Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown might arguably be one of the best Prince of Persia games in the series. It’s a weighty claim, especially when going against the juggernaut of nostalgia, but it still rings true the more you play through this beautiful 2D take on a series well over 20 years old.
By calling back to its 1989 platformer roots, the newest addition to the franchise jumps swords-first into a sprawling Metroidvania that reminds players of everything they loved and adored in past titles, and the bittersweet memory of instalments like The Forgotten Sands are, quite conveniently, forgotten. The 2010s saw a handful of Prince of Persia titles continuously fail to live up to the likes of The Sands of Time, and Ubisoft has been struggling to strike gold in the way it did before with the series’ magnum opus. But with the release of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the studio goes back to basics with sharp, responsive movement and a surprisingly huge 2D map that lets you explore gorgeous scenery and battle throngs of enemies at every turn.
Two things make a good Prince of Persia title something great. Freedom of movement and engaging combat, and The Lost Crown delivers them both on a silver platter right from the off. You play as Sargon, a young buck part of a group of powerful warriors called The Immortals, tasked with the rescue mission of the titular prince, Ghassan. Many fans of the franchise were rightfully upset that The Lost Crown wouldn’t have you playing as the actual Prince of Persia. Still, despite reservations, Sargon is an engaging and enigmatic protagonist, keen to prove himself to his peers as they battle their way up the beautiful Mount Qaf.
His speed is a perfect match to the breakneck combat system but the game thankfully doesn’t make you disastrously underpowered, because right from the beginning, fighting is damn fun. Of course, Metroidvanias are infamous for having unlockable skills and level-ups to make progress something to work for, but from the moment you control Sargon, fighting with his double blades is a joy. This is thanks to an incredibly responsive and wonderfully intuitive combat system that never makes it feel like work.
This isn’t to say that the game goes easy on you, because you will almost definitely have a tough time in certain areas, whether it’s battling hordes of enemies across a number of different levels, or trying to navigate your way through various environmental puzzles. But the combat feels fresh, and as eager as the brash young character you control, and much like Sargon, the more you play and understand how to take certain battles, the more you want to learn. Sargon is a frenetic fighter, and each blow to an enemy charges a meter that eventually allows you to unleash an Athra Surge - a devastatingly powerful mechanic that can vanquish foes in one fell swoop if timed correctly, adding even more vindication to victories when you end a fight in a cinematic crack of blue lightning.
This inexplicably great combat system is perfectly placed on a sprawling 2D map, and this is another area in which The Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown excels. It's a platforming masterpiece, and it needs to be because the Metroidvania flair of The Lost Crown provides a dense map full of obstacles and secret routes. Returning to old spots with new abilities is a joy because you can gain access to hard-to-reach places that you’d been staring at longingly in the first few hours, and with every new wall jump or movement combo you seem to discover more. The game wants to be explored, and you can feel how keen it is to reveal its secrets everywhere you go. One such ability that comes in useful through hours of exploration, is Memory Shards. This mechanic lets you take an in-game screenshot of an inaccessible area and then once you have the means to get there, you can fast-travel back to that very same point in the screenshot. The back-and-forth of this level of expedition is a delight, because not only do you unlock combat mechanics with new abilities, but you also unlock verticality and exploration.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an unexpected joy and after the disappointment of 2010’s The Forgotten Sands, it succeeds where its predecessor failed by staking its claim as a reboot to the much-loved series. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it wants to be played just as much as you want to play it.
