Just some 3 hour gameplay impressions since the game is out tomorrow.

Overall design
Prince of Persia next-gen (let’s just call it PoP?) departs from the last-gen series in a couple of ways. The most apparent is the inclusion of a world map. You have 32 areas that have been corrupted by an evil god/spirit being and which have to be cleansed. Once cleansed, you unlock new paths and you can teleport to and from every cleansed area at any time as you as you are standing on a platform. This makes it a lot less linear than before, and in the beginning you might get confused as you happily platform around until you get stuck.

Basically, you have a kind of hub world that you use to enter one of 4 distinct levels. Each of these is made up of 4 areas with one of them leading to a separate area, probably a boss fight. You encounter these bosses from time to time while trying to reach a cleansing spot, but they always just run away after being defeated. After cleansing an area of corruption, new passages become available and the area looks a lot nicer/cuter. You’ll also be able to collect Light Seeds, glowing orbs that you need to progress. Collect 60 of them, and you can unlock one of four colored powers. These powers can then be used in certain areas (they show which ones on the map) to activate colored launch pads. The Red power for example launches you from pad to pad to platform, which looks pretty cool. The Yellow power makes you fly through the level in a preset path, requiring you to evade obstacles on the way.



Each time you unlock a new power, it takes more Light Seeds to unlock a new one. But there are enough of them to go around, so you don’t have to find all of them in a level. In practice, playing the game goes as follows. You enter an area, platform your way to a cleansing location, fight some enemy/enemies on the way, cleanse the area and then you are free to explore the area to collect Light Seeds. This splits the gameplay into evading killer corruption on walls or on the ground, fighting enemies and bosses, and freely exploring at your leisure. It works really well and since you don’t need to collect everything to progress, you can just play the game at the pace you are most comfortable with.

If you lack the power for one area, you can’t reach the cleansing spot but you can just run through it to an adjacent area that you can cleanse. So, there is a lot of freedom in choosing your approach, although in the end you’ll have to do everything so it’s more a question of whether you want a change of scenery or not.

Platforming
The platforming has been changed quite a bit. It’s not exactly casualized, but it follows the Molyneux school of ‘least button presses to do cool shit’. You and Elika are beautifully animated and never get in the way of eachother. A is jump, which automatically reaches the right point to grab most of the time. Jump to a wall under an angle and you’ll wallrun a lot with a lot of time to plan your jump off it.

Sometimes you’ll reach a big ring on the way, which you can grab with B and move on. If a jump is too far to reach, the games goes into semi-slow motion for a second and starts becoming white. For these jumps, you just press Y to let Elika make you double jump. Finally, you can jump off pillars to the roof and run along the roof by grabbing some rings with B.



It’s all really easy to do and not too tough to master. You still have to press the right button or you’ll fall to your death. Though when you fall, Elika reaches your hand and resets you to the last platform you’ve stood on. It’s a bit cheap and easy, but it removes a lot of annoyances without really making it too easy. It definitely keeps the pace flowing.

The game feels a lot different than Sands of Time, but at the same time it feels familiar. Instead of having to micromanage a lot of tricks and split-second jumps, it’s now more a matter of running and jumping through an area in a very relaxed way. The further you get, the harder the platforming becomes, but it’s never really hard to find where to go. Most of the challenge comes from collecting all the Light Seeds in an area. For instance, sometimes you’ll have do to wallruns and jumps in locations you would normally never venture, but you may end up on a platform with 6 Light Seeds.

Knowing where to go was sometimes a little tricky in Sands of Time. They removed this by giving you a Fable 2 type of guide: press Y while standing and Elika will send a big white light forwards that will fly along the path you need to take to reach your destination. This destination can be set in the map screen. It’s also really obvious where you are supposed to wallrun and all that, so finishing an area is really not that hard. Yet it is very fun to do.

Combat
The combat is restricted to monster encounters and boss encounters. For random monsters, you’ll see them more or less being summoned into the world. If you are fast, you can stop them from entering with a slash of the sword and you’re done. If you are too late or fell along the way, you’ll have to defeat them.

Combat is not really button mashing, but you can easily button mash your way through it :)
X is a sword attack
A is an acrobatic attack (jump on a monster and throw him away)
B is a grab attack (throw a monster up in the air)
Y is an Elika attack (Elika jumps towards the monster and hits it with magic)



You can combine these moves by pressing them in any order. So if you throw a monster, you can let Elika hit it in midair and then slash it downwards with your sword. When a monster attacks, you can either hold RT to block, or time it to parry it and leaving the enemy open to counter attacks. But you can also just mash RT and get a parry most of the time, which is a bit lame.

If you get hit, you’ll look injured and the screen will have a bit of a red edge. Get hit too many times and a monster will try to grab and stab you in a short cinematic. Press the right QTE button and you’ll be healed again. Press the wrong one and Elika will save you, but the monster will get some health back and you’ll still be just as injured. Still, you can’t die…

Some bosses will change things by changing form. When they do, they can only be hit with one type of attack. Hit them with the wrong one and you’ll lose Elika for a while, or just be struck by the monster. All in all, you can time attacks to make it look really great, but you can also just hit grab and mash buttons to make it look great. It’s no Ninja Gaiden or anything.

The combat is fun though. It feels and looks nice, even though it can get a bit repetitive after a lot of it. Still, it doesn’t occur that often and it changes the pace nicely at the right moments.

Overall impressions
So far, it looks like a really solid and polished game. The art style is pretty cool, although of course you get used to it after 1 minute and never really go WOWOWOW THAT LOOKS AMAZING! It does look great, but it just keeps you occupied enough to not really nitpick about anything or to let you go wowow. Which is definitely not a bad thing.

Most of the wow moments come from the interaction between the Prince and Elika: they make room for eachother, gracefully move around each other and most importantly neither of them is ever in the obstructing the other.

The voice acting is pretty well done in my opinion. The prince can say some girl charming lines like ‘Ooph you’re heavy’. Most of the time the Prince and Elika talk to each other throughout the level. If you want to, you can press LT to talk to Elika for some more information about an area. She’ll give you a general idea of where to go, or provide backstory. It’s nicely done, but you’ll probably stop doing it after a while (probably after you get the achievements for talking to her) because you can talk a LOT and it does break up the pace.

As for the overall length of the game: there are 24 areas split over 4 large levels and the hub. There is an achievement for finishing the game under 12 hours. I’ve spent about 3 hours so far and I’ve cleared about 8 areas.

So far, it looks like IGN’s 9.3 review is pretty accurate. Whether this is a rental or a purchase, it will have to depend on whether you want to collect all Light Seeds, finish the game without failing/falling 100 times or finish the game with the unlockable BG&E Jade skin. There is replayability enough if you want to, but if you are not really a collector type, you may want to rent it instead. Overall, a great addition to the Prince of Persia series with some innovations and most of all a more streamlined gameplay experience for a wide audience.

Definitely give it a try if you can.