Last night on stream I finished a game, and it’s always lovely to finish a game on stream. This time it was Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time, Ubisofts classic title from 2003. I’ve played it once before, many years ago, and it’s one I’ve been wanting to tackle again for quite some time.
Part of this was sparked when they announced the remake some time ago, I wanted to give the original another playthrough before that came out, obviously that won’t be happening now due to the remakes unfortunate cancellation, but it was also a game I really wanted to do on stream just due to how much fun I remember it being when I played it many years ago.
So, for Christmas I got it along with the other two games in that trilogy (Warrior Within & Two Thrones) as presents and thought I’d make it one of the first playthroughs on stream this year!
I’m really glad I did, and I wanted to pop down some thoughts about it now that I’ve completed it.
The first thing that really stood out to me as I played it, and something I brought up pretty much every stream was just how bloody good this game looks from 23 years later, both from a graphical perspective, but also in terms of its animation, which is still remarkably impressive to this day, watching the way The Prince moved in combat and during platforming was an absolute joy with its fluidity and style. It’s genuinely one of the best looking titles of that generation.
The visuals also really hold up, there is a certain cartoonish sheen to them which means that whilst it has obviously aged, but it hasn’t aged like games that strove for ‘realism’ during that generation, something that I find holds true for a lot of games of that era that strove for unique over photo-realism.
Looks are one thing though, but how did the game hold up to play?
Well it was a game of two sides for me, the platforming and the combat. Platforming felt fairly wonderful, it was fairly easy to get to grips with but had its tricky moments that never felt too unfair. The Prince has an array of moved avalible to him, from your standard jumping and grabbing onto ledges, to being able to wall run across large flat bits of wall, wall jumping and swinging from poles. You’ll use all of these to solve puzzles, get around traps and skillfully traverse your way to the next section.
Everything felt super responsive, and any issues I did have were certainly down to user error rather than anything too unfair with the game itself.
In fact the only time I had any issue with the platforming was when platforming and combat collided, which I’ll go into next.
Combat was… it was a mixed bag, and I feel like some of this might be down to my impatience, my expecations and also that it hasn’t aged too gracefully. As with the platforming, it’s quite easy to get to grips with, you have basic attacks, special attacks and you can make use of The Princes acrobatic skills to jump over enemies, jump from walls through enemies and dodge in/around them.
There are only a handful of enemy types in game, so learning how to deal with them and their tricks becomes a core part of the game. It’s not the most difficult, you do have to be patient but I did find that by the end of the game the combat left me feeling quite cold.
For one, the combat encounters become very repetitive very quickly, with them taking the form of just wave after wave of various enemies, usually about four or so at a time, until you eventually kill them all, I really found a lot of these encounters to be overly long and frustrating.
Sometimes they’ll be coupled with Farah, a Princess who joins our titular character on his adventure, and you end up sometimes having to protect her whilst she stands perfectly still in most encounters, firing an arrow at enemies every once in a blue moon. Again, adding to frustration.
Thirdly, sometimes it becomes awkward knowing who you’re locking onto or attacking, when you’re surrounded by enemies you might want to pull one way but The Prince goes a different one, and sometimes if you want to roll it might go for a jump leading to being hit and further frustration. I certainly had moments whilst playing it where I was getting quite annoyed withat what was going on.
That said, third person action games like this have came on so much since the game came out, that the combat is probably going to be the one thing that feels the worst aged, and it certainly isn’t bad, it’s just that mix of repetition with my impatience didn’t mix well with my final feelings on it. I’m always willing to hold up my hands and say, ‘This might be a me problem!’ I know I’m quite the impatient lad sometimes.
That said we come maybe another issue I had, and it’s always an issue when it comes to streaming a game vs playing it personally for a video, I didn’t really follow the story at all! There seemed to be this weird problem where the audio was just mixed so low for voices, and the the lack of subtitles meant neither I nor chat were really following it, that said my streams are rarely ones where we follow stories too strictly as it is.
Maybe I could have done more with the audio mix, and turned stuff up it felt like music certainly overpowered everything else, despite it all being the same level but then we’d have missed out on that music, which was bloody fantastic.
Still, it is a bit of a shame when I play this older games and I don’t see things like subtitles avaliable, I know accessibility in general has been a relatively recent discussion but I do wish we had started those conversations in games earlier, maybe in some cased we have tech limitations, but subtitles seem like such a simple one that should just be there!
All that said, frustrations with the combat aside and a fairly easy final boss, I really enjoyed my time with Sands Of Time, and I’m very much looking forward to tackling Warrior Within and Two Thrones when I can as well. It’s certainly a game I’d recommend to all as a standout action adventure game on the PS2, and I feel like it is a shame we won’t see that remake on modern platforms because I think it’s something that could have been special!
Overall, it’s hard to argue with those contemporary reviews of Sands Of Time, it got 9s from a lot of outlets and certainly if I were to rate it, I’d pop it up there too, it’s a game worth of the acclaim and worthy of your time!