admittedly less the bosses but more the stuff in between that's giving me a real run for my patience so far. Dying in the middle between two checkpoint trees because the trashmobs have too much hp and there's no health pickups so I have to backtrack all the way again and hope I'm surviving this time is really frustrating. Especially in the obligatory poison swamp level (spoilers for I think chapter 3?)where they took your fucking map away.

Also man, this game is pretty verbose for a Metroidvania. A lot of recorded dialogue, lots of cutscenes, that might actually be a dealbreaker for some people.

I really want to like the combat but I'm not sure if it's me or if it's just a bit too complex for its own good. Everything feels a bit too fancy and too animated for its own good, so I never really get "into the zone" and mostly stick with basic 1-2-3 :LOL: I don't have enough slots yet to really experiment with talismans, but it's a shame you seemingly can't overcharm like in Hollow Knight. Platforming can get frustrating too but it's mostly my own fault, probably. Really hate the bow handling.

The map is fantastic. So helpful with all the symbols and the memory recording stuff is a revelation.


Some tips I have after the first 5ish hours:
  • Definitely do the trainings when you get to that point. They do give you some nice tips and you get free crystals for completing them.
  • Parry timing is a bit different from Metroid Dread, you definitely need to wait for the enemy a bit more (at least from my pov)
  • You're able to deflect the Chakrams back into the enemy by parrying, that's not terribly efficient (yet?) but it's funny and can keep enemies at bay
  • Sliding behind enemies is almost always a good move!
  • Bow kinda sucks tbh
  • Unlike in other games of the franchise, you can't damage boost through spikes, unfortunately.
 
Great ST ngpdrew! I don’t know when, but I’m hoping to dive in sooner than later.
 
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jariw said:
How long is the game (compared to Metroid Dread for example)?
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About 20 hours is what IGN said and he was about 85% completion.


Edit: the game is freaking fantastic and well worth $50. If you don't have a backlog, this is one to buy now. I have a backlog and put this in front of it all, it's that good. Kinda can't believe it.
 
I've played 12h already since thursday, very rare for me to play this much. This game is already top level in the genre for me, and there is still a lot more to do.
 
I'm not too far into it, but I've been having a lot of fun so far. Combat is easy but really snappy and landing hits and counters on enemies is super satisfying. There's especially a lot of polish on the animation of the enemies. They all have a lot of personality put in their movements and stances. I'm a tokusatsu fan, so giving personality to the monsters is kind of my jam :D

Platforming is also getting better and better as I unlock more ways to traverse the world. and the side-quests adding more interesting lore about the whole curse is getting me really intrigued. Probably the best Ubisoft game in years for me.
 
Fantastic OP, Drew!

Game Stop didn’t get their shipment yet because of the winter storm that we had, so I haven’t been able to pick up my preorder. The one time I go physical 😵‍💫
 
0
TLDR: it's Hollow Prince of Metroid. Level design is excellent, combat and narrative are alright, platforming is juicy. If you liked Dread or HK, get this.

Story: Game is very talky. Like, skipping cutscenes the first playthrough talky. But narratively it's nice, good to see them going back to the timey-wimey wellspring. I think Hollow Knight immerses the player into it's narrative a lot more elegantly though.

Level design wise this game is up there so far (halfway through). Sections have great flow and are distinct. Overall progression makes more sense than Metroid Dread, and paces out it's upgrades much better than Hollow Knight - the two Metroidvania games I've had most experience with.

It's definitely cribbing a whole lot from both of these, the Alchemist/Library section for instance feels a whole lot like the Soul Sanctum from Hollow Knight. Fortunately they inject plenty vintage PoP vibes.

The game feel is a lot more floaty than Dread, and combat isn't as snappy. They seem to take an animation-priority approach where both Dread and Hollow Knight allow you to make course corrections up to the very last second. Hollow Knight's combat overall is much more readable - I always know what killed me in that game. PoP can be hard to read.

Platforming is fantastic though - it has more momentum than both Dread and Hollow Knight and feels much more impactful. You can feel the dev's pedigree on this front.

Art is nice and varied, and well executed, but feels a bit too comic-booky to me. It's not as artful as Hollow Knight by far.

Tech-wise it's the single most impressive use of Unity I've seen on the Switch. Native res 60fps, short load times... After years of wonky Unity ports it's a revelation. It doesn't look as good as Metroid Dread, but it's very close. Impressive!
 
This game is really fucking good. Shame on those who looked down on it after the reveal because it's 2D (not even gonna mention the racist ones)
 
Woo, an ST!

I'm a good ways into the game, playing on the highest difficulty and it's absolutely amazing. Combat is a lot of fun, bosses are really well designed, platforming is pretty challenging and also a ton of fun, the zones are really distinct with basically wholly unique enemies, assets, and gimmicks, and the game just feels so smooth to play

manfromthedam said:
The game feel is a lot more floaty than Dread, and combat isn't as snappy. They seem to take an animation-priority approach where both Dread and Hollow Knight allow you to make course corrections up to the very last second. Hollow Knight's combat overall is much more readable - I always know what killed me in that game. PoP can be hard to read.
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Generally agree with everything else in your post but do feel like pointing out that this game does let you do the course correction approach for everything except the last hit of the standard melee combo, which is committal. I actually think HK does animation priority more, but the animations in that game are intentionally short so you don't feel it as much

Edit: while I do feel like Dread still controls smoother, PoP feels like it has more opportunity for its smoothness to shine than Dread typically offers
 
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B. Spaceman said:
This game is really fucking good. Shame on those who looked down on it after the reveal because it's 2D (not even gonna mention the racist ones)
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Can you imagine being mad at a game called Prince of Persia for not starring a white guy?
 
ToTk consumed my 2023 in its entirely... So much backlog, but I am looking to play this game once I have a change.
 
0
if I had a nickle for everytime a twin boss fight made me rage quit a Prince of Persia game, I'd have two nickles. That's not a lot but it's kinda funny it happened twice now.
 
manfromthedam said:
TLDR: it's Hollow Prince of Metroid. Level design is excellent, combat and narrative are alright, platforming is juicy. If you liked Dread or HK, get this.

Story: Game is very talky. Like, skipping cutscenes the first playthrough talky. But narratively it's nice, good to see them going back to the timey-wimey wellspring. I think Hollow Knight immerses the player into it's narrative a lot more elegantly though.

Level design wise this game is up there so far (halfway through). Sections have great flow and are distinct. Overall progression makes more sense than Metroid Dread, and paces out it's upgrades much better than Hollow Knight - the two Metroidvania games I've had most experience with.

It's definitely cribbing a whole lot from both of these, the Alchemist/Library section for instance feels a whole lot like the Soul Sanctum from Hollow Knight. Fortunately they inject plenty vintage PoP vibes.

The game feel is a lot more floaty than Dread, and combat isn't as snappy. They seem to take an animation-priority approach where both Dread and Hollow Knight allow you to make course corrections up to the very last second. Hollow Knight's combat overall is much more readable - I always know what killed me in that game. PoP can be hard to read.

Platforming is fantastic though - it has more momentum than both Dread and Hollow Knight and feels much more impactful. You can feel the dev's pedigree on this front.

Art is nice and varied, and well executed, but feels a bit too comic-booky to me. It's not as artful as Hollow Knight by far.

Tech-wise it's the single most impressive use of Unity I've seen on the Switch. Native res 60fps, short load times... After years of wonky Unity ports it's a revelation. It doesn't look as good as Metroid Dread, but it's very close. Impressive!
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That's... About my impression after 5-10 minutes demo

Graphics are good, but I'm not a fan of the style. Movement and fighting more floaty and fancy in looks, but less snappy. Way to talkative.
But overall felt good, as if I would enjoy it when I want to get into it. The level design in the first few rooms was slightly to linear, but then again hollow knights first area wasn't to spicy either.
I could see this winning on platforming easily against HK.

As a not PoP fan (well warrior within back then was kinda fun I guess) I will keep this on my watchlist for when I have more time.

Edit: ok, played a few more minutes of it.
Fighting is annoying since enemies are damage sponges (fighting feels more like blasphemous then the Metroid or hollow knight) but the platforming has real potential.
 
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Game is good, but they went overboard with the inspiration from Hollow Knight and Metroid... whenever you reach THAT boss, you'll know.

Performance wise is more inconsistent than Dread and I found a bug that locked me out from a quest. After searching about it, it seems it's pretty common and there is no solution. So, if you are gonna take a quest about a parrot, don't save if your quest log appears blank in relation to that quest or you'll be screwed.

Most satisfying aspect of it for me is the abilities. All of them so far are great and serve for great puzzles and platforming.
 
oomoepoo said:
if I had a nickle for everytime a twin boss fight made me rage quit a Prince of Persia game, I'd have two nickles. That's not a lot but it's kinda funny it happened twice now.
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you’re giving lots of folks flashbacks to those robo-chozo fights in Dread
 
Sander RX said:
If Sakurai ever decides to add Prince to Smash, then he can just copy most of Sargon’s kit from here, with little modification, and call it a day.

This combat is rather Smash-like.
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We gotta find a different way to word that because "Sakurai adds Prince to Smash" paints a very purple picture in my mind 🤣
 
9 hours in (yes I'm binging this :p ) and dang... It gets better and better. Hollow Knight has this improvement as well, but that game's opening 2-3 hours are a slog. This starts out much better than HK, and so far - from a visceral gameplay perspective - it continues to up that game. Dang.

I still miss the snappy feeling of Dread, but that might be mainly due to animation? Sargon's running animation is a little janky (feet don't align with walking speed), while Samus has the best running animation I've ever seen. Most other actions do feel great though, and input lag is very low.

I'm only halfway through it seems...! This game is huge, and incredibly varied. It's backtracking feels great because of the multiple paths per screen. If this keeps up - and it look like it might - it'll be an equal to it's main inspirations. HK really starts to sing near the end, while Dread kinda falls apart in it's final moments in my opinion. This starts out better than HK, now I hope it ends well too.

It's a tad buggy though - nothing gamebreaking, but music getting stuck, visual glitches, camera getting stuck... It needs a bit more polish.

NabiscoFelt said:
Generally agree with everything else in your post but do feel like pointing out that this game does let you do the course correction approach for everything except the last hit of the standard melee combo, which is committal. I actually think HK does animation priority more, but the animations in that game are intentionally short so you don't feel it as much
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Good point! Turned out I was being a little too button-mashy.

Tip for other folks playing: early on there's a character that offers training. Do it. This combat system has a lot more friction than it's inspirations, but it also allows for some great expression if you get to know it. A few minutes of training and it clicked much more for me.

Aether said:
Fighting is annoying since enemies are damage sponges (fighting feels more like blasphemous then the Metroid or hollow knight) but the platforming has real potential.
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I agree - enemies have a tad too many hitpoints in the beginning of the game. I feel like they do this because they want you to learn to read the animations and start countering. A good counter can often defeat a guy in one go.

Getting the first sword upgrade is strongly recommended - without it, some enemies feel a bit too much like minibosses.
 
chocolate_supra said:
We gotta find a different way to word that because "Sakurai adds Prince to Smash" paints a very purple picture in my mind 🤣
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I have no idea what other Prince you are talking about. The only Prince I know runs on walls and wears blue, not purple!
 
I completed the game and got 100% of all items.

Overall great game, but the switch version had some unfortunate bugs, including one that outright crashed my game and a couple that forced me to hard reset the game app to fix.

The game crash one was kinda funny though:
I had a Menolias arrow stored from the boss fight and trying to release it outside of the fight crashed the game.
 
Sander RX said:
If Sakurai ever decides to add Prince to Smash, then he can just copy most of Sargon’s kit from here, with little modification, and call it a day.

This combat is rather Smash-like.
Click to expand...
It's apparently very intentional since the devs have quoted Smash as an inspiration for the combat
 
I'm about 12 hours in so far and I like this game a lot. I do agree that low level enemies can feel a bit spongy, and even do a bit too much damage. I've died dozens of times, but the penalty for death is typically forgiving. So it doesn't bother me too much. I adore Dread and that is probably why I like this game so much, lots of similarities. It's obvious that the team was heavily inspired by games like Dread and HK, but this is not some cheap rip off. The world feels massive and encourages exploration without locking you out of areas at every turn. I need to do some training to learn the combat system better, been getting by with hack and slash along with a lot of dodging and some countering. Hard to say where I would rate this game. But right now I can't see it being less than an 8 out of 10. And could end up being a 9 out of 10.

I did have the game crash on me once and the game appeared stuck while accepting a side quest at one point. The NPC stayed in place and I couldn't leave the room. After entering the menu screen a couple times, the NPC finally ran off and I could leave the room. So this game needs a little patch work, but it's not broken by any means. There does seem to be a persistent hitch when traversing some areas. Runs at 60fps almost always, but can often drop a couple frames when entering new areas. There is one specific area in the forest that seemed to chug a bit, but overall I would say the performance is as good or better than Dread.
 
This game keeps kicking my ass and I keep coming back. I really did not expect this game to be so difficult!
 
Goodtwin said:
the game appeared stuck while accepting a side quest at one point. The NPC stayed in place and I couldn't leave the room. After entering the menu screen a couple times, the NPC finally ran off and I could leave the room.
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I had the exact same glitch happen too (I assume you also had it happen with the moon traveler).
 
You literally HAVE to create a Ubisoft account to play this? You can’t just say ‘nah’?
 
SammyJ9 said:
Interesting, I got it on PS5 (had points) and it wouldn’t let me skip it. Not a huge deal, just kind of annoying
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According to Digital Foundry, while that prompt can be skipped on Switch, on other platforms it will force login as long as internet connection is detected.


(See 14:30)

Which is freaking lame and disrespectful to your paying customer.

There are less pushy, in-your-face tactics to inform the user and give them the option. Treat them like you respect them.
Anyway still planning to pick this one up on the strength of it's quality and the fun demo.
 
Played a couple hours and enjoying it a lot so far. The acrobatics and movement feel great - the combat is… okay. Not bad, but a bit limited so hopefully that gets better as it goes.

The art style isn’t necessarily my favorite but the presentation is good and I like the characters. I don’t really get the complaints that there’s too much talking and text - it feels totally fine? Unless you’re wanting there to be essentially zero - which I get the impression is what some metroidvania players want - then this feels perfectly good to me so far.
 
uncleoptimus said:
According to Digital Foundry, while that prompt can be skipped on Switch, on other platforms it will force login as long as internet connection is detected.


(See 14:30)

Which is freaking lame and disrespectful to your paying customer.

There are less pushy, in-your-face tactics to inform the user and give them the option. Treat them like you respect them.
Anyway still planning to pick this one up on the strength of it's quality and the fun demo.
Click to expand...

Well that's one way to guarantee I'll buy it on Switch 🤣
 
This thread's title is absolute perfection.

As for the game, it's absolutely awesome. An early contender for game of the year as far as I'm concerned, and it doesn't leave anything to be desired compared to other greats of the genre. The map is huge, the platforming is fantastic, and it balances freedom to explore with guided progress in a much better way than Metroid Dread does.
 
Looking forward to starting it... at some point! In the mean time, hope y'all have fun.
 
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manfromthedam said:
Tech-wise it's the single most impressive use of Unity I've seen on the Switch. Native res 60fps, short load times... After years of wonky Unity ports it's a revelation. It doesn't look as good as Metroid Dread, but it's very close. Impressive!
Click to expand...
Yes, impressive that it's a Unity game, and that would explain the frame hickups at the start of many cutscenenes. IMO, I think other Unity games like Hollow Knight, the Ori games and Cuphead are up there as well, but The Lost Crown seems larger in scope.
 
SammyJ9 said:
Played a couple hours and enjoying it a lot so far. The acrobatics and movement feel great - the combat is… okay. Not bad, but a bit limited so hopefully that gets better as it goes.
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It does - by a mile! Halfway through, the amount of expression you can do in combat - or indeed, movement in general - is very compelling.

And yeah, the narrative is alright. My personal tastes are geared toward "less is more" though - I really like Metroid Prime and HK's approach. Or indeed, Breath of the Wild. I've heard it described as "immersion storytelling": the setup is lean, and the details start seeping through over the course of an entire playthrough during your interaction with the gameworld.

I actually think PoP does this too, but layers a more conventional narrative on top. Which I understand - they're obviously aiming for a wider audience than weirdos like me who have 40 hours in an excruciatingly difficult game about magical bugs.
Mbolibombo said:
Started it yesterday, and yeah it's really really good.

The one negative for me so far is.. it's too talky. WE'll see how that turns out in the end.
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The narrative fortunately gets both more interesting and less heavy-handed as the game goes on.
 
I hope whoever designed those Sacred Archive puzzles is very proud of themselves. I also hope they step on a Lego block barefoot.
 
Finished PoP today (89% completion) and loved it.

There's many details I adore like the facial animations during the special techs (wether Sargon is doing one or being hit by one).
Did the entire game with Farsi voice acting and it was pretty good.

The map is massive and there's a lot to see, even found a secret area because I missed a jump in a place (look at your map, you'll see the bottom of the zone is like _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ). I love Sargon's character design, the boss battles are hard yet doable, when you die you only lose 10 Time Crystals and everything you've done before is still done. The game have a bit of Hollow Knight with the amulets but that's all, no pushiment for dying (aside for coming back to the last Wak Wak Tree you stayed at).

Also liked the characters and the story.

I wish there was a way to take clean screenshots tho because there's some very beautiful places in the game.

I did encounter a few annoying bugs tho, like :
- A side quest tasks you to defeat 8 Persepolis soldiers. One of them is in the depths and he died out of the platform (I hit him with a powerful attack) so his coin didn't spawn, yet the game instantly gave it to me.

I went out of the area and came back to see if the game would fix his loot or not and... weirdly, everytime I went into the area, the game instantly gave me his coin, I had like 3 of the same at one point, I loaded my manual save and avoided this place. I killed all the other soldiers and managed to finish the quest with no problem. Phew !

- I used an amulet to increase my max HP but near the end, I grabbed a full HP container and it did not increase my life, instead the animation showed one of my three yellow HP (granted by the amulet) getting refilled. And as I feared, it did not give me a new HP container, so for the rest of the game, I removed this amulet.

And that's it.

Verdict :
9 / 10
 
Ya'all, this game is amazing

SammyJ9 said:
Played a couple hours and enjoying it a lot so far. The acrobatics and movement feel great - the combat is… okay. Not bad, but a bit limited so hopefully that gets better as it goes.
Click to expand...
For combat, make sure to take the optional training lessons you can find a couple hours in, they will teach you a lot of combat stuff you may not otherwise have known of. And yes, combat in general continues to evolve throughout, it's really great

Koren Lesthe said:
Finished PoP today (89% completion) and loved it.


And that's it.

Verdict :
9 / 10
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Great review, glad you liked it! How long did it take you?
 
Hero of Hyrule said:
For combat, make sure to take the optional training lessons you can find a couple hours in, they will teach you a lot of combat stuff you may not otherwise have known of. And yes, combat in general continues to evolve throughout, it's really great
Click to expand...
I'm sure it will! I only just got the bow so I'm very early. So far combat is basically just 'roll under guy and hit him in the back a few times, repeat until dead' but I can certainly see it getting more involved soon. But I'm already loving what the game is doing - it's impressive that it still feels like a Prince of Persia game with the wall jumps and pole vaulting and such while also pulling in all the metroidvania elements.
 
The map design is really fantastic and puts a lot of the competition to shame. I just love the feeling of traversing some section filled with enemies, spikes and more spikes (did I mention spikes), pulling a lever and suddenly coming out of a closed off gutter you came across half an hour ago :D

I know that's kind of a basic element of the genre but I think this game does it remarkably well, don't think I've had that kind of "ohh, that's where it goes" revelation since Hollow Knight 👀
 
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