The Prince of Persia The Two Thrones Review

The Prince of Persia is back, as nimble as ever but with a bit of an identity crisis thanks to those troublesome Sands of Time. The Two Thrones opens as The Prince makes his way home to Babylon with his love, Kaileena. As their ship rounds a cliff face and they catch sight of The Prince’s home they’re shocked to find it in flames and overrun with invaders intent on tearing up the place. When they land on shore Kaileena is promptly kidnapped (didn’t see that one coming, did you?) and another Prince of Persia adventure begins.

At its core, The Two Thrones remains true to the series’ signature gameplay. The Prince is more acrobatic than an eight year old Romanian girl and he puts his skills to good use as he makes his way through the game. The Prince can run up or along walls for short stretches, balance on high beams, shimmy between columns, slide down poles, and that’s far from a complete list. Each of the game’s levels plays out as a series of puzzles where often the only thing that you need to do to move on is to get to the other side of the room. Of course doing so is never easy as you’ll need to find a way to vault, jump, and somersault your way to that exit. The thing about this that is so enjoyable is that The Prince is remarkably easy to control and you’re not stuck spending most of the time trying to align each jump perfectly lest you fall to your doom. The controls are well-designed and are very responsive – so much so that you shouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself asking yourself “did I just do that?” after stringing together a series of acrobatic moves. In fact, the challenge in the game comes more from figuring out what to do than from actually doing it. This one of the game’s strong points, but unfortunately it can also be its most frustrating.

The problem is that you will often find yourself staring at a large courtyard that you must cross without a clue as how to proceed. You may see a couple objects or architectural features that may provide grab points, but since it is very hard to judge distances in the game and to determine in advance just how far The Prince will jump, the proper path to pursue will not be apparent. This leads to a blind jump of faith that sometimes pays off and at others doesn’t. It’s bad enough that you’ll have to watch the death of The Prince, the Game Over screen, the Continue screen, and the load screen each time this happens, but making things more frustrating is that the game will put you back at the last checkpoint and the checkpoints are quite spread out in the game. And if you think the checkpoints are too sparse wait until you see how few and far between the save points are. Playing The Two Thrones inevitably requires a large time commitment every time you sit yourself down in front of your Xbox. Trial and error gameplay can take a little time and you won’t dare to quite before you’ve reached the next save point so you don’t have to go through it all again. I’ve seen games that are miserly with the save opportunities before, but The Two Thrones is like the Scrooge McDuck of them all. This alone is such a frustrating aspect of the game that it knocks down the fun factor of what is otherwise an enjoyable game.

The Two Thrones is not all about vaulting – you’ll face your share of combat as well. The game makes use of simplified stealth kill system that blurs the screen when you’re in the proper position and ready to attack and causes your blade to glow at the moment that you should strike. Sure it’s all kind of Dragon’s Lair-esque, but the stealth kills are pretty fun to watch anyway. If you find yourself detected and facing an enraged enemy (or two, or three,…) you’ll have to fight on your own without useful visual cues as to when to strike. The combat uses a combo-based system with a block action thrown in for defense. The Prince can be pretty acrobatic in combat too, and works a lot of throws and vaults into his attacks. At times it looks like it was all choreographed and at others feels a bit awkward, but overall it works well enough. The excitement generated by the game’s combat gets ratcheted up several notches when you play as The Prince’s alter ego.

Thanks to the aforementioned Sands of Time, The Prince will periodically transform into The Dark Prince. As The Dark Prince The Prince becomes dark in both appearance and persona, and is transformed into a killing machine. While The Prince is all about finesse, The Dark Prince is all about brute strength. The Dark Prince wields a daggertail, which is sort of a sword on a chain and is pretty deadly in a fight. The Dark Prince is a lot of fun in a fight, slicing and dicing multiple enemies at a time. Unfortunately for The Dark Prince he is a flawed character and his life force is always draining steadily. While it can be replenished by slaying foes or breaking some jars for the goodies inside, it acts as a constantly ticking clock that will force you to play through the Dark Prince levels with a certain amount of haste. At times in the game The Prince will engage The Dark Prince in internal dialogue which brings the struggle within the title character to life.

The gameplay mechanic introduced in the first game – using the sands of time to rewind short sections of the game to undo a deadly mistake – makes a welcome return in The Two Thrones. This is especially the case when you don’t want to go through the long arduous reload/replay sequence if you picked the wrong gap to leap across. Where it really becomes a necessity though is in the game’s chariot racing levels. Controlling a chariot is like trying to drive a semi down a windy road made of marshmallow, but even more deadly. It’s not much fun to have to rerun the same race over and over again because of one little mistake here or another there. Too bad the Sands of Time can’t fast-forward as well…

Overall The Two Thrones is an enjoyable game. It features compelling characters and is set in an imaginative and interesting world, and the acrobatic gameplay is pretty unique to the The Prince of Persia series. However, the frustrating save system and unnecessary race levels take some of the luster off of the jewels in this prince’s crown.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 83%.  The Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones shares the dual personality of its title character in that it is at once immensely enjoyable and incredibly frustrating.