4.5/5 ★ – hcolesmith's review of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

So obviously the best thing Ubisoft has made in years. Frustratingly so, considering even this has somehow underperformed based on the company’s flawed expectations. The Lost Crown is so bursting with creativity and brilliance on all fronts that it should immediately make every single AAA publisher rethink their entire release strategy. And yet, it hasn’t, it won’t, and instead Ubisoft will likely try and bury everything that worked about this in favor of continuing their tired tactics that also underperform. Rather than be another guy gushing about how good this is, I’ll offer a few areas of improvement as someone who loves Metroidvanias a ton. Firstly, the game map is probably the most “Ubisoft” thing about The Lost Crown. It litters itself with icons and, as a result, falls a bit short in the aspects of Metroidvanias I love best: the feeling of getting lost, exploring, and discovering something new. There were a couple moments where I almost got that feeling again, but they dropped away pretty quick, as finding the map seller is pretty easy, and I almost always just happened upon them during my first exploration of the area. This ties in with my second gripe. Linearity here is pretty forced. Because you are almost always going through the area from the same place the first time (aside from maybe one or two areas), it means that replayability is shifted more towards wanting to experience the same thing again, rather than to see how you can do things differently. Perhaps I’ve totally missed something here and there are different orders to get things done, but when the game also forces an objective marker on the map it undercuts any potential nonlinearity. Skill progression happens a bit irregularly here, and most of the most useful power-ups are some of the last you’ll receive during the game. This has two primary effects. Firstly, it makes the player feel less inclined to explore early on because you learn quickly you can’t reach most places. Secondly, while I thought the power-ups in this game were a strong suit and some of the more unique ones I’ve seen in a Metroidvania, those unique abilities are used so much less to gate secrets than the traditional ones like a double-jump or grappling hook. So there are actually fewer secrets as a result, because most of them are gated behind the high walls, etc. and the player receives the double jump as one of the last power-ups. This leads into my last gripe, perhaps the most controversial of them. The optional challenges in this game are extremely difficult. That in and of itself is not a problem, but it does feel like those challenges were added in so there’s more optional content for the player to mitigate the lack of exploration available throughout the early and mid game. Those challenges, then, feel like they should be slightly more accessible because they are no longer only really in the territory of the the most skilled player—now, far more average players will likely try them. But since they retain the extreme difficulty you may find in other games, people will get more frustrated because more people feel inclined to try them since there’s less to do. I don’t consider myself to be the top tier of player, but I do consider myself to be pretty adept at platforming and combat in these sorts of games. I flat out stoped doing these challenges after spending close to three hours on a single one until I finally beat it. That’s no problem in a game like Hollow Knight or Celeste, where the amount of content otherwise feels appropriate to the game itself. None of these are dealbreakers, though. The Lost Crown is an exceptional game. It’s flashy, fun, and engaging. In addition to it being the best Ubisoft game in years, it’s one of the best Metroidvania I’ve played since Hollow Knight. This should be the new standard for Prince of Persia. I hope we get more of this.