Somebody trying something different with game mechanics!
Quick! We must stop him from changing status quo so we can only get games that are all the same and that those "casual" abominations cannot play.

The "no dying" was perfectly legitimate except during the boss fights. Aside from those fights it was just a prettied-up checkpoint system that kept you immersed in the game.

The 'death' mechanic didn't bother me whatsoever. It was quick, wonderfully smooth and kept the player immersed in the game. Sure, it made things a tad easier, but it also encourged you to explore more without worrying about being forced back to an older checkpoint.

I do agree that it should have been removed for fights though, seeing as they are generally pretty far apart.

"Now who was the genius that decided to try and do nearly everything in the game with one button so that the Prince didn't do what he was supposed to do 50% of the time? Quite frankly he's the one I'd like to punch in the balls for making PoP so much worse than previous games in the series."

I know early on I had a similar problem because I expected the controls to be similar to the older PoP games. For example, you used to need to manually shift your position on a pole after you jumped to it, but in the new PoP game you would automatically swing 180 degrees after you jump to a pole (presumably to make the transition from pole to pole more fluid). Once I realized that certain steps had been streamlined, the controls actually made a lot of sense and I thought it was an enjoyable game.

As far as the "no dying" feature, I never had a problem with it, and I never could understand how people thought it made the game any easier than being able to simply reverse time and undo a mistake.

If you want harder, download the DLC. The jumps are harder, timing is harder, the "hit x to survive" button in combat is much faster, and when Elika saves you you lose up to 2-3 minutes of gaming...not 5-10 seconds.

When people complained about the "no death" thing, I always wondered what they would have rathered to have. I "died" over 100 times in completing PoP (no xbox cheevo for me). I think I would have bothered to finish the game had I had to see a "you are dead: continue/quit" screen every time I mis-timed a jump or something.

It was just replacing the magical teleporting to a safe spot that other games have. Without having to go through a load screen. Elika didn't make the game easier at all, all games today don't have lives/continues so it's the exact same game as the rest.

CAN IT GET MORE CASUAL?!

Yes it can, all the enemy you kill aren't dead, they just teleport to prison.

I had no issues with the no death concept in the battles since later in the game it usually meant your opponent suddenly popped back up to full health and extended the whole battle. I wasn't too keen on how the combat method myself, where each button performed one type of move. Especially since as you progressed your opponents oftentimes became immune to one attack or another, not including when they went into a stance that required you use one type of attack to break through. Even worse was that as you progressed your ability to perform those long combos dwindled since the mobs ended up recovering after the third or forth attack. This just infuriated me that I pretty much ended up using the exact same short combo throughout a single battle.

Just got this game from gamefly. Played through a couple of levels, and sent it back. Just like Assassins Creed, I could tell how repetitive and boring it was going to be early on. The whole "no death" mechanic didn't really bother me as some of the jumps seemed unclear. What was really annoying was the jump,jump,jump,button-mash boss fight, jump,jump,jump formula.

Hmm, I don't give a shit about the Elika saving system, but I do care that they dumbed down the gameplay to a glorified quick time event.

It was an overall good game, but felt more like Assassins Creed minus real open world. I really liked he many boss fights, but the combat got rather repetitive. I also would have enjoyed more fast paced parcour sections.

Oh and the excuse of a final boss: terrible, all that build against a laughably easy boss.

The not-dying mechanic I have no problem with.

The story, characters and gameplay however are complete and total balls.

Horrible piece of shit, that game.

The lack of dying wasn't a problem at all as others have pointed out; it's just streamlined checkpoint system. My beef was that the game felt like it SHOULD have encouraged exploration, but there really wasn't any to be found. It felt so mechanical in where you could jump and what you could climb on. I never felt like "If I can just make this jump... Sweet! Let's see what I found!"...but rather, I felt like it was always super obvious where I could engage the quicktime events. And I say quicktime events because that's really all it felt like. The way the Prince snapped to surfaces really made it feel too predetermined. I really tried to finish the game, but it was easily one of the most boring gaming experiences I've had.

I know I'm coming in about three months late to this, but that's because I just got the game a few weeks ago, and frankly I think it's a worthy successor to SoT. It is like someone mentioned simply taking the rewind feature out and replacing it with Elika. It's not a "no death" mechanic, it's a clever way to keep the game moving. No reload times, just a jump back to the last safe area you were on before you screwed up. And it only helps slowly but surely to increase the awareness of Elika and the Prince's bond together.

As for the arguments about boss/enemy battles, I don't recall a whole hell of a lot of enemies in SoT either, and yet, everyone loved that game too. Besides, in this one, although you may be saved, every time Elika has to do it the boss recovers part of their life, so ulitimately you ARE punished for your mistake.

Simplistic in its button-pressing? Perhaps. But I think it also allows for plenty of mistakes on the gamer's part just as much as some more complex system. At least this way I'm not overstretching my palm across the controller to pull off a three-button jump/grab/angle leap. The game moves along well thanks to the simpler mechanic, and I still feel more than challenged by it.

I'm very pleased to have it in my collection alongside SoT and my original Mac version way back when.