Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

I was first turned on to Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown when I heard it described as the spiritual successor to Metroid Dread. Knowing it would probably be ages before I got another mainline Metroid game, I was pretty excited by the prospect of having a similar game so soon. I felt a bit burnt-out on the Metroidvania genre for a while, so I let this one sit on my shelf while I allowed my interest to start simmering again. Picking it up now, I don't know why I ever walked away! The exploration and growth that defines search-action games is so addictive, and the team behind The Lost Crown must be experts.

Shaking up the series in more ways than one, this Prince of Persia entry follows Sargon, a member of an elite fighting team known as The Immortals. Instead of being the titular prince himself, Sargon is tasked with rescuing the prince from a cursed mountain following his abduction from the palace. Mount Qaf itself, the setting for most of the game, also acts as the vehicle for just about everything else the game has to offer.

The mountain was placed under a curse when a mysterious event unfolded with the Simurgh, a god-like bird spirit with power over time. This event caused time to shatter within Mount Qaf, leading to timelines overlapping, time passing differently for different people, and other chaos within the confines of the mountain. Sargon unlocks his Metroidvania-standard powers by collecting feathers left behind by the Simurgh and inheriting its time-manipulation abilities. Finding each of these feathers felt like a true event, and I always followed the discovery of a new ability with a huge run-through to each of the secrets I had to skip over before, but could now access.
 
In other Metroidvanias, the backtracking runs could be a bit of a slog since you would need to figure out both which areas you missed and whether or not your new ability was the missing piece to get you in. I only had that problem with a single secret throughout the entire game because of the incredible options the game includes for taking notes on your map. Unlocked very close to the beginning of the game (for free!), you have a nice selection of badges that you can place anywhere on the map to mark locked doors, traps, treasure chests, and more. Even better than the badges is a tool called memory shards.
 
At any point while you're traversing Mount Qaf, you can press down on the d-pad to snap a "memory" screenshot, saving it directly to your current location on the map. You only start with a few reusable memory shards at a time, but you can find more in chests throughout the mountain. These screenshots, in combination with the badges, made backtracking extremely simple. With a quick glimpse at my memories, I could determine whether or not my new ability could help me at the pictured area, allowing me to target only the newly-accessible locations without wasting any time or effort. The deluge of treasure I could collect after each major milestone offered a nice breather and reward after the intense platforming and combat I had just gone through to earn my new power.

Not once did I feel like I wasn't making progress in this game. It seemed like everything I did, everywhere I explored, and every secret I discovered pushed the game forward in some way. The setting and story integrated perfectly with the gameplay, with nothing feeling out of place or contrived. I really enjoyed uncovering the secrets of Mount Qaf, and felt rewarded whenever I cleaned out one of the areas on the map. The areas themselves were also often awe-inspiring. For a 2.5D game, I was impressed by how much effort was made to flesh out the foreground and background, purely for the aesthetic. The cutscenes didn't do the characters much justice due to the poor (often absent) lip-syncing, but the flair of the combat portions of the animation were still quite the spectacle. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown absolutely stood up to my expectations as a successor to Metroid Dread, so I'm a bit discouraged that it wasn't enough for Ubisoft to greenlight a sequel. I would love to see more from this team, so I hope they can work together to make another project like this someday in the future. For now, I'll keep supporting new Metroidvanias, and hopefully I'll find another that I enjoy as much as this!
The game is available for Steam here (as of  2/8/26): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2751000/Prince_of_Persia_The_Lost_Crown/
The game is available for Switch and Switch 2 here (as of 2/8/26): https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown-switch/
The game is available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S here (as of 2/8/26): https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown/9p4lslg7b8ct

Popular posts from this blog

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension

Image
When I first learned about this "game" in a Nintendo Indie World presentation, I was immediately intrigued. I downloaded the original game-jam version to my phone soon after, then proceeded to never play it. When I learned that the full game was available on Google Play Pass, I downloaded that too, and this time I was actually committed. Despite the title, there actually is a game, and it's surprisingly cute! There Is No Game is a tongue-in-cheek point-and-click puzzler with a touch of tragic romance tying it all together, but it takes a second to discern all of those pieces on a first playthrough. From as early as the title screen, the game is trying to stop you from playing. If you manage to make it past that point, you'll be greeted by a somewhat hostile AI who does his very best to keep you from finding any game-related experience within his software. With a little bit of creative puzzle-solving and a lot of determination, you can find ways past his defenses to re...
Read more

Space Invaders

Image
Space Invaders holds legendary status on gaming history. This beloved arcade title paved the way for one of my  favorite space shooters , and the aliens are legendary in both their designs and there ever faster approach. That's already enough to secure a legacy. However, I've found that I'm just not very good at it, and my incompetence puts a slightly sour taste in my mouth. I appreciate the unique strategy involved in using cover to your advantage, but I found that instead of helping protect me, the shields acted sort of like funnels for every opposing missile. This led my play sessions to end pretty quickly. I also never really felt engaged enough to take the time to improve. I hold no ill-feelings towards Space Invaders . The game is well made, and it deserves it's legendary status. However, it just doesn't seem like the game for me when I have so many other options. The game is available for Android here (as of 8/26/20):  https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta...
Read more

Minecraft Dungeons

Image
With Minecraft being the marketing juggernaut that it is, there's a lot of crap that gets sold just because it's associated with the brand. Kids love the stuff, and I'm glad they can have fun with it, I just find myself disappointed that such an original game is represented by crappy plastic toys and endless varieties of low-quality apparel. Minecraft Dungeons seems to be a product of that same marketing titan, slapping a coat of Minecraft paint on something completely unrelated to the original work just to sell some units. However, quite unexpectedly, Dungeons manages to stand on its own as a fun little adventure. It's definitely not without its flaws, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. Unfortunately, my first impression wasn't great. Minecraft Dungeons is a fairly straightforward dungeon-crawler, tasking you with exploring a set of fairly linear maps while defeating enemies in order to reach a boss or an exit at their end. However, before you can...
Read more