Pros: Graphics are amazing, good story, enjoyable to play.
Cons: Rather linear, occasionally over-reliant on gymnastics.
The Bottom Line: Warrior Within does admirable justice to its legacy, and can boast an environment as visually impressive as almost any other in gaming.
smadakcin's Full Review: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within for Windows
Legacy
As a quick glance at my review of the original games will confirm, I was a huge fan of Prince of Persia and its sequel when they first came out on the PC. Unfortunately, the first re-make, Prince of Persia 3D, so disappointed me as to put me off the continuation of the series up until deciding to give this effort a go.
Story
Thankfully, this time, the emotions are almost fully reversed - once I got the hang of the new controls, I became immersed in the game to a dangerous, sanity-threatening extent. We take up the Prince's story off the back of his releasing of the sands of time in the previous game, and discover he is being pursued relentlessly by the fearsome beast The Dahaka, guardian of the timeline, who is apparently a little peeved that our man has cheated death, and is keen to ensure he meets his fate in a grisly manner. Not one to put up with such nonsense, the Prince sets out to travel to the Isle of Time, where the sands were first created. If he can travel back and stop them and their powers ever being created, then perhaps the events that have led him here will never have happened, and he'll be free of the Dahaka.
The Dark Side
Now, hopefully that isn't too confusing, because it only gets weirder and more complex as the Prince begins to play with time and impact upon multiple destinies. Anyway, what of the game itself? First up, the whole tone of the adventure has been shifted, from exotic Persian splendour to dark Gothic scenes, heavy with menace and laced with a suitable rocky soundtrack to boot. The Prince has been similarly updated, scars and several weeks' unkempt beard growth now blighting his previous good looks, tattoos wrapped around his arms and heavy armour about his torso. His whole style is also re-cast: gone is his dainty, skillful fencing of old - he now has access to a whole host of knives, axes and maces with which to go at his opponents, and is able to engage in double-weaponed combat, launching his battered arsenal at his enemy if he fancies a change.
Marvellous Scenes
The graphics that contribute to this atmosphere are simply stunning - few other words to justice to the richness of surroundings, incredible detail and life-like environments that the player can explore - and the landscape does shift out of the decaying gloom of the first few stages after a while to take in a variety of vistas, all as impressive and beautifully-rendered as the last. The animation is also skillfully done - the fights are particularly impressive, and each weapon handles in such a realistic manner that one almost winces when the Prince makes contact with a gutsy axe swing.
Such a complex and intricate environment is not just for show, either; each room or scene is packed with ledges, openings, ropes, ladders and other bits of the scenery to interact with, and the Prince is such an acrobatic and lithe bloke that any number of potential paths are open to him.
Gold-Medal Gymnasts Required ...
This is, however, a slight down-point of the game, if a minor one - there can be something of an over-reliance on our man performing complex bits of gymnastics to get from place to place, often in the stead of decent traps and puzzles. This has two rather annoying effects; firstly, if you can't quite master a complex series of runs along walls, flips, bounces, curtain-slides and pole-swings, you're pretty much stuffed if you want to get anyway in this game - which is a shame, because the original games weren't quite like that, although they had their fair share of irritation-inducing precision jumps. Secondly, as I hinted at, such is the range and scope of the prince's moves, one can often be stuck on a ledge half-way up a tower with not the slightest idea of where to go, when you have to perform a ballet-like routine of moves to get to an obscure tree branch that you can't see anyway. I had to refer to guides to get round this sort of obstacle several times, to my considerable annoyance.
However, generally the path isn't too hard to follow - rather it is pretty linear most of the time (another small criticism), and the challenge is nicely balanced between being able to get from point A to point B and being able to survive the numerous skirmishes en route. There are some nice puzzles as well, often involving the manipulation of levers, or the standard gaming trick of pushing a block around a room onto a pesky button, and the Prince's modest time-control powers are integrated into this pretty well.
Let's Do The Time Warp Again ...
These powers are a major part of the game, and an area in which it improves on what has gone before - the Prince is capable of re-winding time for 8 seconds (provided he has the sand, of which you can carry up to six units), which proves immensely useful when you've just stupidly ran off a precipice, or the camera has caused you to somersault into a ravine. This cures many of the frustrations previously encountered not just in this series, but other games as well.
The aforementioned camera is an aspect which always troubles games of this nature, but is here handled pretty well. It doesn't often plant itself behind a conveniently-placed tree at a crucial moment, or give you an impossible angle to deal with, and borrows from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to incorporate a useful feature allowing you to centre the camera behind the Prince, or take a zoomed-out overview of the playing area.
Influential Predecessors
In comparing with Zelda, it is easy to notice several other influences (not suprising, given that the N64 game is the standard-bearer of the genre). The back-and-forth travel in time system, where one can perform actions in the past that change things in the present (or future, depending on how you look at it) in order to make progress is almost directly lifted from the game, and there is a nod in the direction of Majora's Mask with one later scene.
Sadly, it is with comparison with this sort of game that Warrior Within's weaknesses are exposed; the dark tone of the game is often a positive, but the depressing feel is hardly, if ever, lifted by more up-lifting side quests or "safe" locations, making it all a bit wearing. Also, as earlier touched upon, the game is very linear - go from room to room, completing the odd puzzle, dodging the odd trap, beating up the odd boss, and feels rather monotonous. Granted, some back-tracking and over-lapping exists, but the game would have benefited from a much more expansive playing area (the Island is really rather small) and some more significant diversions to really make it a Zelda-rivalling epic.
A Worthy Successor To The Throne
However, the story will keep you gripped - it gets especially good, if a little perplexing, as you enter the endgame - and the play is almost always enjoyable. It is also particularly hard - I am still stuck on the end boss, who is near-impossible, although I feel completing 99% of the game gives me enough to write a review on; it's just the ending I'm missing. This is a great game, and only suffers by comparison to the very best - it is gorgeous to look at, satisfying to play, and really does justice to its awesome legacy.
The Game of the Year Returns: Prince of Persia 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the universally acclaimed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, th...More at Amazon Marketplace
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