Cards on the table: This wasn’t a game about which I was very excited. At all.
First, there was a bad taste left in the mouth by the troubled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake that started life in Ubisoft’s Mumbai and Pune studios, then stuttered and was taken over by the company’s Montréal studio. Second, there was the jarring (largely due to the anachronistic and very ill-fitting soundtrack) reveal trailer for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. And third, there was the perplexing fact that we weren’t getting an action-adventure puzzle-platformer, but some sort of Metroidvania game.
For those not in the know, Metroidvania (a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania — two luminaries in the field) is a sub-genre of platforming games that feature a large and interconnected map, with diverse sections, some of which might be inaccessible until you get a certain upgrade. Other features seen in many such games include plenty of exploration and backtracking, a whole host of secrets to be unlocked and that returning to areas can often see previously killed enemies respawn.
It’s not so much that I dislike the genre per se. What put me off was a combination of the Sands of Time episode and that it was an action-adventure puzzle-platformer I was eagerly awaiting (ever since Ubisoft’s virtual press interaction for the remake on September 10, 2020). Not whatever the hip-hop-laced The Lost Crown was shaping up to be. Before this turns into a whole thing, I should elaborate: I have nothing against hip-hop music, I simply found it to be a very poor fit in this setting.
In any case, I set the game to download, expecting little more than a humdrum affair. After all, there was no way the game could even come close to making me feel the way the original Prince of Persia had, all those decades ago. Jordan Mechner’s classic 1989 side scrolling platformer (published by the erstwhile Broderbund Software) was my first (or near enough) introduction to gaming and it blew me away. But we’ll get back to my hours spent attaining gaming nirvana in front of a black-and-white VGA monitor in due course. For now, let’s get back to The Lost Crown, which didn’t take very long to download and install.
At first glance…
You play Sargon, one of the Immortals — a band of seven legendary Persian warriors. After a brief tutorial that has you aid these Immortals in their vanquishment of yet another foe, you are introduced to the key characters of this piece. These include Prince Ghassan, the actual prince of Persia, with whom you seem to be getting along just fine as you are toasted for your accomplishments on the battlefield. However, things have a terrible habit of going wrong in games (let’s face it, if things didn’t go wrong, there’d be no game), and it’s no different here.
To Sargon’s shock, it is his own mentor Anahita who is responsible for Ghassan’s abduction. So off you go with your comrades to the cursed Mount Qaf to rescue the prince. This is where the game lets you loose and two things become clear: One, this is a game that puts as much emphasis on its mesmerising visuals as it does on puzzle platforming and two, the music to which I alluded above thankfully doesn’t appear in the actual game. In its stead is a soundtrack by composer Gareth Coker and singer-composer Mentrix that is a great fit for the setting, the action and the events that play out on screen. The less said about the voice acting though, the better. The English audio (featuring extremely out-of-place British accents) is for want of a better word, unbearable; the Farsi audio (that I used alongside English subtitles) is a vast improvement, although it feels like the voice actors were in some tearing hurry while recording their parts — such is the hasty nature of dialogue-delivery.
Let’s return to the visuals real quick. When calling them ‘mesmerising’, I didn’t mean that the graphics were in any way on par with Cyberpunk 2077 running on Overdrive mode through an Nvidia GeForce 4090 GPU. Not that The Lost Crown looks bad at all, but I was referring to what’s happening on screen rather than how it looks. And almost every level and stage of the game looks busy, but in a good way. There are plenty of little details that you only pick up on the second or third time you pass through an area, and to me, this makes the whole experience that much more enjoyable.
Environments appear to have been painstakingly crafted, and each section of the map, or biome if you will, lives and breathes with its own personality… and perils. Whether it’s the varied array of baddies, the traps you encounter or indeed the ambience, each of the 13 biomes is quite unique.
The visuals and audio, in turn, do a great job propelling the story forward — a story that was the most surprising aspect of The Lost Crown. After all, I went in expecting a threadbare (if not half-baked) narrative that just about gave you a reason for all that jumping and dashing, and hacking and slashing. But I was surprised to find a compelling, if somewhat basic, story that kept me intrigued through my time with the game.
Jump, slash, fall and die, respawn and repeat
One of the most iconic aspects of the 1989 Prince of Persia was the retractable spikes that would emerge from the floor. In the decades since, plenty of games — platformers and Metroidvania titles particularly — have co-opted those to a point where they are no longer a novelty. The other features of that game that stand out in my memory are the way there were multiple ways to get around an obstacle (remember the first level that could be completed without even getting hold of a sword) and the sense of accomplishment that followed. I’m pleased to report that the appeal of these facets isn’t lost on The Lost Crown.
For starters, Sargon is an acrobatic warrior, equally at ease when wielding dual swords or a bow. As such, the combat and movement are zippy, responsive and very satisfying. In many ways including the stylish approach to combat, animation style and the dash mechanic, it’s quite reminiscent of the 2014 action-platformer Strider.
Overall, the combat is fairly familiar hack-and-slash platformer fare. It’s easy to pick up, logical enough for you to be able to improve, but hard as nails to master — especially if you want to win a boss battle unscathed. Furthermore, over the course of the game you collect amulets that grant you different buffs and bonuses. Mixing and matching these allows you a more diverse, ergo entertaining, combat experience. Once I got the hang of the various techniques and attacks at my disposal (thanks in large part to the tutorials provided by Artaban, a fellow Immortal), I was able to vanquish enemies in innovative ways. The platforming and puzzling, however, were and remain a different story altogether.
At the time of writing, I’ve invested close to 16 hours in The Lost Crown and just about crossed the halfway mark. According to Ubisoft, the full game should take between 20 and 25 hours to beat. (Update: It took me close to 27 hours to finally complete the main story, with a handful of sidequests along the way) A majority of my time spent, I’ve no qualms admitting, has been on getting through the puzzles.
Initially, these take the form of basic platforming — jump up, jump off the wall and then backwards onto a platform, jump again to grab a ledge and so on. And then things start getting more complex with timed puzzles, time manipulation and multiple avatars of Sargon entering the picture. Before long, you’re (or at least I was) left with the crippling urge to fling my controller against a wall after running into an insurmountable puzzle.
But wait, you realise there’s a hatch that you hadn’t noticed earlier.
Shimmy up the spinning blades, past the collapsing platforms, through that hatch, and you’re clear! The dopamine hit is off the charts. This brings me back to the original Prince of Persia, particularly the heady cocktail of relief and victory you enjoyed after beating the fat guard (apparently called Politician) or figuring out how to defeat your ghost. However, there’s a big difference: While that game had a gentle and lilting learning curve, The Lost Crown possesses a punishingly steep one.
This isn’t a game for the impatient, so be prepared to fail repeatedly before you can progress. Fortunately, the game features a sprinkling of save points (the Wak-Wak Trees) that replenish health and arrows, and checkpoints that ensure you never have to backtrack too far. I would’ve liked to have seen more fast travel points to make navigating across the surprisingly large map a bit snappier, but it’s not a deal-breaker.
Take the leap?
Metroidvania games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and here, I speak from experience. However, if there was ever a gateway game to this genre, The Lost Crown is it. In other words, if you’re not convinced about Metroidvania games or have had a bad experience in the past, this is the ideal game to set things right. Sure, purists might point to other titles, but it’s this game’s lack of prerequisite backstory knowledge and its ability to expose you to a variety of experiences in a rich and varied world that gives it the status of a gateway game in my book.
If, however, it’s a relaxed way to kill a few hours you’re after, this is most certainly not it. It’s also not recommended for those in search of a nostalgia trip, because after a while, you’ll realise the only thing the 1989 game and this 2024 offering have in common is the name and the side-scroller perspective. The Lost Crown is a distinctly different beast crafted for the current generation. It is a very polished, hugely frustrating, immensely rewarding and incredibly entertaining game that’s worth every rupee of its Rs 3,499 price tag. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, there’s a free demo available on all platforms.
Game reviewed on Xbox Series X. Review code provided by publisher
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