Gameplay And Story
Coming out of seemingly nowhere, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, honestly wasn’t really even on my radar in 2023. I’m an old man and played the original Prince of Persia clear back in early days of DOS gaming. Opening up 2024 with The Lost Crown is a massive breath of fresh air. While the game starts simple and straightforward enough with our hero Sargon, the story really opens up with a kidnapping and it just gets better and more epic from there. The massive amount of locales and crazy characters is impressive for what I was expecting to be a smaller title. There are plenty of jaw-dropping and awesome moments to be had. Color me impressed!
On the gameplay side, it’s even better. The action is slick, and polished, with some of the moves are drop dead gorgeous as you can see in the animation below. Sargon is one of my new fave characters and the mix between classic PoP gameplay and modern combat, is near perfect. Totally unexpected, I never knew I wanted and NEEDED at PoP Metroidvania style game.
Graphics And Audio
Audiovisually, The Lost Crown is nothing short of stunning. The art style while I thought it was just ok at first, really opens up as you unlock killer moves and secrets. The animation and artistry on display here really need to be commended. Lush forests, dry deserts, torch-lit palace corridors, and nasty sewers are just a handful of the near-perfectly rendered scenes that play out. It also runs like an absolute dream as we had it maxed out at 4k @ 100hz on our PC review build.
The audio is fantastic as well with a sweeping musical score, awesome combat and sword effects with some quality voice acting (some are quite silly) but it all fits together for a thrilling adventure that honors it’s PoP roots but doesn’t take itself overly serious.
Feedback
As a massive compliment, I’m having a really rough time coming up with things I would change about The Lost Crown. I think I am just still shocked about a game I wasn’t really excited about just blowing my mind. There are some minor items like some enemy types being too similar, some semi-poor quality voice acting with the sillier characters, and a bird companion that helps you find secrets being a bit too squawky. Sound like I am nitpicking? It’s because I had to come up with SOMETHING for this section.
Verdict
If you can’t tell by now how much I loved The Lost Crown and how utterly surprised I was by this epic, thrilling, and sprawling adventure, I will summarize with this statement: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is the first must-buy of 2024. Ubisoft already surprised me and knocked it out of the park with Pandora, now with this title, that’s two for two of recent game releases. Whether you are a fan of the original PoP clear back when or a total newcomer to the series, it doesn’t really matter. The Lost Crown is just a stellar game overall and what I consider a modern masterpiece. The action is slick, the graphics and audio are fantastic, and it’s a near-perfect mix of both old and new Prince of Persia in a Metroidvania package. Play the demo today. Buy it ASAP.
