Best game Ubisoft has made in a long time.
Outside of some issues with combat (mixture of balance and bugs) which was ultimately still great, the game as a whole is pretty dang good.
If you like exploration platformers, absolutely worth checking out.
(Note: I beat the game with a 67% percent complete save. I would absolutely recommend doing side stuff when you feel like it, but this is not a situation where you want to 100% before credits. Using those late game abilities in post-game clean-up feels like the intention.)
Extended Thoughts
For the most part, the core of the game feels like if the UbiArt Rayman games hand a new instalment that was an exploration platformer instead of level based. The Prince of Persia-ness comes mostly from the aesthetic/narrative. However I will say one of the early upgrades that is this games equivalent to the Sand of Time trilogy "rewind", does A LOT for the puzzles and combat.
Both the puzzles and platforming I have the least to say about, because it just worked. They both made sense, and felt great to do. Really snappy, whenever I repeatedly failed a harder optional platform sequence, it felt like my fault.
I want to stress the combat is actually very good. If you have ever gotten sucked up in a "Action Game (good)" aka, "Character Action" game, especially DMC, you can feel the passion from the design team oozing with what they put in here. They really went above and beyond what you would expect to be here in a game of this genre. I think PoP: TLC has the most mechanically deep combat of any 2d Exploration Platformer. The optional combo tutorial NPC does a fantastic job of highlighting the kind of stuff you can pull off, with what on the surface looks like very basic combat.
My only real issues with the combat are there is some mild jank with hit/hurt- boxes, frame timing, and bugs. There were multiple occasions where I dodged something, only to "get hit" on recovery of the attack, then teleported to another platform, like there was a safety check to make sure I wasn't being popped OoB (one time this did actually put me OoB during a boss fight in the forest).
Also damn I play a lot of action games, and some of the later bosses were kicking my ass with extremely strict parry/dodge timings on Normal difficulty. I felt like I needed 2/3 runs to know what the attacks actually did, because the windup was so short, I couldn't sight read some. The fact there was also a "Counter Hit" system where late parry/dodging would actually incur MORE damage taken, felt unnecessary (should have been reserved for higher difficulties for sure).
I do want to highlight specifically one later boss I want to beef with. This boss has ranged attacks, that after its 1/4 health lost cutscene transition, gains command grabs. One of these grabs is a counter stance the boss enters, and doing any hit to them triggers an attack where you lose half your health. This is one of the only times in the game there is "grey health", and if you dont get hit for an amount of time after getting grabbed, you will gain the health back. Except this is boss that does mass amounts of range attacks, so you will probs get hit for 1hp and lose that 50%. To beat this fight you had to learn to not attack when there was an opening, and instead sit around hoping they whiff the counter, instead of just looping into another long attack string. I feel like if the active frames for the counter weren't immediate, this wouldn't have annoyed the shit out of me so much.
If I had issue with this, I shudder to imagine more casual players fighting some of those bosses.
I bring this boss up not just because I took that shit personal, but it also highlights a level of dedication. Clearly the combat designers knew what they wanted to make, and holy hell you can feel them being limited by what was available. With such a small combat toolset, they are really pushing it to its limit. That same boss while kicking my ass, also would take more damage between attack phases if you understood how to extend your combos. You could either hit them with the 1-2-3, or if you knew your stuff, you could launch them, full aerial combo, air-reset, 2nd full aerial combo into helm splitter into a super.
Honestly my biggest takeaway from finishing the game is just let them make a 3d follow up! Everything here on the Puzzle/Platform side would translate great to 3d, especially since it would mean we could bring back wall running. No I'm not just trying to get a "Warrior Within but good with no caveats" game.
I would love to see what this team does if they get to no-holds-barred make a fully realised Character Action game (I mean fuck, this game not only does the rule of 3's rival fight, but that rival fight is JUST Vergil)
Outside of some issues with combat (mixture of balance and bugs) which was ultimately still great, the game as a whole is pretty dang good.
If you like exploration platformers, absolutely worth checking out.
(Note: I beat the game with a 67% percent complete save. I would absolutely recommend doing side stuff when you feel like it, but this is not a situation where you want to 100% before credits. Using those late game abilities in post-game clean-up feels like the intention.)
Extended Thoughts
For the most part, the core of the game feels like if the UbiArt Rayman games hand a new instalment that was an exploration platformer instead of level based. The Prince of Persia-ness comes mostly from the aesthetic/narrative. However I will say one of the early upgrades that is this games equivalent to the Sand of Time trilogy "rewind", does A LOT for the puzzles and combat.
Both the puzzles and platforming I have the least to say about, because it just worked. They both made sense, and felt great to do. Really snappy, whenever I repeatedly failed a harder optional platform sequence, it felt like my fault.
I want to stress the combat is actually very good. If you have ever gotten sucked up in a "Action Game (good)" aka, "Character Action" game, especially DMC, you can feel the passion from the design team oozing with what they put in here. They really went above and beyond what you would expect to be here in a game of this genre. I think PoP: TLC has the most mechanically deep combat of any 2d Exploration Platformer. The optional combo tutorial NPC does a fantastic job of highlighting the kind of stuff you can pull off, with what on the surface looks like very basic combat.
My only real issues with the combat are there is some mild jank with hit/hurt- boxes, frame timing, and bugs. There were multiple occasions where I dodged something, only to "get hit" on recovery of the attack, then teleported to another platform, like there was a safety check to make sure I wasn't being popped OoB (one time this did actually put me OoB during a boss fight in the forest).
Also damn I play a lot of action games, and some of the later bosses were kicking my ass with extremely strict parry/dodge timings on Normal difficulty. I felt like I needed 2/3 runs to know what the attacks actually did, because the windup was so short, I couldn't sight read some. The fact there was also a "Counter Hit" system where late parry/dodging would actually incur MORE damage taken, felt unnecessary (should have been reserved for higher difficulties for sure).
I do want to highlight specifically one later boss I want to beef with. This boss has ranged attacks, that after its 1/4 health lost cutscene transition, gains command grabs. One of these grabs is a counter stance the boss enters, and doing any hit to them triggers an attack where you lose half your health. This is one of the only times in the game there is "grey health", and if you dont get hit for an amount of time after getting grabbed, you will gain the health back. Except this is boss that does mass amounts of range attacks, so you will probs get hit for 1hp and lose that 50%. To beat this fight you had to learn to not attack when there was an opening, and instead sit around hoping they whiff the counter, instead of just looping into another long attack string. I feel like if the active frames for the counter weren't immediate, this wouldn't have annoyed the shit out of me so much.
If I had issue with this, I shudder to imagine more casual players fighting some of those bosses.
I bring this boss up not just because I took that shit personal, but it also highlights a level of dedication. Clearly the combat designers knew what they wanted to make, and holy hell you can feel them being limited by what was available. With such a small combat toolset, they are really pushing it to its limit. That same boss while kicking my ass, also would take more damage between attack phases if you understood how to extend your combos. You could either hit them with the 1-2-3, or if you knew your stuff, you could launch them, full aerial combo, air-reset, 2nd full aerial combo into helm splitter into a super.
Honestly my biggest takeaway from finishing the game is just let them make a 3d follow up! Everything here on the Puzzle/Platform side would translate great to 3d, especially since it would mean we could bring back wall running. No I'm not just trying to get a "Warrior Within but good with no caveats" game.
I would love to see what this team does if they get to no-holds-barred make a fully realised Character Action game (I mean fuck, this game not only does the rule of 3's rival fight, but that rival fight is JUST Vergil)