Prince of Persia: The Lost Crownhas some big shoes to fill: not only is it a beloved franchise’s 14-year comeback, but it’s also stepping into the Metroidvania genre which has enjoyed an explosion of high-quality titles in recent years. Gamers have come to expect certain quality-of-life features and game mechanics inmodern Metroidvania games, but they also have grown accustomed to several of the genre’s pitfalls.
Speaking exclusively with Game Rant,Prince of Persia: The Lost Crownsenior producer Abdelhak Elguess and game director Mounir Radi revealed how the series' latest entry addresses a few of the genre’s pain points. In particular,The Lost Crownhas made mapping and backtracking through its sprawling world as easy as possible, and adjustable difficulty settings also introduce a refreshing level of accessibility.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Has a Surprisingly Innovative Map Feature
One ofPrince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s most revolutionary features is deceptively simple: its Memory Shards feature. Ingames likeHollow Knight, it’s standard fare for players to place map markers while exploring so they can keep track of noteworthy areas to return to, but this requires players to come up with their own mapping system using the various colored markers. While helpful, players can still miss out on a lot of key information, and if players backtrack to the wrong location, that can lead to frustration.The Lost Crowntakes this standard marking feature further by allowing players to attach a screenshot of the location to the map pin so that players can easily recall interesting locations.
From the moment we decided to make a Metroidvania, we played and replayed HUGE titles of the genre, in particular to identify those who were most successful in exposing their gating loop….But to the extent that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown offers its own mechanics, we were mostly interested in the weaknesses of the genre and the things we could evolve. This is what led to the Memory Shards feature for example, allowing you to pin a screenshot to the map to easily remember the blockers or hints you stumbled across earlier in the game.
For better or worse, many of thebest Metroidvania gamesalso lack any form of customizable difficulty. Although this ensures that all players must overcome a similarly difficult challenge, it’s an accessibility issue for gamers who may be more interested in simply exploring the world and its narrative.The Lost Crownincludes a generously tweakable set of difficulty sliders that can alter enemy health and damage among other things, and this also allows more daring players to up the challenge level even further.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Has Lots of Freedom of Exploration and Difficulty
Many seeminglyopen-world Metroidvaniasare actually quite linear upon closer inspection due to the natural progression of their ability gates. AlthoughThe Lost Crownstill leans into this style of progressive exploration, multiple viable paths are opened up almost immediately from the start. Two players starting at the same time may find themselves in vastly different biomes at the same point in their respective playthroughs, and this freedom allows players to explore without worrying about being on the “wrong” path.
Metroidvania allows us to truly bring together the essence of what Prince of Persia is.
In view of the evolution of the series and the different forms it borrowed, we wanted to be sure to recapture its essence, and it is quite naturally that we turned to the very 1st Prince of Persia, the one from 1989, for which we had a lot of memories of players.
At the time, it was already a question of navigating in a dungeon with deadly dangers in which it was essential to memorize the position of enemies and traps to be able to complete the adventure in the given time. It is this feeling of isolation, autonomy but also constant reflection around the architecture of the places that reinforced us in the idea that we should embrace the genre of Metroidvania!
The Lost Crownalso makes some positive changes to the formula used byearlierPrince of Persiagamesin which the character often had a time limit to complete a certain challenge. Rather than hard timers and failure conditions, the game’s various parkour gauntlets instead call for the player to move through them at a steady pace due to their mechanical nature. Dashing through a series of swinging pendulums or breakable platforms is still a timed challenge in a way, but the pressure is applied differently. The player still effectively only has ten seconds to complete the challenge, but not being explicitly told that this is the case is a subtle improvement over the constant pressure of a countdown timer.
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.
