Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

"Overly long, unforgiving, repetitive...and yet still fun"

Many years ago Prince of Persia redefined the exploring genre and captured it with an extremely challenging game to show for. The animation for the time was amazing and the layout of the game was extremely taxing on the player and adding in puzzles made it a great gaming challenge. A single wrong move in Prince of Persia could mean the end of the Persian Prince. There were quite a few editions of the Prince's journeys but he pretty much vanished during the N64 and Playstation 1 era. Will his return to the portable world be a pleasant experience?

If we scored on story, this single category could negate any rating in any other category. The story of Sands of Time for Gameboy Advance is so broken up and garbled it hurts your head to follow it. In the ancient Persia a magical dagger able to control the fabric of time itself exists within some ruins. The Prince is drawn to its dark powers and accidentally unleashes its power after being tricked by Vizier of the Maharajah in which the Prince and his father were visiting. While that supposedly makes sense according to the game's manual, the actual in game story tells a story that the Princes father sent him to get the dagger after the vizier suggested it. Later in the game Prince meets Farah, the daughter of this unnamed kingdoms land, who helps Prince until she disappears from the game and its story for unknown reasons. Its things like this that set the story into a tailspin of nonsense. After the games intro and after the second chapter ends the story really fades away until you reach the end. It's probably a good thing though considering how much Ubisoft butchered an extremely short storyline.

Fans of the old games will be used to this style of gameplay as opposed to the 3d world created for the consoles. Its the classic exploration you find in games like old Prince of Persia's, Newer Castlevanias, and all of the two dimensional Metroids. That concept is mixed in with button pressing puzzles, block pushing and other types of puzzles forcing you to not just run through the game. For the most part this concept still works, except it starts to really come apart the farther you get in this game. Puzzles start repeating very fast, you'll constantly face the same type of enemy, and the whole thing really starts to fall apart fast. That's the theme of Sands of Time's gameplay repetition, a good example I haven't used would be the Winged Demon you face in the game four times for an unexplained reason. To stop that Ubisoft added the scrolls which give Prince moves similar to Samus Aran grabbing powerups in a Metroid game. Once again this also fails to change things up as besides the basic move scrolls most are only used once or twice through the game. The only scroll that is cool and actually useful would be the one allowing you to run up walls. Then again only 5 really give you 'new' abilities, the rest simply add in as optional need to know information about skills you already possess. The main gimmick of course in Sands of Time IS the Sands of Time. A small dagger that gives a magic circular bar allowing you to rewind time and a costly error you made. It also lets you freeze time and slow it down. While extremely cool, aside from fixing errors you made and fighting bosses (since the bosses all know an unexplained anti-sands of time protection spell) its really useless especially since the bar drains in seconds.

The awe of the Prince and his moves still exists with Sands of Time. The prince is as fluid as ever and just amazing to watch as he moves around the dungeons. The enemies themselves are for the most part very nicely animated. The only real trouble with Sands of Time's graphics comes with not being able to distinguish large stone pillars that are climbable from the background itself. Aside from this, the only other complaints worth noting is the extremely out of place style of graphics used for the wall cogs that spit fire.

In terms of sound effects Sands of Time really doesn't suffer at all. When the prince is hurt he well hurts and enemies will sometimes howl at you. The real troubles with the sound effects are missing sound effects, ever heard of a sword clang Ubisoft? While its a minor complaint its a bit odd that the Prince is the only person in the game with a silent weapon. As for the games music... well I really question it. Considering that the game is completely silent in terms of music through the whole game except in small events that last less than a minute. Very rarely a lightly heard theme will play but even at max volume its extremely distant.

The gimmick to get you play Prince of Persia:Sands of Time more than you have to is to force you to go through every single room, collecting the remaining medal pieces, and beating enemies to get Prince strong enough to survive the final battle. The problem with Ubisofts stroke of 'genius' here is the final boss uses a pattern so simple Mega Man bosses would laugh at him. It's not only extremely possible but also extremely easy to beat the final boss without taking a single hit of damage.

In the end despite all its problems, the gameplay system somehow works. Although extremely clunky, confusing and repetitive it still works. Ubisoft may have not made game of the year quality game for the Gameboy Advance but its at the very least playable, controls well and can put you in states of awe at times. Sands of Time is a great game for fans of the series, or fans of the adventure-exploring genre that don't mind the repetitive gameplay.

Game Play 8.3/10
Audio 7.0/10
Replay Value 5.0/10
Graphics 9.0/10
Final 7.1/10 [7 though cause of Gamefaqs scoring system]

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/06