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 Prince of Persia: Two Thrones
In 2003, Ubisoft resurrected the Prince in the Sands of Time. This late sequel rocked the industry. It was gaming going back to its roots and old-school Last year things went horribly wrong however, in the shape Sands of Time’s sequel, the extraordinarily chaotic Warrior Within.
Two Thrones, the third and apparently final game in the series, is Ubisoft’s attempt to make amends for that in the forum of The Two Thrones.
For the uninformed, the story revolves around the Prince’s use of the Dagger to free the Sands of Time on the advice of an evil Vizier, causing death and destruction in the process. To do this the Prince attempts to rewind time to before all this happened. Later the Prince travels to the Isle of Time to rid himself of the Dahaka, a demon whose purpose is to hunt down and get rid of those who mess with the with time and its existence.
In Two Thrones the Prince returns to his home of Babylon to find that the once defeated Vizier is alive again and leading an invasion against his home city. So the Prince sets off, via an endless progression of handily-placed walls, pillars and ledges, to find the Vizier, dispose of him and end the whole catastrophe once and for all …. Again.
The challenge when developing a platform game is to make sure the player feels fully immersed in the world the developers have created. This can either be accomplished by designing environments where the route through the game seems entirely natural, or by creating something amazing so that the player doesn’t actually mind. Sands of Time was an noted success of the latter, Two Thrones sadly falls short.
It’s as if the lack of consistency in the plot has transfered over into the games design, resulting in a range of samey corridors and city streets. Worse, the platforming feels rather unnatural. The Prince has been given some new moves, such as being able to stab his dagger into plates in the walls and hang from it, or make huge diagonal leaps accross wall panels. But all these perfectly placed dagger plates and panels serve to remind you that this is just a game, a world engineered to be navigated by precisely this route. This is a severe case of linearity.
Life is not simple for the Prince however. He has been infected by the Sands of Time, and can hear the voice of his evil alter-ego talking to him in a schizophrenic way. Worse, the Prince episodically undergoes transformations into a horrific Sand creature. As this Dark Prince you have extra moves involving a chain implanted in his arm.
While in Dark Prince form however your health is continually dropping, and can only be restored by collecting Sand from dispatched enemies. This makes these sections a rush to the finish, serving to break up the otherwise slightly repetitive sequences. Even so you can’t help noticing that they have been designed in a way that can only be completed as the Dark Prince, and so the forced feeling stays.
This feeling also pervades the narrative style of Two Thrones. In Sands of Time, the Prince’s voice telling the story naturally tied into the beginning and end cut-scenes, and created a playful atmosphere right through the game. This isn’t achieved in Two Thrones.
One thing that has improved is the combat Two Thrones provides some control, retaining Warrior’s combo-based free-form fighting while reducing the number of enemies encountered.
It is difficult to think about Two Thrones without feeling repentant. We have been shown how good a game can be, but have fallen short of replicating the feat. It’s fun, but it really makes me want to return to 2003 to experience "Sands of Time" again for the first time. |
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Reviewed by rip2roar
Rating: 7 (Out of 10) |
| Gameplay: |
8 |
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| Graphics: |
7 |
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| Sound: |
8 |
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| Longevity: |
7 |
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| Overall: |
7 |
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