Prince of Persia is a weird series for me, I have enjoyed all the games in the series but the ones I have played were made by Ubisoft. I have never really touched the non Ubisoft related games in the series and I have never touched the original 2D side scrolling game, then there was the fact that I never thought there would ever thought Ubisoft would ever make a new PoP game especially considering how much money Assassin's Creed and Far Cry makes them but low and behold Ubisoft would finally make a new game in the series and on top of this, the new game they would make isn't even in 3D but it's more of a homage to the original 2D side scrolling game all though this new game would take inspiration from modern games like the Mercury Steam Metroid games, Guacamelee games, Celeste and the Ori games to varying degrees.
I do really enjoy this game, but later in the review there is going to be some lengthy criticism I have, but this all comes from the fact that this is already a really enjoyable game that could be even better. I'm honestly surprised that a game like this can come from a big name publisher whose name isn't Nintendo especially for the kind of game Lost Crown is.
What PoP The Lost Crown is esstentially a metroidvania, but it's not just that but it also very challenging platforming and combat especially for a game in the genre, the platforming in general is kind of like a cross between Celeste, the recent Rayman games and Guacamelee. Lost Crown is much more challenging that any Ubisoft PoP endeavour, if you were one of those people who heavily criticized the 2008 cel shaded reboot for being "too easy". Lost Crown and I don't like to saying this since it's so overdone is the "Dark Souls" of Ubisoft Prince of Persia.
Much of the game is dodging a vast array of traps from spikes, to moving platforms where you need to dodge out of the way quickly or you will get crushed, solving time puzzles, timed spiked walls, using your location displacement power to solve puzzles and in conjuction to the dash and in some levels dodging spikes while dashing, double jumping and timing pole swings to make it to the end. The dash Sargon gets is very similar to Celeste, the double jump is almost similar to Guacamelee's, the grapple hook towards the end of the game is similar to one in the Ori games to some degree. The amount of insane platforming guanlet the game throws at you in the main story path can feel pretty stressful and can be relieving to get to the next save point. The platforming especially towards the end of the beaten path requires some insane precision.
The game's platforming can be so challenging that I played the game on guided mode since it's similar to Guacamelee where it's more about intense platforming and combat than it is about moment to moment exploration, I didn't want to spend majority of time dying to platforming gaunlets that wasn't on the beaten story path. The easy mode also comes in handy, I was playing on normal for much of the game but then towards the end lowered to easy since you lose less health upon failing a platforming sections, I don't get why the game doesn't just constantly autosave like Celeste and Guacamelee do since if I get a full game over, I don't want to do the platforming parts I already did, save points are plentiful to the game's credit but it does get frustrating getting a full game over because I was stuck on one super hard platforming part, the game checkpoints during bosses so I don't get why it wouldn't here.
Speaking of bosses, the combat is mostly solid all though, I kind of wished it took more inspiration from Guacamelee and had mandatory combat, some parts of TLC does it but it isn't consistent. I would prefer this over optional enemies I want to skip past being HP sponges.
Some other criticisms I will also mention, that the dimension shifting upgrade later in the game doesn't get much use, TLC makes you get this dimesnion warping platform shifting upgrade but it gets little to no use in the main game.
The bosses are also a mixed bag, none of them are outright "bad" except for Menolias. What I liked early on with bosses is that they were challenging but they also had the ability for the player to parry them like in Mercury Steam Metroid, but the thing is, most of the bosses after Azdhada stop having "vengenful parries" or major ways to do damage outside of upgrading your swords to get to phases a little faster. The bosses had so much HP afterwards that I had to lower to easy and not engage with the RPG systems. The bosses afterwards are still decent but none of them ever really reach the heights that Azdhada did.
I will say some positivity and say the story is pretty decent, it isn't amazing or anything but Sargon is a decent protagonist who goes through just enough character development where he starts off as someone who blindly follows the Immortals and is quite arrogant but slowly mellows out and starts being more humble. Vahram is also fleshed out enough that I felt kind of bad for him and was decent enough anti villain that at the very least I paid attention to the story outside of moment to moment gameplay.
Overall, PoP TLC is a very good game even though I got some criticism for it. The game has a very good foundation and I respect Ubisoft at all for making a game like this considering how much flak they get for their bad PR. I would love for their to be a sequel or another game like this but with more refinements, what's here is already very good.
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