A confession: in over a quarter century of playing games, I've never tried any iteration of the Prince of Persia series. Yes, never on PC, never on NES, never on the last gen systems. I did play The Sands of Time and The Warrior Within briefly, but not enough to really form an opinion of either game. Even though the series on the last gen had gobs upon gobs of acclaim heaped on it, it's just one of those things that passed me by.

Which offers me a unique persepective I suppose, as I'm going into the game cold, with no love or hate for games past and present. Ubisoft Montreal have created a beautiful game, one filled with lush, creative environments, and great platforming gameplay. Once the initial rush wears off, the player is left with a decent game, but unfulfilled.

The franchise reboots- video games were doing reboots before reboots were cool- finding the titular character wandering through a sandstorm for reasons I won't reveal, and finding himself in a strange land. One of the intriguing things about the story is that it's never quite revealed who this Prince, voiced by Nolan North, exactly is, except for the hints given in the dialogue that this charming rogue ran away from a position of great responsibility some time ago.

Princess Elika (Kari Whalgren) is running- from men sent by her father, the king of UnnamedPerisanesquenationistan. A thousand years before, the Ahuran god of light, Ormazd, and the god of darkness, Ahriman, battled for control of the Ahuran people. Ahriman and his minions, the corrupted were sealed within a Tree. However, when Elika died in an accident, the king cut a deal with Ahriman to free the evil god in exchange for Elika's life. After the prince runs into Elika in the desert, they attempt to make it back int time to heal the broken tree and seal Ahriman back in, but it's too late. The State of Unspecified is overwhelmed by Ahriman and his minions, covered in Corrupted black goop which pulls the player into is clutches at the merest touch. Now the Prince and Elika must traverse the Kingdom of Watchamacallit, healing the corrupted lands in hopes of cramming Ahriman back in his treely prison.

And what a kingdom it is. Prince of Persia is a stunningly beautiful game- the world is filled with four large areas, and subsections of those areas, for the Price and Elika to run about in. There's varied scenery from mountains to airships, looking like the previous games in the series but also different enough on its own. I really liked the sort of rustic graphical style that's like cel-shading, and the nice, fluid animation that has become a series trademark.

The meat of the gameplay is the running, bounding, leaping, grabbing, clawing, sliding, leaping, swinging, somersaulting, spinning, bouncing, climbing, over the corrupted lands. Each world the Prince and Elika find themselves in is cleverly designed and requires a lot of on the fly thinking to manage your way through them. There's only one path to the land to be healed in each level, but figuring out that path can be fun. There's great joy to be had in making your way across seemingly impossible gaps or wall running to your heart's content.

It's also pretty easy, since the player cannot die. In a hat tip to the time bending elements of the previous three games, every time the player falls in combat or gets swallowed up by corrupted or misses a jump, Elika turns back time and sets you back on terra firma. There's no real penalty for dying, except an enemy getting half his health bar back, which can be frustrating in some of the more repetitive fights.

Oh, the fights. You see, there's only one real type of regular enemy in the game, a corrupted soldier that you fight at various spawn points in the lands. Combat consists of the prince using four different kinds of attacks mapped to the face buttons on the controller, and holding RT to block. There are several combos the player can use, but there's no real incentive to figure them out, since hammering X and RT alternately gets the job done nine times out of ten. I began dreading whenever combat was coming; thankfully, the designers probably did too, because an option is left for the player to preemptively strike spawn points, preventing Corrupted from coming out.

The combat is slightly more complex when dealing with Ahriman's lieutenants in the Corrupted, The Hunter, The Alchemist, The Concubine, and The Warrior. You fight all of them in several sub-battles, and one final boss battle to do a final heal of the land. These battles start out creative, but quickly become tedious, since it's simply a manner of figuring out the right attack to break through whatever blocking move the boss is throwing up. 

If the combat and the rushing to the healing spot were the only modes of play, the game would feel lacking, but exploring each area right after the healing has its own rewards. Light seeds, which are needed to power Elika's healing powers and unlock areas, are spread out in the nooks and crannies of the world. Doing this as a leisurely breather and allows you to explore the world in new ways, unencumbered by the corrupted.

The game also encourages you to have a chat with Elika. Often. The Prince and Elika discuss the world, flirt, reveal interesting facts about themselves, explain the legend of Ormazd, and unlock Achievements.

The conversation section is something about the game you will either love or hate. The Prince, as played by North, is some distant, slightly less Wisenheimer version of Nathan Drake from Uncharted. Elika, as Yahtzee pointed out, ping-pongs from willowy to flirtatious, which gets kind of odd, since she's supposed to be this isolated heroine, yet Wahlgren gives her a good bit of sauciness. At one point, she remarks, "I'm very well read." How to Confidently Out-Snark a Man Even Though You've Been Sheltered All Your Life?

It really depends on your tolerance for Wahlgren and North- I think they're great, and Wahlgren's good enough to make Elika's inconsistent characterization plausible, but I can see why some commenters felt their bits were a drag. It doesn't help that there is the exact same animation for every conversation. The Prince has his right hand on his sword, his left hand outstretched. Elika holds her left hand out, and moves her right hand in a cutting motion.  Their faces are expressionless. Now remember, the game wants you to have them talk as much as possible. It's understandable that something as minor as a talking animation wasn't given much thought, but geez. You know how quickly that got tiresome, seeing the same animation whether the exchange is fun, sad, informative?  Didn't anyone comment on this during the playtesting? Also, the conversations are important to the ending of the game, which if you're paying attention is easy to predict but no less compelling.

The ending sequence is haunting. I'll avoid spoilers as much as I possibly can. The play mechanics are radically altered for a brief time, and boy, can you ever feel it in your bones. It's also not immediately clear what you're meant to do, but that works in its favor since you have to intuit it from the events of the story. The ending sequence also stumbles, though, by not giving the player a choice in the matter. It would have more impact if it did.

Prince of Persia's journey to that ending is good, but it far too often slips into rote repetition. The game has very little challenge- I unlocked the beat the game in under 12 hours achievement and the die less than a hundred times achievement without even trying. Each world can be tackled at any time, which gives us freedom of movement but also means the difficulty stays the same throughout. The new moves the Prince and Elika gain mix things up a bit, but there's very little reason for backtracking except to get seeds. Another problem with the game is its lack of immediacy. We are told that AHriman is all powerful and dangerous, but since the Prince always escapes the clutches of the corrupted he doesn't feel like much of a threat. Elika speaks of how great the kingdom was and how the return of its people is imperative, but we never get a sense of that, since the only people seemingly in the kingdom when the Prince arrives is Elika, her father, and a couple of redshirt guards. The game's pacing is so leisurely at times it belies the stakes that are involved. By the end I stopped appreciating the world I was in and just felt like I was going through the motions.

Ubisoft Montreal has created a terrific platformer with Prince of Persia, but it's dragged down by the boring combat and repetitious experience. There's a lot to savor, enough for me to recommend the game, but unlike the Prince and Elika, it doesn't reach the heights it so obviously wants to aspire to. As the old saying goes, it's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Perhaps when the inevitable sequel rolls around, Ubisoft Montreal will have worked out a better game.