Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

"The ruined Prince."

The first Prince of Persia was an awesome game. It had amazing graphics, a simple yet effective and pleasing combat system, good story, amazing environments, good music, and probably the most memorable thing in the game were the puzzles. These puzzles actually required some thought, were long, and just plain cool. But warrior within, the awaited sequel just lets us down in every aspect.

I'll start with the story. The story is not great like the one in the first game, but it seems to keep things together, basically the Prince was supposed to die. But he didn't, and a monster that guards the Sands of Time, which the Prince opened. Now this monster is going to set things right by killing, or at least trying to, the Prince. There's also a women involved somewhere (she wears a thong) but I don't want to spoil what little story is left.

On to the graphics. This is one of the letdowns of the game. The huge lush environments are still there. They look exactly the same as the ones in the first, but everything else seems to have suffered for some odd reason. The characters do not look good at all. They look blocky, they're un-smooth, and look like an old PS2 game. Also the great curtains that were in PoP1 seemed to have also been toned down, along with the water effects. One thing I didn't like that sort of depends on personal opinion is the lighting, In PoP1 the lighting was always bright and colorful. In this game, seen as how it has a darker tone, it's obviously darker, and there's not many parts with bright light.

The game play. Here is one of the really annoying things. Were the first game had a simple yet effective combat system. This game opted for the oh so popular combo system. And, a combo system, just doesn't feel good, or work good for this game. The combos are unresponsive most of the time (I ended up doing attacks that are nothing like the combo that I tried to do), it just gets tedious. They also added a secondary weapon, which means dual wielding is in, although the secondary weapon will break over time, you can just pick another one up. This is the only improvements,

The time traveling during game play has also been toned down, there's barely any special time things available, but, at least they kept the rewind. Now you can actually completely warp from the present to the past at warp portals.

The platforming and puzzle elements are back. But also toned down, these time it's mostly just platforming, the number of puzzles is less, and they are much easier to figure out, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. For me the puzzles and ambient were what made the first game so awesome, but this one just didn't satisfy me, a downgrade.

Now the sound, possibly the biggest mistake the developers could've done. The first game had music that fit in with the era and setting, and sometimes really good ambient sound. This game just ruined this. As I said before the puzzles and ambiance (sound) were what made the first game appeal as such a good game to me. I was already let down by the puzzles, but the music just sucks. They added rock music, what the hell were they thinking, every time enemies are near it shifts to this annoying rock music, and you fight a lot. This means that most of the gaming experience will have craptastic and annoying rock music in the background. Note: I have nothing against rock music, but it just doesn't belong in a game like this, and especially crappy rock music. This is sad to because when there's no rock music and there's actually regular game music, it's good music, it gives an epic feel.

The ambient sound is more or less the same, but quieter. Everything else is like the fist game, good. Except when you get in a fight the Prince makes these weird groaning noises that just don't sound right. The enemy voices are horrible, they sound out of place and repeat the same damn lines over and over and over. Everything else is decent.

To end it all this game was a total letdown. They completely changed from the first PoP and chose the game to revolve around combat (which is hinted by the title "Warrior Within), but the combat was just not executed right, it's blotchy and unresponsive. The great puzzle aspects were toned down a lot. And, what really made me hate this game is the music, what the hell were they thinking with the damn rock music. Hopefully they go back to the good stuff in PoP3, from what I've seen PoP3 looks to be back to great platforming and puzzling.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/05