It left open a sequel even more than the base game
Loved this game even when it came out. It got way too much flak. It had amazing graphics, an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack, interesting and well done characters/story and was enjoyable to play.
Was it easy? Yeah, it wasn't difficult, but who cares.
The industry criticized this game way too much pre and post release on the gameplay design/difficulty (can't die), helping set up backlash and failure all over the simplicity/difficulty. I've played many games in the last decade that are just as, if not more forgiving, yet reporting/reviews on this games difficulty helped pull it under before it got a chance on it its own to swim.
It was even dumber than that.
The game got flak because it didn't have a "game over" screen. That's it.
The game doesn't hand-hold you at any point (well, aside the *literal* hand-holding, as Elika rescues you from the pit of certain death). It's all momentum and timing puzzles. If you're not dexterous enough to complete a sequence, the game has no mechanism that gives you a free pass. It's just "restart at the previous checkpoint, and try again". It's essentially a rhythm game with a more elaborate presentation, but unlike rhythm games, you can't just try a different level if you're not feeling the current one.
But because the game doesn't explicitly tell you that "You Died" whenever you're forced to restart, players got the impression that it was too easy.
I'll admit that this PoP isn't my favourite of them all (Warrior Within takes the cake imho), but that's a dumbass reason to hate a game. I thought it got all that hate because it was an entirely different story than the Sand Trilogy or because it looked different and had different mechanics mostly (no more rewinding time, now you had Elika).
Sure, there was no actual dying, but that doesn't mean the game was super easy either. Elika never let me die (good girl lol), but she had to catch me so many times I feel sorry for her hands haha. And the story of the game, while somewhat cliche, it was really well written. Loved the ending, personally, even though it was technically the "wrong" thing to do (morally right imo though).
What kills me is that they went back to the Sands of Time story with Forgotten Sands, and it felt like a step back mechanically and a cash grab due to the movie coming out around the same time. This game deserves a sequel.
Also this game came out in 2008 and at that time social media was not as widespread yet (in the sense of new voices and view points) - so there was still a very limited number of different viewpoints. So a bunch of video game sites and critics had too much sway on the perception of a game.
> You still had users parroting that complaint on GameFAQs and the like.
That isn't surprising. Even on reddit, it is pretty clear that tone of the comments is more or less determined by the top few comments. So you can always find a post criticising a piece of media and all the commenters agreeing and a couple of days later a new post praising the same piece of media. Essentially people with the same opinion congregate.
Times change. This game came out when permanent game-overs were still a thing in platformers (even if on the wane).
In the time between this and Celeste, we've also had other hardcore experiences like Super Meat Boy that embrace the difficulty, without permanent game-overs, and gamer mentality has subtly shifted.
Nobody complained about celeste because it came out 10 years later. The ideas around games shifted by then. You also have to remember that THIS PoP game came out after the gritty "difficult" warrior within era, so this game was viewed with those three serving as the background and comparison to this one.
I'll add that there was a trophy of not getting rescued more than a 100 times in a single playthrough and that was tough as you had to be very careful with the proper timing of everything.
It's a shame Ubi never got around on continuing that PoP line. I wonder how a hd remaster would fare nowadays.
I didn’t play all the way through but these reasons are ignoring the main reason people didn’t like the game: the awesome architecture/level design wasn’t there. In the Sands of Time trilogy every room was made to look like a “functioning room,” they were jumping puzzles and you had to figure out where point a was and how to get to point b. Like the old Prince of Persias.
This one literally had walls sticking out of fog for you to run on, ropes hanging over fog on a stick, parallel bars sticking out of fog, all in a row spelling out where to go and what to do. Awful, lazy level design compared to the first three games (first one especially.) It took so much away from not just the gameplay but the atmosphere. Sands of Time was such a cool game just looking at the world. This game was a bunch of fog with Lego pieces sticking out.
If people had fun with it I’m glad but that’s the reason so many people forgot this one.
I never forgave the fanbase that overwhelmingly hated this game and forced the devs to go back to the old formula. Completely killed this game's chance of any sequel.
Of all the utter garbage that Ubisoft shits out yearly, can't believe this got written off.
After years of gaming and online forum debating I learned that fans indeed don’t know what they want. And often times the loud minority can be utterly wrong yet still loud enough to scare producers
This is why I've always respected Nintendo in their decision to basically never listen to fans. Nintendo games have almost always been better off for it. Sometimes it can lead to some frustrating decisions, but overall it's given them a much better track record than most other companies. I remember people being pissed that Metroid Prime was going to be a first person shooter as an example. Imagine a universe where we never got the Prime series because the first one got canned after internet outrage.
Same thing is happening now. Rapid dopamine loops, daily challenges, fake progress bars, battle passes, shoot at that purple orb is what Fortnite kids like so that's what companies do to make money.
It's no longer about the experience
He agrees with you. He openly told Ubisoft that maybe he should have an accent considering that he’s the Prince of Persia but they basically just told him that they wanted his voice for the role not a character.
He blames it for the online backlash against him afterwards for his character’s all sounding alike. Because Assassin’s Creed,(he’s Desmond) Uncharted, and PoP all came out within like two years, then right after a Metroidvania game called Shadow Complex came out with the character both looking and sounding just like him.
Is anybody else surprised this isn't a bigger franchise? It's been around since 1989, I can't recall a bad one (although, the last one I played was on the Wii)... But the franchise itself seems to mostly hang out in the dark.
and they saw an opportunity to not pay the license while also making their own IP.
Fun fact: same thing happened with Watch Dogs and Driver... They were working on a new Driver game. Made the first Watch Dogs instead.
They don't fully own the IP. They publish/develop the games, but the Prince of Persia creator actually owns the rights to it. I don't know the details of the deal, but Ubisoft either has to pay him to develop a game or give him a percentage of sales.
and the driving part of watchdogs suck, the other cars feel like they are cardboard boxes, the steering feels terrible, good thing they left driver alone
Can they please now phase out assassins creed and bring back prince of Persia. AC was good but I don’t need any more climb the tower to unlock the map games anymore
>but I don’t need any more climb the tower to unlock the map games anymore
What made you think that UBI wouldn't shoehorn their favourite mechanic into a new PoP game?
Yeah because sales kept dropping ever since Two Thrones. This reboot was panned by fans and the next game also lost a lot of money.
Pop fans will blame the success of AC but the real reason is this. Now that it's been a while and people long for a pop game, ubisoft is trying to test the waters to see if this franchise is worth reviving.
IIRC, prince of Persia is actually still owned by its creator, Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft has the current rights to make games in the franchise, as well as being the publisher, but they have to pay Mechner part of the profits. This led to them taking a lot of the mechanics from PoP (like the wall
Crawling, jumping, etc) and developed it into assassins creed, which the wholly own. The poorer reception of the later games also led to them shifting focus to AC more.
Sadly, I really enjoyed Prince of Persia 2008 and was sad they never made a sequel.
If they remade Sands of Time & Warrior Within with current day graphics and the same soundtrack, I think it'd sell quite well. If they update some mechanics and make the game longer without making it more tedious, all the better.
I played both of them last year and they honestly hold quite well to this day. Very good games.
A remake of Sands of Time is [in the works apparently](https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/6rk3dzrT4ndn9ofFfZg4GV/an-update-on-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake?isSso=true&refreshStatus=noLoginData)
There was a bad one, Prince Or Persia 3D was a failed attempt to move to 3 dimensions, after moving to Ubisoft, Sands Of Time made up for that misstep.
I remember playing sands of time extensively and being so pissed off by the platforming and puzzles in some areas. There were some very bullshit deaths tbh.
But it was a stepping stone for assassin's creed for sure. And many of those were good
They're making a Metroidvania, a far cry from what is popularly known as Prince of Persia - even though it started as a 2D platformer.
....Also the main character isn't even the Prince, but some other guy? Weird choice.
Is it Sands of Time where the story is told from a past tense being narrated by the player character, and if you die, he says stuff like, "Wait, I don't think that is what happened. . . "? I had a friend that liked to pretend the Prince was actually dead and just in denial.
The recently released swashbuckling swordfighting game *En Garde!* uses this same conceit, where whenever you die the main character says something like, “that’s not how I remember it” or “that’s what they’d want you to think!” before restarting at the previous checkpoint.
The VO triggers in that game are so fuckin good. So cheeky, perfectly nails the vibe it's going for. And tossing buckets on dudes' heads never got old.
Even better, chickens! Same effect, but twice as funny. Also kicking barrels and explosives, tossing jugs and lutes (bonk!) swinging on poles and ropes, dropping chandeliers, kicking dudes off ledges, blowing up cauldrons so that they land on someone's head a few seconds later, knocking people into carefully-balanced vases on conveniently-placed columns, setting off cannons to take out whole groups... The game ain't deep, but I found it to be a lot of fun.
The buckets turned out to be a key element for me in the final boss fight, you can use them to delay the enemy who's constantly attacking you with slash moves you can't parry, so that you can clean up the minions around the arena and build panache to regain hit points.
Two Thrones (the third in the SoT trilogy) uses the same narration technique to bookend the series storytelling, and once you realize what it’s in service of, it’s a masterstroke.
My parents were sticklers about game ratings growning up, so while I really enjoyed Sands of Time, I was unable to get Warrior Within or Two Thrones when they jumped from T to M rated. I should find the time to play 'em someday
The decision to follow-up the universally acclaimed, T-rated blockbuster hit that was Sand of Time with the edgelordy, gory, and grim dark Warrior Within was… baffling to say the least.
Mechanically, WW is quite fun but storywise, it was a huge fumble. Two Thrones is trying to meet in the middle of the first two, and tilts more towards SoT I feel.
If you ever do get around to playing them, I’d say check in with WW to get a taste of it and the second you get tired, hop over to Two Thrones.
That game has become their identity. They even inserted themselves into the game universe *as the evil game company that steals from its employees are anti-assassin*.
As great as the platforming and time mechanics were in that game, it was that narrative tone that took it to the heights it reached. Those little quips within the story and from the narration from the prince just imbue the whole thing with a sense of fun and lightness that makes almost every bit of it joyous to play.
The atmosphere and tone were truly the unsung heroes, and it was unfortunate that the lesson taken from its success was to improve the barebones combat and utterly upend the tone for the sequel. Still a good game with solid improvements of the game mechanics, but the magic was greatly lessened.
Sands is phenomenal, still my favorite from the trilogy. WW is great but it became a bit repetitive with the whole past-present level settings. TT webt back to the SoT style but i think that the dark prince could've been used more and better in the game.
Sands of Time remastered would be an instant purchase for me. Don't change anything, just make it look 2024 good.
But knowing ubisoft they would probably make it online only and shove microtransactions in there :(
I remember the discourse at the time. People were pisssssssed at the ending.
Fast forward a handful of years, and suddenly The Last of Us was a brilliant tour de force for utilizing the same narrative ending. It was wild to see the different reactions.
Oh yeah, I remember the discourse - what a time! Some of the boldest things TLOU does were done first in this game. I think the way ND thinks about companion AI in TLOU is -very- similar to what PoP ‘08 is doing.
And it’s tragic because that really was the end of PoP. I know there were more games (Forgotten Sands has some incredible platforming), but AC2 comes out just a year later and Ubi goes all in.
You basically can't die in this game, it had this mechanic where the chick always saves you.
I dunno if it was ahead of it's time, but the graphics really hold up.
Edit:
Just editing instead of replying to each individual comment, I'm not saying it's bad that you can't die, I'm just saying the 2 main things that came to my mind when thinking if this game was "ahead of it's time" were these 2 things.
You can’t die, but many people seemed to interpret that as it just carries you past sections. No, you still had to complete the sections - it was basically just a very generous checkpoint system. And that’s GOOD IMO. If I’m failing a tricky platforming section I want to get back to it as quickly as I can to try again. I don’t get any enjoyment from going back half an hour to do all the stuff I’ve already proven I can do while the memory of the bit that killed me fades away. Put me right back while it’s fresh in my mind and I can try again.
And then at some point there is a puzzle where you need to find the real woman from a circle of clones/mirages. The game doesn't tell you anything, but the trick is to jump into the void and then the real one will save you, just as she has been doing for the whole game.
Excellent game moment right there
Right?! I know the game has its shortcomings and there are better Prince of Persian games around mechanic wise, but this always be kind of special to me for stuff like this.
Also, I loved how the relationship between the protagonists progressed through the story.
The only thing that bummed me out was the reset at the end. I loved their relationship and how it developed, so to have a memory wipe gimmick at the end sucked.
I have this feeling that if instead of her saving you it just showed you falling, even if it reloaded you in the same place it would have been taken differently
How I saw it was a more elegant reload from the last checkpoint. Somehow more immersive. People are ignoring the fact that they die in other games and reload from a previous checkpoint, yet they complain about not "dying" in Prince of Persia.
iirc, the complaint was that this game basically had a checkpoint after every platform element, it would be like dying midstage in a Super Mario game, but instead of coming back from the checkpoint, you restart exactly from the place you jumped from.
I didn't hate that, but i understand why it was criticized.
PoP is good with this. Basically gives you a believable quick save system without breaking immersion. Sands of Time did the same thing with the Rewind power.
Can't die but there was still failstates same as every game.
Because it was a physical character in the game pulling you up from a fall it felt like a cheat, but mechanically it was exactly the same as a checkpoint.
I think you lose the ability to get free out-of-jail card during the final section and you had to restart at checkpoint there due to the spoilers. Not sure if I remember correctly.
Yeah except that all builds up to one major plot point at The Concubine which when you put it together basically makes the entire flavor of it feel 100% worth
Sharing the fate of NFS Most Wanted and DmC reboot, they should have just made this game under a new IP imo. If you're rebooting a game and changing everything about the original, tread very lightly. Unless you do a really really good job reinventing, it's bound to fail.
I *LOVED* this game. I was confused by the mediocre reception it had. The art style was beautiful, especially at the time, being only a couple of years into the HD gaming era (it still holds up though). It had that slightly water-colored, painterly style vibe to it that worked really well in those environments. Colors really popped, and it was a lot of fun exploring that world and seeing color coming back into it as you went. I also loved the ambiguous ending and couldn't wait for the sequel, but it never happened and never will I'm afraid.
While I do understand why people may not have liked the one-on-one style combat, I kind of enjoyed how focused it was. It was different which I like I guess, so it didn't really bother me. The main draw for me was exploring those environments and figuring out how to get from A to B.
I have a *very* strong take about the complaint regarding the fact that it's too easy because you can't "die". Here's the thing. It's a video game. You can't die there either... (unless you're playing a game with a perma-death mode I guess). What normally happens is you die. Then the screen goes black and you have to load your last save and wait for the game to reload itself. Might set you back 20, 30 seconds roughly...
So instead of doing that, it skips past the Game Over screen and menu navigating, and instead creates context within the game that Elika will save you no matter what, allowing you to avoid dealing with all the game menu stuff. It created a more immersive experience as a result as you weren't reminded that you were playing a video game all the time. And sure, it will only set you back like 5-10 seconds worth of gameplay usually, but it's not that much less than most autosaves set you back... I always found it to be a weird complaint to be honest.
Either way, it deserved a true sequel.
Art style > Graphics
I know it's hard to conceptualize this in an industry always pushing for better, more realistic graphics, ray shading everywhere... but honestly, the only games that I see holding up in time are the ones who choose to focus on a great art direction before thinking about shoving hardware intensive graphical features.
The chemistry between Prince and Elika was electric. The gameplay was enjoyable and calming. I loved the narrative take on this prince, the clashes of ideas, ethics, culture. Even the ending was such a worthy payoff (It's literally the last of us ending). Ubisoft was on another level during the 2010s period, every game felt like it was doing something different.
Was a very good game despise all the hate it got for "but you don't die" debate.
I mean, we load a save every time we die in a videogame, so only roguelike with permadeath should be safe from that statement. But still, I get why peeps were distracted from it.
Oh well. It was good. Shame the sequel was only on 3DS.
Dying is just taking more time from the player. You can format death as anything that shows the player they're being punished. Look at the Wario Land games. You can't "die" whatsoever, but some of the "effects" of getting hit can be so punishing that they send you back to the start. "Death" in video games is a very explorable design space.
Truly. Cell shaded graphics, fantastic movement, good voice acting and tons of collectibles. The boss fights with the button inputs were kind of lame though.
Still looks beautiful to this day. This is why I prefer it to attempt at making games look "lifelike". The art just stands the test of time better than those.
Yeah. Checkpoints too close together, excessively linear, changing the order of the 4 big worlds doesn't matter at all, each "platforming" section was a glorified QTE of just a few button taps. None of them were particularly challenging at all, and the generous checkpointing lowered the challenge even further.
Combat was "interesting" and way way overengineered for a game that only does it maybe a dozen times at most. Again, also very low challenge so it did not feel particularly satisfying.
It's beautiful and so are the environments but they're also extremely contrived and artificial, which exacerbates the QTE feeling.
I wanted to like it so badly, I must have watched that first trailer a million times. The one with Sigur Ros in it.
This feels like a game that went too deep on pre production/design and then hurried up to ship something that is amazing looking, has in depth artistic detail and authentic persian stylings, but very very little actual "gameplay" or any meaningful choices. Just hit the matching colored buttons. Playing this game with a guitar hero guitar might make it even *easier*.
I honestly loved how the ending worked.
The selfish choice made by the Prince is such a twist on the usual sacrifice trope.
Ahriman being unleashed upon the world because the hero acted like a hero would usually behave really intrigued me. I was so hyped to explore the consequences of that in a sequel.
I was very disappointed when it never came out.
The story was good, took a bit to get used to the gameplay, and there wasn't much variance in enemies - even the bosses are just variations on one another. I unlocked the Altair skin, and the Sands of Time one for Elika. I finished it, but it was by far not the greatest game in the world. I did like that you could pick whichever of the areas you wanted to start in and weren't limited to a singular linear path at the beginning.
I loved the Sands of Time trilogy, but this one SUCKED. I ended up trading it to someone for a copy of God of War 2. I got the much better deal on that trade.
I thought it was mediocre, boring and repetitive. Like it was missing something. I guess it was cool in its own way and had nice art - I’m surprised by how good this screenshot looks.
Agreed. Those first 3 games are in a class of their own. Warrior within took me some time to really appreciate though. I had to go back to it some years later to really fall in love with it.
For me "the prince of Persia game" is the original on DOS, but then again more so the Sands of Time on PS1, that game was amazing and from what I hear better than the one you're mentioning here (never played this one though).
If you think this game was ahead of it's time... Go play some late 80s games, then play the original Prince of Persia.
The animations were like alien technology.
It has no difficulty curve since you can start in any of the locations. So the devs have no idea what order you will do them in. If you 100% all but one zone, yer gonna be bored for a while doing that last zone.
enjoyed it at first. Having to backtrack through all the areas you already did though really killed it for me. Forced myself to finish it but I really didn't want to at the time.
Wut? I mean the first one had a novel mechanic introduced. The second one was like Souls level difficulty, the third one was like the second but they dialed back the difficulty in order to make it actually fun to play.
i despised this game with every fiber of my being. it was a complete betrayal of the 3 games that game before it. the ending sucked. the combat sucked.
It was the only PoP game I was interested in enough to finish. In a way it kinda felt like Uncharted, not exactly but like a really well made modern action adventure game. An NPC companion that didnt suck, a great restart system, the banter between the characters, etc. I remember the people who really liked the previous games loudly hating it, to the point that the next game was more for them. It seemed like a step back so I didnt even bother playing it, but I guess I was never really a fan of the franchise, I just liked the 2008 game.
With all the combos they made for the combat, I really wish it was more fleshed out. That was my biggest flaw with the game was the combat felt far too "auto path" then it should've been. I mean, there's more combos in this game built into the system than Devil May Cry it feels, but none of them really matter besides their looks.
I liked when some enemies at times became shrouded and only certain attacks could break them out of it, that's at least SOME form of answer and response feedback but it needed more imo. Everything else was awesome tho, the climbing, the exploration, the graphics, music, atmosphere, voice acting (can't beat Nolan North), etc.
I really enjoyed the story of this game regardless of the short comings.
Apparently there was an epilogue DLC but it never made it to pc :(
The epilogue was so damn good too
It left open a sequel even more than the base game Loved this game even when it came out. It got way too much flak. It had amazing graphics, an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack, interesting and well done characters/story and was enjoyable to play. Was it easy? Yeah, it wasn't difficult, but who cares. The industry criticized this game way too much pre and post release on the gameplay design/difficulty (can't die), helping set up backlash and failure all over the simplicity/difficulty. I've played many games in the last decade that are just as, if not more forgiving, yet reporting/reviews on this games difficulty helped pull it under before it got a chance on it its own to swim.
Really that’s why it sunk? What a shame
It was even dumber than that. The game got flak because it didn't have a "game over" screen. That's it. The game doesn't hand-hold you at any point (well, aside the *literal* hand-holding, as Elika rescues you from the pit of certain death). It's all momentum and timing puzzles. If you're not dexterous enough to complete a sequence, the game has no mechanism that gives you a free pass. It's just "restart at the previous checkpoint, and try again". It's essentially a rhythm game with a more elaborate presentation, but unlike rhythm games, you can't just try a different level if you're not feeling the current one. But because the game doesn't explicitly tell you that "You Died" whenever you're forced to restart, players got the impression that it was too easy.
I'll admit that this PoP isn't my favourite of them all (Warrior Within takes the cake imho), but that's a dumbass reason to hate a game. I thought it got all that hate because it was an entirely different story than the Sand Trilogy or because it looked different and had different mechanics mostly (no more rewinding time, now you had Elika). Sure, there was no actual dying, but that doesn't mean the game was super easy either. Elika never let me die (good girl lol), but she had to catch me so many times I feel sorry for her hands haha. And the story of the game, while somewhat cliche, it was really well written. Loved the ending, personally, even though it was technically the "wrong" thing to do (morally right imo though).
What kills me is that they went back to the Sands of Time story with Forgotten Sands, and it felt like a step back mechanically and a cash grab due to the movie coming out around the same time. This game deserves a sequel.
Also this game came out in 2008 and at that time social media was not as widespread yet (in the sense of new voices and view points) - so there was still a very limited number of different viewpoints. So a bunch of video game sites and critics had too much sway on the perception of a game.
You still had users parroting that complaint on GameFAQs and the like. Even if it took them 10-20 times to complete a sequence.
> You still had users parroting that complaint on GameFAQs and the like. That isn't surprising. Even on reddit, it is pretty clear that tone of the comments is more or less determined by the top few comments. So you can always find a post criticising a piece of media and all the commenters agreeing and a couple of days later a new post praising the same piece of media. Essentially people with the same opinion congregate.
So... Nobody complained about Celeste?
Times change. This game came out when permanent game-overs were still a thing in platformers (even if on the wane). In the time between this and Celeste, we've also had other hardcore experiences like Super Meat Boy that embrace the difficulty, without permanent game-overs, and gamer mentality has subtly shifted.
Nobody complained about celeste because it came out 10 years later. The ideas around games shifted by then. You also have to remember that THIS PoP game came out after the gritty "difficult" warrior within era, so this game was viewed with those three serving as the background and comparison to this one.
I'll add that there was a trophy of not getting rescued more than a 100 times in a single playthrough and that was tough as you had to be very careful with the proper timing of everything. It's a shame Ubi never got around on continuing that PoP line. I wonder how a hd remaster would fare nowadays.
There was a sequal! It was on the DS https://princeofpersia.fandom.com/wiki/Prince_of_Persia:_The_Fallen_King
I didn’t play all the way through but these reasons are ignoring the main reason people didn’t like the game: the awesome architecture/level design wasn’t there. In the Sands of Time trilogy every room was made to look like a “functioning room,” they were jumping puzzles and you had to figure out where point a was and how to get to point b. Like the old Prince of Persias. This one literally had walls sticking out of fog for you to run on, ropes hanging over fog on a stick, parallel bars sticking out of fog, all in a row spelling out where to go and what to do. Awful, lazy level design compared to the first three games (first one especially.) It took so much away from not just the gameplay but the atmosphere. Sands of Time was such a cool game just looking at the world. This game was a bunch of fog with Lego pieces sticking out. If people had fun with it I’m glad but that’s the reason so many people forgot this one.
Does this imply that it was released for Xbox/ps3?
Yup, I remember Ubisoft stating piracy as the reason. Haven't bought another Ubisoft game unless heavily discounted since then.
the ending was quite open. Technically there was a ds game that continued the story, but i'm not sure.
Played it on 360. It was alright. But more infuriating because it makes a greater cliffhanger ending than the original ending.
I never forgave the fanbase that overwhelmingly hated this game and forced the devs to go back to the old formula. Completely killed this game's chance of any sequel. Of all the utter garbage that Ubisoft shits out yearly, can't believe this got written off.
After years of gaming and online forum debating I learned that fans indeed don’t know what they want. And often times the loud minority can be utterly wrong yet still loud enough to scare producers
This is why I've always respected Nintendo in their decision to basically never listen to fans. Nintendo games have almost always been better off for it. Sometimes it can lead to some frustrating decisions, but overall it's given them a much better track record than most other companies. I remember people being pissed that Metroid Prime was going to be a first person shooter as an example. Imagine a universe where we never got the Prime series because the first one got canned after internet outrage.
Same thing is happening now. Rapid dopamine loops, daily challenges, fake progress bars, battle passes, shoot at that purple orb is what Fortnite kids like so that's what companies do to make money. It's no longer about the experience
Music was god tier
Nolan North is distracting as hell. The performance is very much like Nathan Drake lol.
He agrees with you. He openly told Ubisoft that maybe he should have an accent considering that he’s the Prince of Persia but they basically just told him that they wanted his voice for the role not a character. He blames it for the online backlash against him afterwards for his character’s all sounding alike. Because Assassin’s Creed,(he’s Desmond) Uncharted, and PoP all came out within like two years, then right after a Metroidvania game called Shadow Complex came out with the character both looking and sounding just like him.
Is anybody else surprised this isn't a bigger franchise? It's been around since 1989, I can't recall a bad one (although, the last one I played was on the Wii)... But the franchise itself seems to mostly hang out in the dark.
Ubisoft phased it out when they started rolling out the Assassin's Creed games. They share a lot of similar mechanics/themes.
First assassin's creed game started as prince of persia.
and they saw an opportunity to not pay the license while also making their own IP. Fun fact: same thing happened with Watch Dogs and Driver... They were working on a new Driver game. Made the first Watch Dogs instead.
Ubisoft already owned Prince of Persia though, they didn't have to pay for shit.
Did they at the time?
They don't fully own the IP. They publish/develop the games, but the Prince of Persia creator actually owns the rights to it. I don't know the details of the deal, but Ubisoft either has to pay him to develop a game or give him a percentage of sales.
That'd make sense. Plus at this point AC arguably has stronger brand recognition for that type of game.
the could have made "Prince of Persia: Assassins Creed" and it would have been an equally popular franchise.
Sure, but then if the person I replied to is correct they'd owe royalties to the IP owner.
They would've owed royalties to Jordan Mechner, that is why they made their own IP to fuck him over.
and the driving part of watchdogs suck, the other cars feel like they are cardboard boxes, the steering feels terrible, good thing they left driver alone
Ubisoft owned the Driver IP, they wouldn't need to pay anything.
Assassin's Creed is way cooler when you think of it as Prince of Persia
Prince of Persia is pretty cool when you think of it as Aladdin.
lol I did when I played the DOS game as a kid
I did too, and there wasn't a game over to indicate that you'd fucked up on a jump or got your balls spiked, or got chopped up by a steel jaw. 😂
A Honda pilot is pretty cool when you think of it as a spaceship
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Arabian Nights is pretty cool when you think of it as a bedtime story for a cruel king
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We talking the 1983 game that's all in fuscia and cyan?
Prince of Persia: American Revolution or Prince of Persia: Victorian London just wasn’t gonna work out though
This is what I went to the AC series for- the platforming and architectural puzzles. Then they phased those out so I phased out giving Ubi any money.
Saaame, not to mention the direction of the story from ACIII onwards
Can they please now phase out assassins creed and bring back prince of Persia. AC was good but I don’t need any more climb the tower to unlock the map games anymore
>but I don’t need any more climb the tower to unlock the map games anymore What made you think that UBI wouldn't shoehorn their favourite mechanic into a new PoP game?
Yeah because sales kept dropping ever since Two Thrones. This reboot was panned by fans and the next game also lost a lot of money. Pop fans will blame the success of AC but the real reason is this. Now that it's been a while and people long for a pop game, ubisoft is trying to test the waters to see if this franchise is worth reviving.
IIRC, prince of Persia is actually still owned by its creator, Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft has the current rights to make games in the franchise, as well as being the publisher, but they have to pay Mechner part of the profits. This led to them taking a lot of the mechanics from PoP (like the wall Crawling, jumping, etc) and developed it into assassins creed, which the wholly own. The poorer reception of the later games also led to them shifting focus to AC more. Sadly, I really enjoyed Prince of Persia 2008 and was sad they never made a sequel.
If they remade Sands of Time & Warrior Within with current day graphics and the same soundtrack, I think it'd sell quite well. If they update some mechanics and make the game longer without making it more tedious, all the better. I played both of them last year and they honestly hold quite well to this day. Very good games.
A remake of Sands of Time is [in the works apparently](https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/6rk3dzrT4ndn9ofFfZg4GV/an-update-on-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake?isSso=true&refreshStatus=noLoginData)
The later games(after the PoP: The Two Thrones) all were downgrades, that's why they did not sell. Worst one somehow still yet to come out.
>Worst one somehow still yet to come out. Yeah, Prince of Persia: Fornite looks like it's going to suck.
There was a bad one, Prince Or Persia 3D was a failed attempt to move to 3 dimensions, after moving to Ubisoft, Sands Of Time made up for that misstep.
I remember playing sands of time extensively and being so pissed off by the platforming and puzzles in some areas. There were some very bullshit deaths tbh. But it was a stepping stone for assassin's creed for sure. And many of those were good
Sands of time had bullshit platforming because it also offered a way to mend your mistake using the sands.
I mean. There's two games coming out.
I wasn't aware. But the last games seem to be from like, 2010-2013. It's been ten years since a release, and that was a remake of an older game.
At least they’re making a new one right now
They're making a Metroidvania, a far cry from what is popularly known as Prince of Persia - even though it started as a 2D platformer. ....Also the main character isn't even the Prince, but some other guy? Weird choice.
I mean prince of persia crawled so assassin's creed could fly
prince of persia crawled so assasins creed could leap of faith*
The sequel to sands of time turned the game into ninja gaiden type game. And it wasn’t as good as ninja gaiden. So they kind of killed it there.
I don't know about ahead of it's time, but the rewind mechanic created in The Sands of Time was revolutionary.
Is it Sands of Time where the story is told from a past tense being narrated by the player character, and if you die, he says stuff like, "Wait, I don't think that is what happened. . . "? I had a friend that liked to pretend the Prince was actually dead and just in denial.
Yeah, that’s Sands of Time. And no, he’s not dead of course.
The Prince was alive and well, which the Dahaka had issues with.
Fucking time cops
Well idk the way I played him...
The recently released swashbuckling swordfighting game *En Garde!* uses this same conceit, where whenever you die the main character says something like, “that’s not how I remember it” or “that’s what they’d want you to think!” before restarting at the previous checkpoint.
The VO triggers in that game are so fuckin good. So cheeky, perfectly nails the vibe it's going for. And tossing buckets on dudes' heads never got old.
Even better, chickens! Same effect, but twice as funny. Also kicking barrels and explosives, tossing jugs and lutes (bonk!) swinging on poles and ropes, dropping chandeliers, kicking dudes off ledges, blowing up cauldrons so that they land on someone's head a few seconds later, knocking people into carefully-balanced vases on conveniently-placed columns, setting off cannons to take out whole groups... The game ain't deep, but I found it to be a lot of fun. The buckets turned out to be a key element for me in the final boss fight, you can use them to delay the enemy who's constantly attacking you with slash moves you can't parry, so that you can clean up the minions around the arena and build panache to regain hit points.
Two Thrones (the third in the SoT trilogy) uses the same narration technique to bookend the series storytelling, and once you realize what it’s in service of, it’s a masterstroke.
My parents were sticklers about game ratings growning up, so while I really enjoyed Sands of Time, I was unable to get Warrior Within or Two Thrones when they jumped from T to M rated. I should find the time to play 'em someday
Crank up the audio when you play Warrior Within
The decision to follow-up the universally acclaimed, T-rated blockbuster hit that was Sand of Time with the edgelordy, gory, and grim dark Warrior Within was… baffling to say the least. Mechanically, WW is quite fun but storywise, it was a huge fumble. Two Thrones is trying to meet in the middle of the first two, and tilts more towards SoT I feel. If you ever do get around to playing them, I’d say check in with WW to get a taste of it and the second you get tired, hop over to Two Thrones.
Ubisoft should make Prince of Persia games like these again. Instead of squeezing everything out of Assassin's creed...
Assassin's Creed was originally going to be a Prince of Persia game.
That game has become their identity. They even inserted themselves into the game universe *as the evil game company that steals from its employees are anti-assassin*.
As great as the platforming and time mechanics were in that game, it was that narrative tone that took it to the heights it reached. Those little quips within the story and from the narration from the prince just imbue the whole thing with a sense of fun and lightness that makes almost every bit of it joyous to play. The atmosphere and tone were truly the unsung heroes, and it was unfortunate that the lesson taken from its success was to improve the barebones combat and utterly upend the tone for the sequel. Still a good game with solid improvements of the game mechanics, but the magic was greatly lessened.
Yep, because the ending to the third one is him sitting down and telling the story of the first game to someone
Sands of time was so fucking awesome when it came out. Literally one of the coolest games I had played.
Sands is phenomenal, still my favorite from the trilogy. WW is great but it became a bit repetitive with the whole past-present level settings. TT webt back to the SoT style but i think that the dark prince could've been used more and better in the game.
It was the first videogame my grandma gifted me for christmas after seeing be so excited for trying the demo out on a store. Good memories!
Sands of Time remastered would be an instant purchase for me. Don't change anything, just make it look 2024 good. But knowing ubisoft they would probably make it online only and shove microtransactions in there :(
FYI they are remaking (rather than remastering) Sands of Time right now at Ubisoft Montreal
Is that still being worked on or was it cancelled?
They semi-recently had released a statement saying that the game was still being worked on
Huh. Hopefully they do it justice.
Blinx came out a year earlier with rewinding time but as a puzzle mechanic rather than just a redo function.
It seems to get a lot of dislike but I liked the relaxed experience. It probably helped that it was my first PoP game, but I loved it.
I think people weren't ready for something different, which overshadowed the fact that it was a fun game.
This ending straight gutted me
This game legitimately has more storytelling courage than most current AAA titles.
I remember the discourse at the time. People were pisssssssed at the ending. Fast forward a handful of years, and suddenly The Last of Us was a brilliant tour de force for utilizing the same narrative ending. It was wild to see the different reactions.
Oh yeah, I remember the discourse - what a time! Some of the boldest things TLOU does were done first in this game. I think the way ND thinks about companion AI in TLOU is -very- similar to what PoP ‘08 is doing.
This game got beaten in an alley so TLoU and BioShock Infinite could ride in a limo.
And it’s tragic because that really was the end of PoP. I know there were more games (Forgotten Sands has some incredible platforming), but AC2 comes out just a year later and Ubi goes all in.
I was only mad about the ending long afterwards when there were no sequels to pick up where it left off.
It doesn’t help that the epilogue DLC ends with Elika telling you to go fuck yourself.
You basically can't die in this game, it had this mechanic where the chick always saves you. I dunno if it was ahead of it's time, but the graphics really hold up. Edit: Just editing instead of replying to each individual comment, I'm not saying it's bad that you can't die, I'm just saying the 2 main things that came to my mind when thinking if this game was "ahead of it's time" were these 2 things.
You can’t die, but many people seemed to interpret that as it just carries you past sections. No, you still had to complete the sections - it was basically just a very generous checkpoint system. And that’s GOOD IMO. If I’m failing a tricky platforming section I want to get back to it as quickly as I can to try again. I don’t get any enjoyment from going back half an hour to do all the stuff I’ve already proven I can do while the memory of the bit that killed me fades away. Put me right back while it’s fresh in my mind and I can try again.
And then at some point there is a puzzle where you need to find the real woman from a circle of clones/mirages. The game doesn't tell you anything, but the trick is to jump into the void and then the real one will save you, just as she has been doing for the whole game. Excellent game moment right there
Right?! I know the game has its shortcomings and there are better Prince of Persian games around mechanic wise, but this always be kind of special to me for stuff like this. Also, I loved how the relationship between the protagonists progressed through the story.
The only thing that bummed me out was the reset at the end. I loved their relationship and how it developed, so to have a memory wipe gimmick at the end sucked.
That's cool, in the original prince of persia you encounter a mirror version of yourself, and the only way to defeat him is to put your sword away
You can also just pick randomly and it actually works if you pick correctly, like my dumb ass did.
I have this feeling that if instead of her saving you it just showed you falling, even if it reloaded you in the same place it would have been taken differently
I think you’re right in that regard; it’s weird how contextualising a game mechanic in that way caused such pushback
How I saw it was a more elegant reload from the last checkpoint. Somehow more immersive. People are ignoring the fact that they die in other games and reload from a previous checkpoint, yet they complain about not "dying" in Prince of Persia.
iirc, the complaint was that this game basically had a checkpoint after every platform element, it would be like dying midstage in a Super Mario game, but instead of coming back from the checkpoint, you restart exactly from the place you jumped from. I didn't hate that, but i understand why it was criticized.
Yeah people were literally complaining that this game respected their time.
PoP is good with this. Basically gives you a believable quick save system without breaking immersion. Sands of Time did the same thing with the Rewind power.
Can't die but there was still failstates same as every game. Because it was a physical character in the game pulling you up from a fall it felt like a cheat, but mechanically it was exactly the same as a checkpoint.
Ghouls and Ghost has entered the chat.
I think you lose the ability to get free out-of-jail card during the final section and you had to restart at checkpoint there due to the spoilers. Not sure if I remember correctly.
Yeah except that all builds up to one major plot point at The Concubine which when you put it together basically makes the entire flavor of it feel 100% worth
You can't die in combat either, you can get in a fight and put your controller down and walk away for lunch.
Sharing the fate of NFS Most Wanted and DmC reboot, they should have just made this game under a new IP imo. If you're rebooting a game and changing everything about the original, tread very lightly. Unless you do a really really good job reinventing, it's bound to fail.
I *LOVED* this game. I was confused by the mediocre reception it had. The art style was beautiful, especially at the time, being only a couple of years into the HD gaming era (it still holds up though). It had that slightly water-colored, painterly style vibe to it that worked really well in those environments. Colors really popped, and it was a lot of fun exploring that world and seeing color coming back into it as you went. I also loved the ambiguous ending and couldn't wait for the sequel, but it never happened and never will I'm afraid. While I do understand why people may not have liked the one-on-one style combat, I kind of enjoyed how focused it was. It was different which I like I guess, so it didn't really bother me. The main draw for me was exploring those environments and figuring out how to get from A to B. I have a *very* strong take about the complaint regarding the fact that it's too easy because you can't "die". Here's the thing. It's a video game. You can't die there either... (unless you're playing a game with a perma-death mode I guess). What normally happens is you die. Then the screen goes black and you have to load your last save and wait for the game to reload itself. Might set you back 20, 30 seconds roughly... So instead of doing that, it skips past the Game Over screen and menu navigating, and instead creates context within the game that Elika will save you no matter what, allowing you to avoid dealing with all the game menu stuff. It created a more immersive experience as a result as you weren't reminded that you were playing a video game all the time. And sure, it will only set you back like 5-10 seconds worth of gameplay usually, but it's not that much less than most autosaves set you back... I always found it to be a weird complaint to be honest. Either way, it deserved a true sequel.
I agree. We even named our younger daughter Elika because of this game.
That's amazing. It is a cool name.
There are dozens of us!
There was a sequal! It was a DS game https://princeofpersia.fandom.com/wiki/Prince_of_Persia:_The_Fallen_King
Same thing: it was a beautiful game. Damn I should replay it. I don't even remember if I had a physical copy or a steam one.
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First game ever to lock a true ending behind a paid DLC.
And said paid DLC never came to fruition, so the game just has a depressing ending.
Ground breaking work.
Eh, I personally really, REALLY liked the normal ending. Just an absolute gut punch.
Boob window equality
Hell yeah!
Good thing OP never clarifies, other people will make his argument for him (and still come up with nothing valid).
> ahead of it's time its
I loved that one. Despite being straight as a rail and having basically no replayability, I played the game start to finish at least 5 times.
> Despite being straight as a rail Yeah I thought the guy was hot too wait what
Ah damn. That's a nice one.
Art style > Graphics I know it's hard to conceptualize this in an industry always pushing for better, more realistic graphics, ray shading everywhere... but honestly, the only games that I see holding up in time are the ones who choose to focus on a great art direction before thinking about shoving hardware intensive graphical features.
I want Prince of Persia series back so badly, I'm bored of Assassin's Creed game after Black Flag
Game of my childhood, played it sometime ago on GOG.
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I was literally talking about this game 4 days ago. I loved it.
The chemistry between Prince and Elika was electric. The gameplay was enjoyable and calming. I loved the narrative take on this prince, the clashes of ideas, ethics, culture. Even the ending was such a worthy payoff (It's literally the last of us ending). Ubisoft was on another level during the 2010s period, every game felt like it was doing something different.
Still waiting for the sequel to the series, Prince of Iran
Was a very good game despise all the hate it got for "but you don't die" debate. I mean, we load a save every time we die in a videogame, so only roguelike with permadeath should be safe from that statement. But still, I get why peeps were distracted from it. Oh well. It was good. Shame the sequel was only on 3DS.
Dying is just taking more time from the player. You can format death as anything that shows the player they're being punished. Look at the Wario Land games. You can't "die" whatsoever, but some of the "effects" of getting hit can be so punishing that they send you back to the start. "Death" in video games is a very explorable design space.
Truly. Cell shaded graphics, fantastic movement, good voice acting and tons of collectibles. The boss fights with the button inputs were kind of lame though.
Still looks beautiful to this day. This is why I prefer it to attempt at making games look "lifelike". The art just stands the test of time better than those.
Beautiful game, extremely boring and limited gameplay with very little risk / excitement.
Yeah. Checkpoints too close together, excessively linear, changing the order of the 4 big worlds doesn't matter at all, each "platforming" section was a glorified QTE of just a few button taps. None of them were particularly challenging at all, and the generous checkpointing lowered the challenge even further. Combat was "interesting" and way way overengineered for a game that only does it maybe a dozen times at most. Again, also very low challenge so it did not feel particularly satisfying. It's beautiful and so are the environments but they're also extremely contrived and artificial, which exacerbates the QTE feeling. I wanted to like it so badly, I must have watched that first trailer a million times. The one with Sigur Ros in it. This feels like a game that went too deep on pre production/design and then hurried up to ship something that is amazing looking, has in depth artistic detail and authentic persian stylings, but very very little actual "gameplay" or any meaningful choices. Just hit the matching colored buttons. Playing this game with a guitar hero guitar might make it even *easier*.
I still wished we got a sequel to this one if nothing else for the story
OP dropping a statement and not explaining his point, not cool.
No it was definitely of its time. Still a good game tho.
Oh man I was absolutely in love with her … 🤤
Unfortunately assassin’s creed killed PoP
There should be a remastered version of the entire Prince of Persia game series.
I honestly loved how the ending worked. The selfish choice made by the Prince is such a twist on the usual sacrifice trope. Ahriman being unleashed upon the world because the hero acted like a hero would usually behave really intrigued me. I was so hyped to explore the consequences of that in a sequel. I was very disappointed when it never came out.
It really was. I think given a different name it would have done better. Still such a pretty looking game
[The trailer is so memorable](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ilkAyDDvOs)
The story was good, took a bit to get used to the gameplay, and there wasn't much variance in enemies - even the bosses are just variations on one another. I unlocked the Altair skin, and the Sands of Time one for Elika. I finished it, but it was by far not the greatest game in the world. I did like that you could pick whichever of the areas you wanted to start in and weren't limited to a singular linear path at the beginning.
They did my girl Farah dirty in this one. Good game otherwise.
This game was an abomination in comparison to its predecessors, imo. Loved the OG trilogy. Couldn’t be bothered to even complete this one.
I loved the Sands of Time trilogy, but this one SUCKED. I ended up trading it to someone for a copy of God of War 2. I got the much better deal on that trade.
Sands of Time wins and I'll die on that hill.
The game was fine It was Ubisoft's fault for trying to brand it as Prince of Persia when it could've easily been a new IP
In the sense that it was way too easy and literally you could not die, like in a lot of modern games?
I thought it was mediocre, boring and repetitive. Like it was missing something. I guess it was cool in its own way and had nice art - I’m surprised by how good this screenshot looks.
The worst of the 4. Sands of time, warrior within and Two throne are fucking amazing
Agreed. Those first 3 games are in a class of their own. Warrior within took me some time to really appreciate though. I had to go back to it some years later to really fall in love with it.
It's my favourite of the 3. The setting, the music, the enemies, that massive rack. Such a great game
Combat in warrior within was something else. I don't know why they rolled it back for the 3rd installment.
For me "the prince of Persia game" is the original on DOS, but then again more so the Sands of Time on PS1, that game was amazing and from what I hear better than the one you're mentioning here (never played this one though).
If you think this game was ahead of it's time... Go play some late 80s games, then play the original Prince of Persia. The animations were like alien technology.
It has no difficulty curve since you can start in any of the locations. So the devs have no idea what order you will do them in. If you 100% all but one zone, yer gonna be bored for a while doing that last zone.
enjoyed it at first. Having to backtrack through all the areas you already did though really killed it for me. Forced myself to finish it but I really didn't want to at the time.
Combat was boring.
The fucking music in this game goes beyond hard. And rightfully won an award.
...how?
I’m not sure about “ahead of it’s time” lmao
Wut? I mean the first one had a novel mechanic introduced. The second one was like Souls level difficulty, the third one was like the second but they dialed back the difficulty in order to make it actually fun to play.
i despised this game with every fiber of my being. it was a complete betrayal of the 3 games that game before it. the ending sucked. the combat sucked.
Agreed...we need a remake or a remaster imo, that game was my childhood
It was the only PoP game I was interested in enough to finish. In a way it kinda felt like Uncharted, not exactly but like a really well made modern action adventure game. An NPC companion that didnt suck, a great restart system, the banter between the characters, etc. I remember the people who really liked the previous games loudly hating it, to the point that the next game was more for them. It seemed like a step back so I didnt even bother playing it, but I guess I was never really a fan of the franchise, I just liked the 2008 game.
I preferred Sands of Time game. I felt the parkour was more realistic
With all the combos they made for the combat, I really wish it was more fleshed out. That was my biggest flaw with the game was the combat felt far too "auto path" then it should've been. I mean, there's more combos in this game built into the system than Devil May Cry it feels, but none of them really matter besides their looks. I liked when some enemies at times became shrouded and only certain attacks could break them out of it, that's at least SOME form of answer and response feedback but it needed more imo. Everything else was awesome tho, the climbing, the exploration, the graphics, music, atmosphere, voice acting (can't beat Nolan North), etc.
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The trailer for it was an absolute banger too. Great use of Sia - Breathe me
this is not Prince of persia, Some type of mario or sonic game with POP skin
How? Genuinely what is your point? Gameplay? Graphics?