I felt a warmth in my heart when I first booted this game - it truly takes you back to those PS2 games. Unfortunately, that only lasted a couple of minutes.

The Forgotten Sands is not nearly as engaging as its predecessors. The game is a mechanical downgrade to every single PS2 game: the animations are stiffer, slower, and somehow less realistic than those much older games, which takes out the fun from the platforming. The combat lacks weight and the acrobatic moves the prince used to have, besides being too easy. The traps were mind-numbingly boring. The story has an interesting pivot, but it's conducted really poorly - the pacing is just off.

There were also multiple graphical bugs that required a restart of the game. I dropped it after about 4 hours. Too bad, I really wanted to like this.