Over the past six months, I steadily came to a realisation; an epiphany, even. The ‘Sands of Time’ trilogy of the Prince of Persia games (I’m not counting The Forgotten Sands here) could be THE BEST GAME SERIES OF ALL TIME. Think of this as an almost 10th Anniversary magic of sorts, after the series’ end in 2005 with The Two Thrones.
Everything from the level design to the combat to the free-running and parkour movement mechanics could keep even the staunchest of game critics relatively quiet while writing their reviews in their parents’ basements. I say “relatively”, because some nitpickers still managed to find small faults with each of the three games, and most of these were unceremoniously heaped on the 2nd entry, Warrior Within. After playing through the three games, I find it slightly unfair that that particular game has to be the black sheep of the ‘Sands of Time’ series. Allow me to share with you my opinion (and I can’t state that word any more obviously) that Warrior Within could in fact be the BEST game of the trilogy.
Oh, and for those of you who were expecting purely metal stuff in this next entry; if an angry Persian warrior slicing his enemies in half like they’re sandwich bread ISN’T metal enough for you, then I don’t know what is.
Also, MAJOR SPOILERS.
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First, the level design. Warrior Within’s Island of Time made vast improvements over Sands of Time’s limited albeit engrossing Palace of Azad. The Island had better spread-out structures, platforms and death traps, with more intricate design and detail. And while I think its dominant colour scheme of reds and browns was a little much, I think it was a small price to pay for how it turned out in the end. The time portals were an ingenious move as well, adding an all-new twist to familiar areas.
But what I loved most about the island was its non-linearity. You could choose which tower you wanted to activate first, you could backtrack through the Empress’ castle to find the well-hidden life upgrades, and you had to find the right time portal to open inaccessible areas. It was easy for you to get lost or ponder your direction within the towers, especially the Mechanical Tower. That one had such a sense of scale and intricacy to it. And for all the good things about the level design of the first and third games, they were still comparatively more linear and restricting.
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Second, the combat. Sands of Time’s combat system was a little too simplistic; vault-and-slash for the maroon-clothed monsters, vault-off-the-walls-and-slash for the blue-wearing ones. Plus, the final fight with the Vizier was just too anticlimactic. Although it was pretty funny to see all the sand monsters just gormlessly standing around while the Prince made that whole in-fight stunt of absorbing each monster’s essence into the dagger.
Nevertheless, Warrior Within had different kinds of primary swords and secondary weapons, enabled more combat mechanics and combos, and offered a wider variety of enemies for your proverbial hack n’ slash buffet. The three main bosses – Shahdee, Kaileena, and the Dahaka – were easier to defeat once you figured out their attack patterns, but were pretty challenging nonetheless. Kudos to the Thrall and Griffin side-bosses as well.
With respect to Two Thrones, its combat system was a bit indecisive, if not sociopathic. If you ignore the fact that it borrowed aspects from Warrior Within’s environments and gameplay, you’d see that the game made you rely on stealth mechanics and speed kills first like a proto-Assassin’s Creed. But if you failed in these actions and had to switch to melee combat, OH BOY did Two Thrones make you pay for it. You would then have to control a slower, less agile and essentially weaker Prince with an unbelievably low health bar and sand-time limit. And God forbid you alerted the enemy archers while sneaking around the game, unless you wanted to become Persia’s first human pincushion. Sure, the Dark Prince and his daggertail attacks were really cool, but his constant dependence on the sands to stay alive made you break every piece of crockery and furniture in the game like the world’s clumsiest house-guest.
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Now for the story, characterisation and themes. Warrior Within got the spiky end of the review-stick when it came to its darker and angstier themes, which supposedly deceived the fans of Sands of Time’s more mystical and adventurous tone. As a result of this “mis-step”, Two Thrones went out of its way to re-introduce that ‘Arabian Nights’ feel by bringing back Yuri Lowenthal to voice the Prince and involving Princess Farah in the story again. I want to look at this whole story arc from a different angle.
I always thought that Sands of Time’s fantastical theme and aesthetic understated the true nature of the Prince’s actions. Think about it: his own father and his comrades were turned into sand monsters by his releasing the sands, he had to traverse a multitude of death traps and terrains in and around the castle, and he had to personally kill the monster forms of his loved ones by absorbing their sand essence into the dagger. The game included few blood animations and sounds during combat, but that shouldn’t take away from the true grisly nature of his fight with the sand monsters. Add to that the fact that the Prince had no food or drink to fuel him through the game (if you exclude the unexplained “magic water”), and that’s an inhuman amount of physical and mental stress burdened on the poor fellow. While it can be said that his “grand rewind” action at the end of the game effectively nullified these events, he still had the memories of the whole tragedy, and the mental scars can be every bit as severe as the physical ones.
Fast-forward to the events just before Warrior Within. The Prince is recovering from his self-caused cataclysm when the whole Dahaka business crops up due to his fooling around with the sands. Later becoming estranged from his father and kingdom, he is marked for death by a giant time-travelling bogeyman that looked like the love child of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings. At this point, I honestly didn’t know how the Prince’s probable PTSD didn’t reduce him to a quivering heap, curled up on the ground and cutting his wrists to the tune of My Chemical Romance albums. Nevertheless, Warrior Within authenticated his past experiences and portrayed him as a truly hardened and desperate soul, using any means necessary to “change his fate”. I’d venture to say that the game almost had no choice but to go with a darker theme.
Another good thing about Warrior Within is that it had a less linear storyline as well. While Sands of Time and Two Thrones just made you go after the girl (or in the former’s case, with the girl) and defeat the Vizier, Warrior Within had you jumping time periods, mowing down anyone in the way of your survival, and essentially playing against your past self while being the Sand Wraith; all the while not knowing whether to save or kill the mysterious Empress. I think all this made for a gorgeously twisted storyline, with the cherry on the top being the alternate endings.
Two Thrones’ story was fantastical and engrossing in its own right, but I still felt that even with the whole split personality angle with the Dark Prince in it, it was a bit too similar to Sands of Time. The chemistry between Farah and the Prince was forced as well (that elevator sequence was just lame), but the game’s major turn-off for me was Kaileena’s voice acting. Seriously, she sounds like she smoked all the hashish in Persia before narrating the story. Say what you want about Monica Bellucci’s voice acting in the previous game, but she at least brought more clit-balls to the character than in this sequel.
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In the end, is Warrior Within without flaws? Definitely not. Perhaps if it had Two Thrones’ environments and Sands of Time’s natural chemistry, it could’ve more or less become the perfect action-adventure game. But for now, I think it’s the best game of the series so far. And even if you all don’t share my view, I hope you can at least appreciate this black sheep of the series just a little more.
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Centuries of Sin 