Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

"Platforming - Great! Combat - Not great!"

What's going on, party people!

First of all, I'm going to be biased on the "Free Form Combat System" of POP2. But before I get to that, let me review the game.

STORY:
The story is pretty good. In the middle, the story becomes convoluted with the Sand Wraith and Mirrored Fates subplot. But other than those two, I find the story to be quite engaging even if it is a change of pace from the Sands Of Time.

GRAPHICS:
The game maintains the same feel of the first one. It's a more expanded version of the original with bigger environments, more puzzles, great platforming elements, and an okay camera. The Prince animates well and can do all his moves without a hitch. The Sand powers always look good. No complaints here.

AUDIO:
It says in the credits that Monica Belluci was the voice of the Empress (and also says that she had a voice double!). The Prince is less charismatic and more prone to cursing and yelling like Wolverine from the X-Men comic books.

The enemy dialogue is horrendous! All the enemies sound like chipmunks and spout off stupid quotes like "REGROUP!" or "I'm not here to hurt you!"

The music is great. A little orchestral music every now and then followed by the thunderous crunch of Godsmack's "I Stand Alone" make it more memorable than that god awful "Scorpion King" movie.

COMBAT/PLATFORMING:
This is where I'm biased. I played the XBOX version of Ninja Gaiden and expect every combat game to follow suit. I tried to adapt to the "Free Form Combat" system but never found it to be quite as engaging than in Ninja Gaiden.

For example, in the first boss fight, the Prince can block every attack EXCEPT the boss's kick! On top of that, the Prince's counter moves are completely shoddy! I ended up mastering the counter attack move but at the cost of numerous retries. Just like in the first game, combat is a chore. Do I really need to fight these enemies just to climb a pole? Jeez, give me a break!

The platforming in the game is EXCELLENT! I don't care what anyone says about it. Figuring out the puzzles and where to jump takes a while to figure out but it is so damn fun to do. The platforming elements are second to none because it actually uses it's environments well. Unlike games like Ratchet and Clank or Jak and Daxter, the puzzles here make you think what to do next and I love it!

OVERALL:
This game is NOT as easy as The Sands of Time. You will definitely be seeing the GAME OVER screen (with the blood splat!) a crapload of times from the shoddy combat. But after wasting so much sleep on Hard mode, I figured that maybe this game was better off this way. The first game was pretty easy so I guess it wasn't a hard decision to ramp up the difficulty.

Anyway, I recommend POP2 ONLY for the platforming and puzzle elements. You can master the combat system but IMO it doesn't help in the long run because fighting doesn't make the game, it's the platforming. Enough said!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/04