When we were originally deciding how to cover the Ubisoft demos that we got to play at Ubisoft Forward during Summer Game Fest, we were going to divide the article based on each game. Leaving the Ubisoft Forward event, we had gameplay footage of The Division: Resurgence, The Crew: Motorfest, and Prince of Persia The Lost Crown (POP: TLC).
Frustratingly, both Prince of Persia and The Crew were in a file format that was not able to be uploaded to YouTube directly and needed a converter. While converting The Crew Motorfest, an error occurred corrupting our footage, however, we still have our footage from Prince of Persia The Lost Crown.
Early on, we thought about combining the two articles into one because of the loss of footage, but after contemplation, decided to keep them separate, to an extent.
Both demos gave us a good bit of hands-on time with each game but walking away from demos, I was more impressed with what The Crew: Motorfest had done compared to Prince of Persia. Now this isn’t to say that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a bad game; in fact, it’s a pretty solid game from what we played, but racing and open worlds have always been more appealing to yours truly.
Story Plot
After a decade-plus, we finally have a new Prince of Persia, but the game is not as everyone expected. Rather than playing as a Prince, we play as Sargon, a warrior of the legendary mercenary group of Persia – the Immortals. This group has been sent to rescue the kidnapped Prince Ghassan.
Upon entering the temple, The Immortals notice that something is off and discover that the army that had been sent out before them had be decimated.
Something even more disturbing was going on with the army already rotting away. It is up to Sargon and the other Immortals to escape the cursed temple and rescue the prince from the clutches of the time manipulator.
POP: TLC Demo
As someone who prefers open-world games vs 2D side-scrollers, Prince of Persia The Lost Crown still managed to impress me. Now like any game, the 2D side-scrolling action did take a while to get used, however, the platforming was easier to adjust to.
The jumping and platforming elements of gameplay are similar to other platformers (Metroidvanias) such as Metroid, Ori, or even Disney Illusion Island. Despite being a Metroidvania platformer, the gameplay did not wow us with any of its mechanics.
It just felt like the run-of-the-mill platformer. Now this is partially due to the game having time abilities available but not knowing how to use them.
Visually, Prince of Persia The Lost Crown is structurally appealing with multiple levels to platform on with a variety of obstacles to avoid but none that feel unique.
When you think of The Prince of Persia that were popular in the early 2000s, The Lost Crown feels like it has lost its connection to the beloved series. The gameplay is structurally sound but the art and the story, at least how it was presented to us feels like something was missing.
Takeaways
While Prince of Persia The Lost Crown has some of the looks, it does not have the feel. One thing we can proudly say is that we got further than Geoff Keighley in the demo. The Boss fight against the Chimera was the most memorable aspect of the demo and was a fun challenge.
It forced us to learn the block mechanic and how to use Sargon’s special abilities. Even though the boss fight was a fun but challenging experience, it did not sell us on the game. The controls were fine to use but they felt like any other 2D platformer
Hopefully, Ubisoft does something to get us more excited about the game before its release. Prince of Persia The Lost Crown is scheduled to be released on January 18th, 2024, on Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
