Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (hereafter: "Lost Crown") is a 2024 cross-platform action game with Metroidvania elements, developed and published by Ubisoft. Players will take on the role of Sargon, amusingly not actually a Prince of Persia (0/5), as he sets out to right wrongs. This will be a spoiler-free review as far as plot. Minor discussion of abilities will be present; and discovering what abilities the Metroidvania has in store for you can be a lot of fun, so I'll put another spoiler warning around that section and keep it near the end.
This game looks Good. If you're playing on Switch, you can upgrade that to Great. It's speculated that the developers operated from a "Switch-first" perspective: make something that will run well on that hardware and then port to the other consoles / PC without significant changes. You're not getting extra high-res textures or shading on PS5 (it actually runs on PS4 and Xbox One, lending weight to the "port" theory). The feature image is from a cutscene, so check out some other images below.
Visually, the game can be described as 2.5D, though unlike other Ubisoft 2.5D Titles (such as the Assassin's Creed Chronicles series), there is no gameplay in that .5; you are only ever operating in the 2D space, a la @super-metroid or @ori-and-the-blind-forest. Speaking of Ori, some of the area and even some of the art gave me distinct Ori vibes, which isn't a bad thing at all.
Menus are functional but not elegant. Fortunately you won't spent too much time in them, and mostly can just use the dedicated map button to check where you might want to go next.
Nothing here stood out for or against. Everything was serviceable. Audio cues, including "the person who will sell you the map for the area is humming nearby" (we hadn't borrowed from @hollow-knight yet, but we definitely aren't done with them either) are good. There are satisfying clangs when your swords collide with things. The death traps (you didn't think we had forgotten those) sound like they should.
The story is good, but bogs down for a bit in the mid-game, and somewhat follows the predictable trope of explore new area, fight boss, get new ability. It's a classic formula for a reason. I won't dwell on this topic to avoid spoilers, just enough to say it's fine; didn't wow me but wasn't bad. Given the games I play that have more time for narrative, it's a high bar.
This is a combat-heavy Metroidvania, as you might expect from this franchise. You start initially with a sword and can perform your basic 3-hit combo, launch, slide/dodge, and parry. As has now become practically mandated by law, enemy attacks fall into basic (can parry), and unblockable. There is now a 3rd category, where their eyes flash yellow, allowing for a super counter attack if you time your parry correctly. Lots of games probably have that but I'm getting some melee counter from @metroid-dread vibes off it. The video below contains a spoiler-free section showing one of those counters. They're not guaranteed to kill enemies, but I had weakened this one.
Video: Combat sample: Counters
Boss fights, as in "I have a life bar and a name, therefore I'm a boss," are exactly what I expected. Significantly more challenging than regular enemies, requiring you to study their movement and dodge / block / attack with relatively good timing, and of course, multiple phases getting increasingly more difficult (I can't even start tagging games we borrowed that from; we'd be here all day). I died at least once, and probably an average of 3 times per boss before I got it figured out. For boss fights (ONLY), the game has a generous retry system that takes you right back into the action, or it can take you back to your nearest campfire, I mean, Spirit Tree, where you can change your loadout.
You start the game with 3 life bars, and can get healing potions that will refill a portion of your health. There's an annoying and sometimes fatal pause between hitting the drink button (D-pad Up) and actually recovering health, and you have to be standing still on the ground, which is still more generous than some games I could maybe already have mentioned and will mention again. The number and strength of your potions can be increased during the game, but only to a degree. Late-game bosses will destroy your health far more quickly than you can recover with just healing potions, and you will have to learn to avoid their attacks.
You remember I said we weren't done with Hollow Knight yet? Can I interest you in some charms, I mean, amulets? What's an amulet? Well, it gives you additional power-ups like "increased damage while airborne" or "recover health on successful parry"... ok sure, lots of games have things like that, you can't just say it's borrowing from Hollow Knight... and each one requires 1 to 3 "amulet slots" and you start the game with I believe it's 3 or 4 slots, and can find more in the world as you explore, and you can even upgrade the amulets with the in-game currency. Convinced yet? There are 36 total amulets to find and I really stuck with the same 4-5 for most of the game. I'm usually boring like that; there are going to be certain ones that work for my playstyle that I want and I like, and I'll equip those and that's it. I did find the amulets as a whole to be relatively disappointing. Oh yes, and you can also only change your amulets at a spirit tree, which is where you can rest/refill health/save your game too. it's definitely not a bench-shaped tree.
No Metroidvania gets put into that label without a heavy exploration element, and Lost Crown is no exception. You're going to backtrack over previous areas as you get new abilities, though maybe not as much as you expect. There is a limited fast-travel system that you can use starting fairly early, with maybe a dozen-odd points around the world you can travel between. I found myself frequently returning to the "Haven" area where the merchant lived to see if there was anything new to buy, like more Healing Potions.
SPOILER WARNING FOR MOVEMENT ABILITIES - Minor discussion of (somewhat predictable) abilities below. New, unique abilities are not discussed. Scroll past 3 normal paragraphs (there's a link between the 2nd and 3rd).
You
have
been
warned.
(But seriously, this is hardly a spoiler.)
The developers got creative here and I'm on board with it. In most metroidvanias, by mid-game at the very latest, if not still into early game, you're going to get double jump. Not here! You will eventually get it (required-by-law) but not for a long time. You're going to do with your basic run, jump, slide, and a Dash ability like HK or Ori had (can be used in-air immediately once you get it, which helps). Most of the game can be played using only those abilities. I'm deliberately not going to talk about two of the more interesting abilities, leaving something for you to find out. The movement feels fun and fluid most of the time, until you end up banging your head on a section. It's easy to get tilted in some of the harder sections, so be aware of yourself and take a break as needed.
Most of time, failing a platforming section will just take you back to the last place you were on "solid ground" and you take a little bit of damage. This can add up over many failures, leading to chugging healing potions you were hoping to use for combat. One of the collectible items in the game are Xerxes coins, which are always found in platforming sections, generally in the middle of tricky sections, and for these you will need to get to the coin and back to solid ground (either where you came from or a new landing at the end) without restarting in order to collect it. Some of those were downright annoying, but you don't need them all for the platinum trophy, so feel free to skip them.
#video:https://youtu.be/HEXqauQTVLE#Video: Sample platforming challenge from mid-game.#
As a small drawback here, the game does sometimes remember that the original was in some ways a Roguelike. There are movement puzzles that are nearly impossible to do correctly on your first try because you can't see the whole thing and you need lightning reflexes to first read the threats and then determine the right course of action in a split second. The inputs aren't overly sensitive when you know what you need to do ahead of time, but making that instant read is challenging, and some players may be annoyed by the sort of "we expect you to learn by failure" sort of methodology in use here.
END SPOILER SECTION
Besides the amulets which can be found in a variety of chests and from side-quests, you've got specific items needed to upgrade your weapons and amulets, as well as generic "time crystals" which serve as the in-game currency. I'm a sucker for metroidvanias making me go back and get everything, so I normally really like it.
What I didn't love here was that a lot of the collectibles were just lore. Lore is great, but I don't like hiding it behind collectibles and I don't love it being the reward for solving a puzzle or finding a treasure; give me something that makes me stronger.
A-plus-plus here (super post editor did not like me using the plus symbol). Really love what they did. Besides having I believe 5 standard difficulties (with "Normal" being 2nd lowest), you can freely tweak a ton of options. After failing at a certain boss like 7 times in a row, I went in and found I could turn enemy damage to 0.9x and lengthen my parry window (old man doesn't have the reflexes of some youths). I could also add an increase visual cue for unblockable and counterable attacks to help, so I went ahead and made those changes, easily beat the boss on my next try, and then set damage back. I left the parry window. There are also options for enemy health, whether your "limit break" meter (ok "athra" but who's going to remember that?) should recharge at trees / respawns or not. None of these impacted trophies, so you're free to play the game how you want, and I am a huge proponent of this. There are also settings for high-contrast and increasing HUD size.
Lost Crown is a great metroidvania with some roguelike elements that show the franchise remembers its roots while not being afraid to grow and experiment. Overall, it succeeds here. Players may be frustrated by some platforming sections, slightly tedious backtracking, and challenging boss fights, but can look into accessibility settings to help some of those problems.
Metroidvania fans who don't mind their games leaning more heavily into combat should give this a shot.
Edition Played: Owned Physical PS5 edition.
Completion Level: Platinum Trophy.
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