Review: Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones

Rock The Casbah
Ubisoft / Playstation 2 Xbox Gamecube PC / Mature

It’s no secret that Ubisoft has been cranking out the sequels at a breakneck pace lately. From their valuable Tom Clancy licenses to the Prince of Persia series a new sequel seems to, and generally does, come about once a year. As anyone who has ever played more than one Madden or Tony Hawk game over the years knows, this can lead to a loss of originality and a general boredom with a series that is admittedly still good but lacks the newness to keep gamers coming back. The aforementioned Prince of Persia series showed signs of the sequel syndrome with the release of Warrior Within last year and now the syndrome may have developed further in the trilogy capping The Two Thrones.

The story follows the unnamed Prince as he returns to Babylon to find it conquered by the evil Vizier, who he was pretty gosh darn sure he killed. The Vizier has found the Dagger of Time and uses it to turn himself into some sort of gold, hovering, monster thingy. The Sands of Time that caused the Vizier’s transformation also changed our hero. The explanation given is that the Sands of Time the Prince had been fiddling with infected the wound around a chain imbedded in his arm causing him to periodically become the Dark Prince pictured on half the box.

The major gameplay remains intact with the same jumping puzzles that fans fell in love with. For the experienced runners and jumpers there a greater emphasis is placed on stealth kills. A new speed kill system puts together well-timed button presses make up a killing sequence that quickly dispatches enemies. The inclusion of these speed kills means that nearly every combat situation in the game can be avoided and provides new challenge to play out the puzzles correctly.

The inclusion of the Dark Prince segments makes for the most noticeable change. The Dark Prince has some new moves too that the Light Price can’t use. Our anti-hero uses the imbedded chain to attack enemies and grab onto various switches and fixtures to swing on. A stipulation of these segments is that the Dark Prince’s health energy constantly depletes and he must collect Sands of Time from fallen enemies to replenish it. This condition is thankfully countered by the fact that the chain is much more effective in combat than the usual dagger. The worst change the personality split brings is an independent inner voice of the prince’s untapped potential. To counter the prince’s do-gooder personality this generally whiny and sadistic inner voice will constantly pop up to voice his opinions on whether or not to help the wounded Babylonians and where Princess Farah, the Prince’s ally, can shove it. The inner voice only occasionally overwhelms the Prince’s personality in the cutscenes, though.

Speaking of the cutscenes, the visual bugs and glitches that caused complaints in Warrior Within have increased nearly twofold. In addition to the fact that the game doesn’t look very good to begin with there are a multitude of visible seams and clipping issues in both the cutscenes and the actual game. While not actually affecting the function of the gameplay, these glitches and poor visual quality take away from a game previously praised for its aesthetic.

But, there are improvements over the last game too. The inclusion of the Dark Prince segments, and new moves like sliding down chutes and hopping off spring-loaded shutters at a 45 degree angle, add variety and keep the beloved formula from getting stale. Presentation wise, Two Thrones falls somewhere between Sands of Time and Warrior Within with a heavily gold aura across the environments that would make Mr. T squint. The music has also been changed back to the cinematic Persian-style orchestral music of the first game and the rock vibe that put so many on edge in Warrior Within has been mercifully ditched.

Despite the visual letdowns, Two Thrones proves itself a worthy sequel that simply falls short of expectations in terms of polish. The controls are tight as ever and the puzzles still clever and challenging. The great quality that has made the series so beloved and has survived the sequel syndrome is that the game can make the player feel more clever than he/she actually is. The Two Thrones continues this tradition and marks a satisfying end to the current-generation trilogy.

8.5/10
By Zack Rovinsky