Prince of Persia: The Lost Crownis the series' first mainline entry in almost 14 years, this time forgoing the previous trilogy’s third-person action game approach in favor of a 2.5D metroidvania that harkens back to the series' roots as a sidescrolling platformer. It’s clear thatPrince of Persia: The Lost Crownhas been taking notes over the past decade of metroidvania development: many of its systems will be cozily familiar to fans of the genre, while a generous helping of quality-of-life features and customizable difficulty make it one of the most accessible metroidvanias in recent memory. The game promises a length of between 20 and 25 hours, and Game Rant saw a sizeable chunk of content in our three-and-a-half-hour run.
Players take on the role of Sargon, a gifted warrior and one of the seven elite Immortals tasked with rescuing Prince Ghassan who has been kidnapped away to Mount Qaf, the game’s primary setting. Once a wondrous center of knowledge and power, Mount Qaf is now mysteriously cursed and filled to the brim with hordes of undead and other enemies that have seriously thrown a wrench in this rescue operation. Mount Qaf is more interesting in terms of biome diversity than its name may suggest: there are lush wild regions like the Hyrcanian Forest, puzzle-filled labyrinths like the Sacred Archives, and wide-open cityscapes that deliver some exceptional vistas.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Looks To Be A Solid Metroidvania
Although it’s part ofthePrince of Persiaseries,The Lost Crownis unmistakably a metroidvania with all the hallmarks of the genre. There’s backtracking to previously unreachable areas with new abilities, punching walls in the hopes of finding secret doors–of which there are many–and carefully navigating some occasionally tough-as-nails platforming gauntlets for some extra goodies. In typical metroidvania fashion, progression is largely driven by unlocking new abilities that aid in either traversal or puzzle-solving in some way, and these usually also help in combat. For example, the boomerang-like chakram is often used to remotely trigger mechanical puzzle elements but is also a handy ranged weapon that can be accurately ricocheted with a helpful angle indicator. Puzzles, combat encounters, and platforming sections tended to do a good job of encouraging us to fully utilize Sargon’s growing arsenal.
The Lost Crownalso introduces a major quality-of-life leap for the genre: the Memory Shards system. Rather than simply marking locations on the map, players can include a screenshot of that area as part of the map pin so that they can easily refer back to the particular challenge in that area. This is one of those features that, although a simple concept, is hard to live without when we returned to our favorite metroidvanias after the preview.
An amulet system reminiscent ofHollow Knight’s charmsadds some welcome customizability, and we found ourselves switching between various amulet combinations depending on our goals. During exploration, we’d be sure to slot an amulet that would pull in currency drops from further away; meanwhile, for boss fights, we’d be sure to equip amulets like Wolf-Bride which helped us build up our Athra charge. The amulets are a fun system to work around, and either finding them or earning currency to purchase more amulets or slots from vendors helped encourage more thorough exploration.
Another similarity toHollow Knightthat we enjoyed was the inclusion of a few souls-like elements that raised the stakes of combat and exploration. Players have a limited stock of healing items that only recharges when resting at trees throughout the world, and resting also respawns any defeated enemies aside from a few one-time encounters. As usual, this approach makes every newly discovered tree feel like a hard-won reprieve. Although some currency is lost to whoever kills the player and must be retrieved by coming back to them in a souls-like “corpse run,“The Lost Crown’s death penalty is one of the most forgiving we’ve ever seen in this regard as players only lose a tiny fraction of their currency this way.
In another player-friendly move, flowing golden breezes lead players to the nearest undiscovered tree not unlike howElden Ringpoints players to the next site of grace. Since this is an exploration-heavy game where players could end up dying one wrong turn from a life-saving checkpoint, this feature cuts back significantly on potentially frustrating moments. A bit later on, a fast travel system also unlocks that makes returning to previous biomes a breeze. Overall, it feels likeThe Lost Crown’s developers asked “How can we make this less frustrating?” when approaching every aspect of metroidvania design.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s Combat Is Tight And Challenging
Combat inThe Lost Crownwas a highlight of our experience. Sargon has a full range of directional attacks including upward juggling combos and downward plunging attacks that mesh well with the game’s platforming level design. There’s a very strong emphasis on timing and memorizing enemy attack patterns:a well-timed parrycan lead to a devastating punishing strike, while telegraphed unblockable attacks must be dodged carefully. Landing hits and parries build up Sargon’s Athra meter which can be spent on powerful unlockable abilities. One of these Athra Surges summons a stationary healing fountain on the ground, allowing players to potentially keep themselves going in a fight even after they’ve run out of healing potions.
The various bosses we encountered during our preview ranged in difficulty from single-attempt takedowns to barely scraping a win after several tries, but each loss always taught us more about the encounter and brought us closer to victory. One standout boss fight was Jahandra, a giant manticore with numerous interwoven mechanics that could be approached with various strategies. The boss had a surprisingly diverse move set, from meteoric dive attacks to scorpion tail stabs that created acid pools on the ground all while an additional flying orb hovers over the player shooting beams downward. The boss was an intricate dance involving several mechanics, and it was incredibly satisfying to secure a win.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Is Surprisingly Accessible
As we mentioned earlier,The Lost Crowngoes to great lengths to be an accessible entry point for gamers who may beinexperienced with metroidvaniasor who simply have a hard time with some of the mechanics. While most games in the genre are pretty dead-set on a static difficulty level, TheLost Crownincludes numerous settings that allow players to tweak the difficulty. Enemy health, enemy damage, and environmental damage can all be modified up or down, and even the timing window for parrying and dodging can be adjusted to be more or less forgiving. Additionally, whether or not the Athra gauge depletes over time can be toggled.
This modifiable difficulty extends to the game’s exploration: players can freely switch between Guided Mode, which features detailed map indicators for blocked and available paths and objective locations, or Exploration Mode which leaves things up to the player.
Other helpful features that we found were several colorblindness modes, controller remapping, and full voiceovers in a variety of languages–including Farsi for a little extra immersion.
Overall,Prince of Persia: The Lost Crownis shaping up to be a worthy addition to an iconic series and a welcome surprise for metroidvania fans. If the rest of the game’s content is anything like its first few hours, it just might tide genre fans over as they continue to wait patiently forSilksong.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
WHERE TO PLAY
Dash into a stylish and thrilling action-adventure platformer set in a mythological Persian world where the boundaries of time and space are yours to manipulate. Play as Sargon and evolve from sword-wielding prodigy to extraordinary legend as you master acrobatic combat and unlock new Time Powers and unique super abilities.UNLEASH YOUR INNER WARRIORUse your Time Powers, combat, and platforming skills to perform deadly combos and defeat time-corrupted enemies and mythological creatures.LOSE YOURSELF IN THE PRODIGIOUS MOUNT QAFDiscover a cursed Persian-inspired world filled with larger-than-life landmarks and explore a variety of highly detailed biomes, each with their own identity, wonder, and danger.LIVE AN EPIC ADVENTUREImmerse yourself in a Persian mythological fantasy through an intriguing and original story as you use your wits to solve puzzles, find hidden treasures, and complete quests to learn more about this corrupted place.
