3/5 ★ – hwljulie's review of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

The platforming is great, every movement and grab and snap feels very responsive, giving you that feeling of control over your precise timing required to successfully complete the platforming puzzles. Platforming gets gradually trickier but more fun. This subsequently makes exploring fun too, although this can get tedious since there is not too much incentive to explore. The collectibles are just a few sentences that don’t add that much to the already uninteresting and uncaptivating lore. While the platforming can be fun, it is a bummer that it is a gamble on what the reward is after a platforming section. You go through this difficult platforming section, maybe go through a few retries, and finally, you make it to the end. And what do you get for it? Maybe an amulet (yay!), maybe a ton of money (yay!) or just a collectible with a few sentences of flavor text (boo). Maybe it keeps it exciting to anticipate a potentially good reward, but no doubt that it can be a bummer throughout your exploration journey. As you progress through the game and get more abilities and become familiar with the combat though, you’ll find yourself wanting to explore just for fun, regardless of incentive. I suppose the only real incentive to explore is the extra crystal shards (the currency) that you find as you explore. You use these shards to buy amulets that give you extra buffs, weapon upgrades, health upgrades, and many other things, but these are the more notable prioritized purchases. These upgrades are great and I guess if you’re power-hungry, exploring will be very rewarding for you. I don’t find it necessary to grind for upgrades, playing the game passively is enough if you can get the hang of combat, but YMMV. The abilities are great individually but even moreso together. I loved the platforming levels that combined the usage of abilities along with how to manage your dashes, double jumps, and wall jumps. I’m glad the game’s mechanics are focused on fast, snappy movements, naturally creating these abilities that emphasize speedy and satisfying movement. I usually see metroidvanias as a slow and passive genre where the abilities might be more for “support” than a means of movement and offense. Maybe I have a grossly wrong impression. I just wish i could’ve seen more of these abilities the rest of the game. I felt that once an ability was introduced, you used it for about 30 min and then never again. Wish there were more combinations of abilities required for some platforming sequences too. I felt that sometimes, the platforming got repetitive. The ability that confused me the most is Dimensional Claw where you create a black hole to throw projectiles. I just didnt understand why it was so under-utilized. I swear I used it less than 5 times the entire game for the main objective. I don’t think this ability had much attention when it came to dedicated puzzle sections unlike the other abilities. It was confusing. I tried to look for opportunities to use Dimensional Claw the entire game and pretty much never did. I think there was a lot of missed opportunity with utilizing Dimensional Claw with the grappling hook ability especially, but with every other ability. Flying and dashing through the air while timing projectiles sounds very fun. The story was average, somewhat entertaining at least so not entirely boring and doesn’t necessarily turn your brain off. I wouldn’t say it’s horrible, wouldn’t say it’s anything creative. I remember disliking the art style at first, but it grew on me. It contributes to the uniqueness of the game in the Prince of Persia series. Does a good job making it stand out in the series along with the genre shift. Combat is very fun. It seems deceptively one-dimensional at first, but there’s actually some cool combos you can pull off and can end up juggling the enemies and doing more damage than you expect. The combat training is actually quite fun. I dont think i have anything negative to say about the combat. It’s simple, it’s fun, and there’s some depth to it if you care enough to dive in. You don’t need to though, and that’s kind of the beauty of it. Overall, the game is good. It’s polished, it’s fun, it’s satisfying, it’s chill. It keeps you awake with the puzzles it throws at you and also lets you relax when fighting enemies. I don’t think it redefines anything, but it did come with some creativity in terms of abilities and how it’s used in platforming. I do believe the game falls short in the potential of ability usage for platforms. I guess that probably wasn’t the focus for the game? It’s not necessarily a platformer after all. I must consider this when judging the game. When I think of all aspects of the game, all I can think is fun but *average*. I dont regret playing it, but it’s a game that I would not think too much about in the future. I take the lessons I got from this game and spill them over to my future gaming academia 🤓