Videogame review: Prince of Persia Epilogue

The aftermath of prince of Persia last adventure.

The reboot of Prince of Persia was a really interesting experiment. Like many things it was derided by the “Hardcore” for being of all things, too easy. See if during one of the incredibly acrobatic set pieces that compose the game you did a mistake instead of dying horribly and starting again from the beginning of the level you were endlessly saved by your companion, princess Elika, who transported you back to the beginning of the sequence. Of course we casual breathed a sigh of relief and had much more fun this way.

I wonder if someone high up decided to listen to the haters, the game was clearly intended to have a sequel but, years later, we are still waiting and to satiate my thirst of wall running I had to download the expansion of the original game.

Story wise it happens at the end of the main game and it depicts the escape of our heroes from the resurrected god of darkness. Graphically is still gorgeous, it runs on the scimitar engine, the same of Assassin’s creed, but it use cell shading to give the world an incredible hand drawn feeling. It’s astonishing how ahead of the curve it remained after three years.

There is not a real innovation in this expansion, no new graphics or new enemies, only a new power plate for us to play with. Probably if I downloaded it right after finishing the game I would have been annoyed by this but after a couple of years going back to the familiar mechanics mixed up in those new stages has been really fun.

Only one gripe remain, like in the main storyline it’s not really about free exploration, there is only one way to go from point A to point B. The game even leaves scratch marks on the intended route (which if we stop a moment to think about it is hilarious, apparently in this lost city wall running is so common that it left scratching on the walls). This means that the whole game is mainly push the buttons in the right order to arrive to the other side. I understand why they’ve done this, is hard enough to program one spectacular acrobatic sequence, doing a couple different sequences for every single spot would have strained too much programming work power, but it left me slightly dissatisfied. When the main hero is so nimble is annoying to be so limited in our movements.