Looks absolutely stunning
Boss battles are larger than life
Level design and envi🅺ronment𒅌al puzzles are brilliant
Story is needlessly complicated and convoluted
Pacing occasionally suffers as a result
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In its most inspiring moments, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown ওis a wonderful Metroidvania. Its labyrinthian 2.D map is crafted with care and is intelligently balanced, brought to life by the game's vibrant color palette that's as gorgeous as it is inviting. Its environmental puzzles are challenging but rewarding, and its library of incrementally-gained, genre-staple special abilities ensure exploration feels fresh from start to finish. The Lost Crown's narrative features, on the other hand, are needlessly convoluted and too often disrupted my flow, forcefully distracting me from everything the game does so well.
Release date: January 15, 2024
Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
Publisher: Ubisoft
I'll address the game's story in greater detail later, but the skinny here is: Prince Ghassan has been kidnap💖ped, you fill the nimble shoes of a young warrior named Sargon, and, alongside your like-minded band of so👍ldier buddies named The Immortals, it's up to you to save the prince and thus save the day. A series of events that I won't spoil here inevitably complicate things along the way, and while striving to overcome the antagonists of the hour, young Sargon learns a series of super-charged abilities that allow him to access new areas and overcome once impenetrable obstacles.
The 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Metroidvania games live or die by the intricacies, intrigue, and interconnectedness of their maps, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown's constantly-evolving Mount Qaf is a good one. From the slimy Depths to the pitch-dark Catacombs, the sprawling Sacred Archives and the multi-tiered Citadel, each location has its own idiosyncratic style, host of hostile enemies, and treasure trove of key items and environmental puzzles. In a clear nod to the series' 35-year lineage, the latter often comprise some order of spike traps, deteriorating platforms, pressure plates, well-placed flagpoles, and time-manipulation mechanics – and when all they come together, or rather, whenever you work out how to꧑ overcome them when they come together, that's when The Lost Crown really clicks into place.
These level-set, physics-meets-mental conundrums were over and above my favorite thing about Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, offering a🍌 shrewd understanding of what d🅘rives the Metroidvania genre beneath the facade of cool superpowers and larger than life boss battles. I've played too many games of this ilk who fail to grasp the importance of balancing intrigue in both downtime and at full speed simultaneously, but in mechanical terms The Lost Crown is bang on the money. Don't get me wrong, you'll send Sargon into battle against more ancient gods than you can shake his twin-blades at, but the journey getting there is often punctuated with masterful and intelligent platforming puzzle work.
"All of whichꩵ makes Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown a bit of a conundrum in itself."
| Genre | Metroidvania |
Joe Donnelly is a sports editor from Glasgow and former features editor at GamesRadar+. A mental health advocate, Joe has written about video games an♏d mental health for The Guardian, New Statesman, VICE, PC Gamer and many more, and believes the interactive nature of video games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform. His book Checkpoint considers the complex intersections of video games and mental health, and was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book of the Year for non-fiction in 2021. As familiar with the streets of Los Santos as he is the west of Scotland, Joe can often be found living his best and worst lives in GTA Online and its PC role-playing scene.
