 | Too easy for it’s own good Can get monotonous |
Forget all you know about the old Prince Persia. He died (figuratively speaking) with the last generation of consoles giving birth to a brand new protagonist in the bargain. This unsung hero is not really a Prince nor does he have an ounce of royal blood coursing through his veins; he’s merely a vagabond searching for his donkey, Farah (heh) in the middle of a sandstorm, where he bumps into the mysterious Elika and embarks upon the adventure of a lifetime.
Like most male protagonists on the block, the new Prince thinks with his crotch instead of his brain. He gives up searching for his donkey to peruse this spunky little acrobatic girl, who just so happens to be in the middle of a world of trouble. It turns out her father – for reasons that’ll be explained through the course of the game – has released an ancient evil upon the land.
This evil known only as Ahriman has been in captivity for over thousands of years so yeah, he’s pretty ticked off about the whole episode. To get back at his captors, he starts corrupting the land by drowning it in a pulsating black goo of sorts that destroys everything it touches. Now it’s up to the Prince and Elika to make sure Ahriman’s shoved back into the same place he was holed up for thousands of years. To do so, they’ll have to traverse Elika’s kingdom, the City of Light cleansing off all the vile corruption that’s currently engulfing it.
Unlike previous Prince of Persia games, PoP now allows you to choose your destination, granting you a bit of freedom instead of forcing you down a particular road. Liberating the land from the corruption means you’ll have to travel to various areas, but the order in which you do so is entirely up to you. Once you liberate a particular patch of land you can then teleport from one fertile land to another without actually traveling all the way there. As and when you find yourself getting a bit lost, ask Elika for some help and she’ll gladly point you in the right direction.
Once you platform your way to the heart of a corrupted area, you’ll have to indulge in some combat against a boss or a mini boss. After slashing away at him/her for a couple of minutes, you’ll be able to purge the land off all evil and corruption. From there on, you’ll have to collect a certain amount of orbs that spring up all over the place enabling Elika to upgrade her powers. This is a mandatory process since those newly acquired powers are the only way you’ll be able to access certain areas that you couldn’t earlier.
