Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Review

Right from the intro video you begin to see how much time was put into this game. The tale begins in a Middle Eastern setting; you are the Prince of the great King of Persia. Greed and power has overcome your father, as you seen in the video, and your father has prepared an army to attack an Indian city. When the game starts the character you play wants to please his father by fighting like a warrior in battle. Your character then has a better idea: To find the treasure of the Maharaja (I don’t know if that spelling is correct), and be the first one there.

Right in the beginning you catch a glimpse of the dagger of time, and once you see it your character thinks that nothing more would please your father. Soon after, you take it. When you bring it back to your father, a Vizier talks you into unlocking the sands of time which is held in a big hourglass. Then all hell breaks loose. All of the soldiers and other people in the city turn into “sand monsters”. You, the Vizier, and a girl name Farah are the only survivors. For the rest of the game your goal is to defeat the “sand monsters” and return the dagger to the hourglass to try and undo what you have created.

While you’re doing this you now have the dagger of time, which is one cool dagger. When you defeat an enemy you have to stab them with the dagger, thus collecting the “evil sand” into “sand tanks”. You then can use the power of the dagger to rewind time, which is limited by the amount of sand in your “sand tanks” (You may have seen some of the commercials on T.V). When you fall, die, get hurt, or just feel like trying it out you can rewind what you have just done. You cannot do it for too long though because the “sand tanks” will run out.

The story goes on from there but I don’t want to ruin too much of it for you if you plan on playing it yourself. The things in the game like the setting, cloths, buildings, etc. remind me of Aladdin (just think of the Vizier as Jafar). But that doesn’t really have anything to do with it.

Anyways let’s get to the game-play and controls. The game is in third person and you move around kind of like an acrobat. You find yourself swinging from poles, jumping off and running on walls, and climbing all over the place. Think the impossible to get passed some of the parts in this game.

I really enjoyed this game, but wow, there were parts where I thought I was going to have an anxiety attack. Even right in the beginning at around 20% through there was a very difficult enemy to overcome. It can be very challenging at points, and I think it might even be better to play the console version of the game (shame on me). The controls change when the camera angle changes which gets annoying. The camera angles are sometimes very awkward, and the game has a console feel to it. Especially with not being able to save where you want to. Like I have said in the past, it is just ridiculous. This being said though, Prince of Persia does give you a chance to save very often and it will start in places so you don’t have to redo certain things. Other things that bothered me in the game was the fact that I couldn’t always hear what the characters where saying. I don’t know if it’s the computer I’m playing on or what, but I couldn’t always make out what they were saying (it could be my sub). Another thing was the fact that it seemed like the enemies were never ending. When you get further in the game you face different enemies that only get harder and come in more numbers. Like I said before the game can be very difficult at certain points. Don’t give up though, it gets better as you move on. Walkthroughs can be helpful also. I referred to one a few time for help because I was stuck.

For the good, the graphics in PoP are great, and the cutscenes are even better. The graphics are a little fuzzy, but not in a bad way. You will only know what I mean by trying it out yourself. I was impressed by the graphics and the environments. The buildings, scenery, plants, and everything looked great. The cutscenes are amazing, and I would compare them to a game like Warcraft 3 just to give you a sense of how good they are. Maneuverability is incredible and it seems like you’re somewhat of an acrobat like I mentioned before. The storyline is great. I told most of the beginning of the story above and I’m not going to wreck any more of it for you. The last thing that I thought was really well done was the character development. The girl named Farah, who also survived, becomes your partner and is with you for most of the game after the beginning. You really start to depend on her to help you, especially when you are fighting (Although there were at least three or four times where I was killed from one of her arrows). When she is gone for part of the game the fighting seems harder alone. Even though it doesn’t seem like she does much, she does. You also begin to hate the evil Vizier: The traitor who more or less, started this entire mess.

In the end I’d say to get this game. It doesn’t offer multiplayer but it was fun while it lasted (and it took a while to complete). Though it may be very frustrating at times, games shouldn’t be easy to complete. Watch out for the controls if you play it on the PC, they change along with the camera angles. You might want to get it for a console you have instead of the computer.

The Good
-Superb Graphics
-Excellent Cutscences
-Good storyline
-Great Character Development
-Maps/Environments looked great


The Bad
-Camera angles are often very awkward
-Console game feel
-Very frustrating
-Cannot always hear character dialog
-Endless Enemies