Elise, my beautiful daughter
You are a woman now, you ought to choose a wife

Will you pick capable and gifted tradwife Freya
Or sharp and intelligent fun wife Lebkuchen
Or homeless hippie from the woods Rozenmarine

...

Ending №5 Star-Crossed

Truly a Ubisoft Original © in a sense that it's been the buggiest release in recent memory. I had sound bugs, cutscene bugs, gameplay bugs. I found a way to glitch the game to run entirely in slow motion. One time all sound effects disappeared until I completely rebooted the app. During one of the boss fights the camera stuck to a place so I had to rely on muscle memory and sound cues when the boss was out of frame (I still defeated them which might actually speak highly of the design). Whatever this is. It was a shockingly unpolished ride which makes me believe that the last group in Ubisoft subsoils which is still allowed to make games was rushed to get Prince of Persia out the oven. And I'm sorry to lead with this, because the game itself is seriously awesome.

It's just a stupidly good game of its type. With Prince of Persia the craft of making "good ass metroidvania" seems to be perfected to a sheen. These folks in Montpelier aren't afraid to leave you alone with the whole map and vague directions to explore. They will create a wildly intricate 2D combat and not teach you any of its peripeteia unless you check with an NPC tucked at the corner of one of the rooms. They will drop you into shockingly precise platforming section required to progress. They also designed maybe the best set of powers in a metroidvania, nearly all of which used to equal success in exploration, combat and puzzles! Nothing here is breaking new grounds, but every core facet of new Prince of Persia is designed to create just right amount of friction to be engaging. Fantastic fucking time when you're not dealing with bugs.

I'm also very much enthused by artistic goals of The Lost Crown. The old Prince of Persia were good, but Persia itself always felt like an middle eastern fantasyland with corresponding iconography of evil vizier scheming behind the back of good sultan, and only you, the prince of an abstract ancient Arabic country is destinied to save the night. The Lost Crown actually strives to be a game that's unmistakably Persian, paying a lot of respect to the culture, drawing from Iranian literature, ancient Zoroastrianism and hiring Iranian voice actors to do an awesome Farsi dub. I'm not lettered enough to confirm the ingenuity of the work, but it feels authentic and reverent. And the story is quite neat too, playing on expectations that come with the name. I came for a solid metroidvania and stayed for great vibes.

I'm just kinda upset that with all these positive I wasn't having exactly the best time with all the technical issues I encountered. Ubisoft should've let it cook for a few more months. Maybe I'll do a full map sweep after patches some months later and my impression will only improve.

God this game is just dope as hell. A hero marginalized by authorities for being a threat to nazis? Cool swinging mechanics with a learning curve? A set of enemies that actually demand swift movement and mindful use of your tools? Despite all scuffed things about it, I keep returning to this reboot every few years for another replay. No other game has quite got bare fundamentals of an acrobatic action game so right, and I like it even better every time around.

Please Capcom give Spencer another chance. Make him non-stop quip like in a Marvel movie or give him a little bionic son to make journalists like it this time around. I'll take my monkey's paw to bring good swinging back in video games.

From self-aware yet high-spirited attitude to the soundtrack curated by a person with the deepest 2004 taste palette, this is such a refreshing 2000s piece. It's so impressive how the commitment to the beat isn't just an enhancement to presentation — it's your guide in combat, the one that trains you to discern visual and audio cues, restricts button mashing, makes long strings of attacks a commitment; in other words, it teaches you how to play a spectacle action game! And for the price of admission there's a lot of game here, by no means it's less substantial than Bayonettas and Devil May Cries of the world. Simply a tremendous surprise.

And to all people saying Tango finally made a good game: maybe it's time to recognize that Tango was always good.

I wanted to write a review on why I think this is one of the poorest commercial rhythm games I played but Cold nailed literally every point I wanted to hit so I'd rather just remind people of GHWT Definitive Edition if you're really looking to gangnam style in backrooms with Doomguy on vocals and Peter Griffin on drums.