Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Genre: Metroidvania

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (from here on simply referred to as The Lost Crown) is a Metroidvania released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. While connected to the overarching Prince of Persia franchise and bearing some thematic and gameplay ties to earlier games in the overall series, The Lost Crown is otherwise unconnected to the earlier Prince of Persia games, featuring an entirely new story and characters, and bringing the series into the Metroidvania genre.

This is not the only way in which The Lost Crown is unique within the Prince of Persia franchise, as this also marks the first time that the series puts players in the role of someone other than the titular Prince. Rather, this game has players taking the role of Sargon, a young and eager member of a small group of powerful warriors calling themselves The Immortals, charged with fighting to protect Persia. However, Sargon the rest are shocked when they discover that one of their group has kidnapped Prince Ghassan and brought him to Mount Qaf, said to be the home of the fabled Simurgh. However, it doesn’t take long for Sargon and his comrades to discover that there is far more going on than a royal kidnapping.

The story here is a strong one, thanks to some excellent and well-voiced characters, a supporting cast of even more diverse characters living on Mount Qaf (and similarly well-voiced), and the intriguing location itself, with Qaf home to a crumbling ancient city stalked by monsters, a strange curse that has its residents trapped within shattered fragments of time, and more than its share of secrets.

It doesn’t hurt the interesting locale and story that The Lost Crown is a gorgeous game with wonderful 2D artwork, and some visually-striking 3D locales and fluidly-animated 3D characters, with some nice stylized magic effects and excellent lighting. There’s a superb level of detail here stretching well into the backgrounds, making this game’s already large and varied locale seem even bigger, giving players the impression that as massive as The Lost Crown’s map is, they’re only seeing a slice of a once-vibrant and magical place that has been tainted by more than one supernatural disaster. And despite that this is such a graphically-vibrant game, the Nintendo Switch version of the game doesn’t seem to suffer much for being on underpowered hardware, with the worst drawbacks seemingly being occasional irritating load times and lower-quality shadows.

When it comes to the soundtrack, this game’s composer, Gareth Coker, has already made a name for himself as the man behind the Ori series, and here he is joined by Iranian composer Mentrix to create an orchestral soundtrack that is both highly-polished but also grounded by traditional instruments and vocal elements befitting the game’s Middle Eastern-locale. Through much of the game, this results in some extremely atmospheric music that highlights the danger, mystique, and at times dread of Mount Qaf’s different areas, though there are also rousing percussion-filled battle themes as well. For some good examples of this game’s soundtrack, check out Resisting the Inevitable, The First Immortal, The Forest Queen, Clock Tower, A True Warrior, and Hanging Gardens of Mount Qaf.

Getting to the gameplay, as Metroidvania games go, I’m tempted to call this one a “Jack of all trades, master of none”, but I worry that the implication of this would be doing this game a disservice. To explain what I mean, I think The Lost Crown features some outstanding Platforming and beautiful visuals… though perhaps neither as great as what we saw in the Ori series. And the combat is truly excellent, though not quite as good as the Guacamelee series. The story is compelling, though perhaps not so much as what was in the Axiom Verge series. The puzzles are wonderful, though perhaps not… okay, I’ll just stop there. You get the idea.

Here’s the thing – though every individual element of The Lost Crown may be topped by another entry in the genre, I can think of no other Metroidvania other than Castlevania: Symphony of the Night that gets nearly everything right in the way that this game does. And when your closest point of comparison for a game is arguably the best game the genre has ever seen, well, you’re doing something very, very right.

I do say nearly everything, though. The Lost Crown lacks one element often seen in the best Metroidvanias, that sense of there being amazing secrets around every corner. There are secrets, to be sure, but often these come in the form of little bits of lore to discover, quests to be undertaken with nebulous goals, or most frequently time shards, this game’s most common form of currency used to upgrade your abilities and purchase small mostly-passive upgrades. It’s far more rare for players to stumble on something truly wondrous and empowering – usually this comes in the form of “Simurgh feathers” gained through progressing in the main quest.

The first of these feathers gives players access to an air dash, and while it’s a simple thing, this game’s core gameplay flourishes with this ability – combined with the standard wall-jump, observant players will realize this lets them scale any unobstructed vertical wall, and just in standard play this makes for some delightful platforming. And when used in combat, this gives players the opportunity to rush behind their enemy to get in a few hits.

Speaking of the combat here, it is quite excellent, giving players a variety of different attacks that can be chained into combos, along with counters and dashes, all of which simple to use but able to be chained together in some delightful ways, and with enemies that are both varied and often able to counter straightforward attacks in ways that require players to be more thoughtful. Enemies do have predictable patterns and color-coded tells, but failing to respond to these appropriately can be punishing, and possibly my biggest complaint about this game is that it’s not always clear the correct way to respond to these enemy actions.

However, that’s not much of a complaint. Really, when I get down to it, nothing is. The Lost Crown is simply a magnificent game, and even if it has a few small shortcomings, and does not excel so much in any single area that I could honestly claim it to be the best in that area, this is nevertheless a well-crafted, highly-polished, and overall sublime game that is one of the best that the Metroidvania genre has ever produced. If you are a fan of this genre, this is an absolute must-play game.

tl;dr – Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a Metroidvania that does virtually everything exceptionally well. Great Platforming, fantastic combat, a huge and interesting location to explore, excellent visuals, a wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack, superb voice acting, a compelling story and characters, and the Nintendo Switch version of the game sacrifices very little. While in every area it falls just short of perfection, that it excels in just about everything makes it one of the best games the Metroidvania genre has ever received. Do not miss it.

Grade: A

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Winner:

Game of the Year: Bronze Award (Third Place) – Here’s where, as usual, I take a moment to say that while the game designers at UbiSoft do wonderful work, the executives at this company are some of the slimiest folks in the industry, who still haven’t answered for the numerous abuses they’ve put their employees through. Case in point – after Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was released, and proved to be what was arguably the most polished game of the year, with outstanding graphics, superb performance on Nintendo Switch, a wonderful soundtrack, great voice acting and story, great gameplay, and a long-awaited return to a beloved series that’s well worth the wait… after all that, UbiSoft laid off the developers of this game due to underwhelming sales likely caused by Ubisoft’s own questionable pricing practices. What a tragic ending to one of the greatest games of the year.

Best Metroidvania – There were some strong contenders in the Metroidvania category this year, but Prince of Persia is the one game among them that gets everything right about what it is to be a truly great Metroidvania – great exploration, fun abilities, good platforming, outstanding combat. If you’re a Metroidvania fan looking for the entire package, this game is it.

Best Graphics – In a year where the Nintendo Switch is showing its age more than ever before, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown stands alone as one game that delivers a truly impressive visual performance that doesn’t seem to be held back in any way by Nintendo’s underpowered hardware. With a large, imaginative world, great character animation, and plenty of detail, this is a game that’s polished from a fine sheen from top to bottom.

Runner-Up: Best Sequel, Best Voice Acting, Best Story

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