Prince of Persia

"Solid, original game"

Story(7/10): The Grand Vizier has your girlfriend, the princess, hostage and you have 120 minutes to rescue her or she will choose death over marriage to him. It comes off like something between Sinbad and Aladdin. It's a simple story, but it works for this unique puzzler. It consists of a lot of finding switches to open doors and figuring out how to get to the end of each level. Guards will try to stop you along your way.

Graphics(7/10): This game looks pretty good. Your character is well detailed and they made an effort to make his moves very realistic, though sometimes choppy. The levels are very colorful and varied. Unfortunately slowdown does occasionally occur, but not often enough to be detrimental. Though why it only takes 3 to 4 moving objects to cause this is beyond me. You don't run into slow down in too many SNES games.

Sound(7/10): Music fits the mood of the game perfectly and there are several different tracks. More work could have gone into the other sounds though, like the oomph noise enemies make when you hit them with your sword.

Challenge(9/10): You can't really breeze through goo many levels. Puzzles and enemies get tougher as you progress, plus you have to be aware of the time limit. This may mean a lot of reloading your password to start the level over when you die so that no time is lost. While the puzzles and jumping and control are tough to get, the battles are pretty easy. Occasionally you will run across guards or skeletons that will pull out their swords and attempt to kill you. You can parry or lunge. I'm not sure I ever parry. Once you have the timing down its very easy to dispatch guards quickly at little risk to your own health. Bosses are a little tougher, but these are the only points in the game that start you right before the boss and not at the end of the level, so you have multiple chances to beat them without too much loss of time.

Gameplay(7/10): The control takes some getting used to. Its very frustrating to jump when you mean to take a step. When you die you have to start the level over which can also be frustrating. This may mean a lot of resetting and restarting levels in order to lose less time. Replay value is ok after you've forgotten the levels, but this isn't something that you'll be playing constantly.

Overall(7/10): This is a fun game. It's rewarding if you want a puzzler with a little action mixed in. Control is initially frustrating, but luckily the password feature lets you go back to try each level to your hearts content. I definitely prefer the Game Boy version over this, even in its four colors of gray. It has similar, but not exactly the same levels, but the control is much easier to handle.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/15/02, Updated 04/15/02