Prince of Persia Rival Swords

"Magic Carpet Ride"

When the Prince of Persia franchise was revived on consoles in the sixth generation, everyone was blown away by its unique gameplay mechanics and intense action, which ended up inspiring popular games from that generation like God of War or the newer versions of Tomb Raider. Since the Wii is a little short on adventure games, this port of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones is perfect for any gamer wanting some action and adventure, but be forewarned that this port is a little buggy.

Inspired by the “sport” of free-running, Prince of Persia requires the player to climb on rooftops, shimmy along edges, make death-defying leaps and perform jaw-dropping acrobatics to get where you need to go. Prince of Persia pulls off this idea flawlessly and manages to provide some great gameplay that ends up being way more fun than any combat that the game provides.

Actually, the combat is one of the major disappoints of this title. With the Wii remote and nunchuck acting as your weapons, you have to swing your arms wildly to take down your enemies. While this was a cool idea, your arms get tired way too easily and it's nearly impossible to pull off some of the combos that the game expects you to memorize. A cool part about the combat is that you can pick up your enemies weapons after they die, but this is not enough to make up for the fact that the combat is simply tiring.

However, some battles can be avoided if you are patient enough to wait for enemies to turn their backs on you. By sneaking up behind an enemy you can swing the nunchuck to initiate a “speed kill”. Similarly to the button presses made famous by Resident Evil 4, these speed kills are basically interactive cut-scenes where you have to swing the Wii remote when your dagger lights up. These speed kills do give your arms a well-deserved break, but they repeat themselves a little too much. It is pretty awesome though when the game totally surprises you with an entirely new speed kill.

One of the most original features of the Prince of Persia games was the ability to rewind time, thus avoiding death. This feature is back as well and other powers also return like the ability to slow down time. Using these abilities use your sand power and you can gain more sand power by going to special holes in the ground and stabbing them. These also give you new abilities and even Sand Credits.

Sand Credits are used in the game to unlock extra content like artwork and stuff like that, but they don't really provide a compelling reason to hunt out the Sand Credits. You can also find Sand Credits in treasure chests by busting them open.

Sometimes you will be transformed into the Dark Prince who is notably stronger and has an awesome chain weapon which simply decimates enemies. The Dark Prince can also use this chain to swing on poles and pull switches out of walls. However, the whole time you are the Dark Prince your health is drained. In order to heal yourself as the Dark Prince you must collect sand by either finding it in boxes or killing enemies. I think the conception of the Dark Prince was incorporated into the game to give the players a sense of “Holy crap, I better go fast!” but the abundance of sand takes this away. Also, the checkpoints while you are the Dark Prince are frustratingly far apart which takes away some from the game. The Dark Prince can also pull off speed kills, but instead of timed swings with your remote you have to just repeatedly swing your remote wildly in order to strangle your enemies to death. I know that sounds annoying…probably because it is very annoying.

Prince of Persia has some puzzles in the areas that you'll have to figure out in order to progress, but they usually aren't that difficult to figure out. In fact, they aren't hard at all to figure out, they are just extremely tedious and long. A game like Prince of Persia was not meant to have puzzle concepts such as those found in this game and I just found myself getting frustrated at the puzzles instead of enjoying in them in any conceivable way.

There are segments throughout the game where you'll have to control something, like a vehicle or a creature. These little segments really kept the gameplay fresh and they were also fun, fast, and exciting to do. Sadly, there aren't enough of them to really make them stand out in the title which is a shame since Ubisoft really had a great idea there.

Warrior Within had a very good story, but Two Thrones is a big step down. Fans of the series will be happy to see the return of some older characters, but there really isn't much substance to everything that is going on. The Prince has returned to Babylon with Kaileena, but his city is being attacked. Upon investigating the attack he finds that the Vizier is alive once again and he must use the Dagger of Time to try to save his city and regain his throne. By the way, the Prince is a major dork with his lame monologues, but even when the game tries to add some humor into it all the jokes just fall flat. Hell, the voice that's talking to the Prince throughout the game is the most likeable character of all.

I know the Wii can provide better graphics than this, but there are some very beautiful images in this game. Some of the character models are very nicely done, but the most important one, the one of the Prince, is terrible and just looks weird. Graphical glitches are abundant with extra weapons that you pick up often going through the Prince as well as hair going through people's faces and chests. Sometimes you'll end up floating in mid-air for no conceivable reason and other times you'll end up in areas that you weren't supposed to ever be in. Besides these glitches and graphical mishaps, the animations are fluid enough to redeem some of the lost dignity.

The sound also had some very good things about it, but also had some really annoying things. Voice-acting for the Prince was really dorky when he is supposed to be badass, but the sound effects were amazingly done. Everything sounds just as it should sound and the soundtrack itself isn't too bad, just not very memorable.

With three different difficulty modes and a lengthy adventure, Prince of Persia does provide some replayability. The game even gives you a reason to replay with the Sand Credits because if you're a completist you'll have to go through the game multiple times in order to unlock everything. Still, some of the more annoying parts of the game, like the puzzles, will make some people never want to come back to the game once they're done with it.

A lot of the games Ubisoft develops have taken features from the Prince of Persia games ever since their remake came out back in 2003 from Naruto: Rise of a Ninja (a great game) to Assassin's Creed (a bad game), so it's nice to see that the Prince is still being represented in the seventh generation. Ubisoft had a lot of cool ideas with the motion-sensing of the Wii remote, but the overall product was too buggy to achieve the greatness its predecessors reached. Here's hoping that Prince of Persia will make another comeback and Ubisoft won't abandon the franchise that gave birth to the conceptions that they still use in their games today.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/14/08

Game Release: Prince of Persia Rival Swords (US, 04/03/07)