When Ubisoft announced Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (hereinafter Lost Crown because that name is simply too long), they did a not-great job conveying what kind of game this was. I mean, sure, it was obviously a 2d action game, but it wasn’t clear – to me at least – if it was going to be a Roguelike or a Metroidvania. I mean, it’s Prince of Persia, surely they could make either style of game out of that. And there’s this cast of Immortals, are we playing as all of them, or just the main dude? Who knows! It looked interesting, but I put it out of mind because Ubisoft stuff is incredibly hit-or-miss.

Now that it’s out, let me make it abundantly clear:

  • It’s not explicitly tied to any specific Prince of Persia game.
  • It is absolutely a Metroidvania through and through. It’s most similar to Hollow Knight… but with a far more overt narrative.
  • There’s a big cast of characters, but you’re only playing as one dude.

It’s… fine. It’s a competent 2d-3d Metroidvania. It has all the things you’d expect from a such a game: several biomes, lots of interconnectivity, upgrades, charm-based itemization, combat powers, traversal powers, secrets, big set-piece bosses, backtracking to places you couldn’t get through previously, and a gajillion collectables.

They do a lot right – they clearly did their homework – but they never really expand on the genre, they don’t do anything different. If anything, while competent, it’s a little too derivative: most of the traversal powers are just basic Metroidvania fare, the necklace charm system is lifted almost directly from Hollow Knight, and it has jumping puzzles that reward coins which are basically Wing Berries from Celeste.

Combat in the game is a little monotone. There’s a combo system, and even a training NPC that tutorializes all the combos in the game, but there’s really minimal reason to use any of the longer combos beyond “Press x until the enemy dies”. There’s two primary weapons (dual swords and a bow), you can upgrade them but the upgrade just increases damage output. There’s no Castlevania-style itemization or Metroid-style beam variety, it’s more like (again) Hollow Knight where you’ve got your weapon and that’s it.

It’s a similar situation with The “Athra” combat powers. Over the course of the game you unlock a variety of combat powers that you can spend Combo Juice on to get a big powerful attack. They’re interesting, but there’s minimal reason to use one over another. They have tiers based on how much damage they do / how much Combo Juice they consume, but each tier basically does the same amount of damage, and they all have the same cooldowns per-tier. The only differences are where they can be triggered, and what the range of attack is, like aerial, area of effect, focused forward targeting, etc. There’s one truly unique one that drops a healing rift, and I basically used that one (because it was basically a rechargeable pocket heal), and the first one you get because it’s a beefy lunging multi-hit attack and it’s cheap. I gave them all a fair shot, and just really didn’t see much reason to use anything else.

But again, it’s fine.

On a better note, it’s incredibly well-paced. It’s a tight game, there’s very little wasted space. The progression roadblocks are very well telegraphed and – with their one real innovation – the game gives you the ability to not just put a map-marker down, but completely snapshot what the room looks like so you can clearly remember what you need to do there. It’s pretty rare that you’ll come across a room that’s just there: either you’re on the golden-line to the next encounter or you’re in a room that has some kind of secret in it.

It also respects your time. It’s not an 80 hour epic with a SECOND upside down castle and then an ALTERNATE DIMENSION castle that takes you to 400% map completion. I rolled credits with all but like 4 achievements complete, 89% overall completion, in a breezy 20 hours. I played on Xbox Series X, but it’s available on everything… but maybe steer clear of the Switch version, because it’s locked 4k 120fps on Xbox & Playstation, and struggles to maintain 1080p 60fps on Switch.

Overall I thought it was fine. If you like this kind of game, go for it, it’s only $50. If you’re not into Metroidvanias, ehh, it’s still fine, but maybe wait for an inevitable sale.