Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown preview: So Farsi so good

The Prince of Persia series has been dormant for a long, long time now, but in the video game medium, nothing ever really stays dead for too long. That's right, Prince of Persia is back with The Lost Crown, a side-scrolling Metroidvania that brings a fresh coat of paint to the franchise.

While most players will remember PoP as a 3D action platformer and the precursor to Assassin's Creed's iconic gameplay, it did initially begin life in the late 80s as a cinematic side-scrolling platformer. It's clear that The Lost Crown respects these roots, but it also introduces plenty of new ideas for a modern-day reimagining that's shaping up to be one of Ubisoft's most exciting games in a while.

Prince of 'vania

The Lost Crown introduces a new hero called Sargon and a team of elite warriors called The Immortals. The prologue sees you and the team defending Persia from an invading army, before venturing off to the mythical Mount Qaf to search for the captured prince (not that one) after some betrayal shenanigans back at the palace.

It's once you get to Mount Qaf about 25 minutes in, and the team decide to split up for their search, that the game really gets going, and the new design ideas get to shine. While nothing from my three-hour session appeared to be groundbreaking, nearly everything coalesced into a very enjoyable metroidvania experience that I'm excited to explore more of. 

While I had to play remotely (meaning there was some noticeable input lag at times), the game seems to have nailed movement. This makes or breaks any platforming game in general, but goes doubly so for Prince of Persia, one of the series that popularised parkour in the gaming mainstream. You can jump, slide, dash, and chain all of these together seemingly infinitely if you find enough walls to support you along the way - and the devs facilitated this with plenty of platforming puzzles that challenge you to master all your movement mechanics. 

Combat is also a big part of the appeal here, but I did find it to be the weakest aspect so far. To start with, you can do light or heavy attacks with your scimitars, and you have Athra's Glow, a metre that builds up to let you unleash special abilities, with new weapons introduced periodically. Combat against generic enemies always felt a touch too long, like they had too much HP, causing me to ignore most of them by the time I was at the two-hour mark. 

Bosses were much more interesting though, and it's in those situations I found myself being tested. Limitations on your healing potions, the fairly squishy nature of Sargon, and the low damage you do with normal attacks forced me to get risky with my parrying and aggressive movement during these fights. Similar to Soulslikes, it seems the bosses are set to be a big focus here, and I hope they can keep them engaging and fresh throughout the whole game.

A snapshot of the past

The metroidvania has come back in a big way thanks to titles like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous in the 2010s, and it's a type of game design that works perfectly for a Prince of Persia title. 

Mount Qaf is a big place with lots of different biomes to wander around in, and in the demo I explored a surprisingly large amount of it. Typical of metroidvanias, the place I needed to get to for the main quest was gated off, and I needed a new item to access it. With the vague goal of "Find Menolias in the Forest", I headed off west, discovered a lot of new places, got what I was looking for, and found my way back - all while organically finding new things to do along the way. 

I find that the guided but non-linear nature of metroidvanias is always a powerful way to evoke wonder in the player, and if I had no time limit on this preview I would have crawled my way into every nook and cranny on the map to search for secret rooms, side quests, collectibles, and new shortcuts. 

Fortunately, the developers were also smart about loading all of these aspects into the first chapter of the game, giving you a taster of the general gameplay loop you can expect throughout, and the possibilities that will open up to you as you progress. It helps to prime the player and beat these ideas into them early, so the benefits of exploration and backtracking stick with them, and offer an out whenever they get stuck. Another clever mechanic that really encourages the idea of follow-up exploration later on is the memory system. 

At any point, you can create a screenshot of the environment that sticks to the world map, forming a memory. This lets you keep note of certain items that are currently gated off, or areas you want to explore later, but it puts the onus on the player, allowing you to drive the curiosity and exploration. I think this is also a fantastic mechanic for collectible fiends that encourages them to hunt without consulting a guide, as it gives you the helping hand that's often needed without just providing a straight map of everything. 

During my early wanderings, I was also a little overwhelmed at just how much side content there appeared to be. I picked up a number of side quests after running into NPCs that were hidden away, and there are tonnes of different collectibles items for various forms of progression if you want to micromanage your overall potential in an order that suits you. 

The verdict so far

From my time so far with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, I get the feeling that it's a game from a team that knows exactly what they want to do and how to do it. It retains the fast and fluid feel of older PoP games, and blends them seamlessly with metroidvania design - a combination that just makes sense from top to bottom.