The Rogue Prince of Persia

Genre: Action-Platformer / Roguelike

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

.

Review:

In 2024, one of my top games of the year was Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a Metroidvania that was visually-stunning, smart, and a joy to play. Sadly, being one of the best games of the year didn’t save it from a terrible fate – its sales were reputedly underwhelming, and as a result, UbiSoft laid off the game’s staff. Given this ugly mess, it was quite surprising to see a new game in the franchise release the very next year.

To be clear, The Rogue Prince of Persia, released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2, is a much smaller game than The Lost Crown, with simpler visuals and the exquisitely-designed Metroidvania world design of the prior game traded out for an Action-Platformer/Roguelike that I find surprisingly similar to Dead Cells. However, that’s not to say it can’t also be worth checking out.

Along with the smaller scope is a simpler presentation, with a mix of cartoony 2D and cel-shaded 3D visuals, although the soundtrack still sounds appropriately epic. Surprisingly, despite the downscaled visuals, the Nintendo Switch version of the game suffers from some nasty loading times that really affect the game’s pacing.

Apart from that frustrating issue, this is actually a pretty good take on the Action-Platformer/Roguelike formula, and that’s largely thanks to some excellent platforming and combat mechanics. As you would expect from a Prince of Persia game, your movements are extremely dynamic and fluid, and players have both a dodge and air dodge, as well as a wall run that allows them to run along the background, with players able to chain these together with wall jumps, wall climbs, and climbing on poles to do some pretty impressive acrobatics. Meanwhile, once you get the hang of combat, you’ll find that fighting is often a matter of using a kick to stun enemies before doing some damage, and using a dodge into the enemy to vault over them when they’re about to attack, or use a wall run or dodge to get out of the way if there’s an attack you can’t avoid this way.

Most of this game’s problems come from the Roguelike side – there don’t feel like enough randomized upgrades to make each run feel distinct, and repetitive level design makes this even more of an issue. Also, speaking of level design, The Rogue Prince of Persia has a real problem with levels that force the player to jump downward despite this game having plentiful damaging spikes that punish you for doing so.

Overall, this results in a game that isn’t quite as well-crafted and polished as The Lost Crown, but is still a solid game well worth picking up despite its shortcomings. If you enjoy good platforming and smooth, enjoyable combat, The Rogue Prince of Persia is absolutely going to be worth picking up.

tl;dr – The Rogue Prince of Persia is an Action-Platformer and Roguelike that excels in the series’ signature smooth, satisfying platforming and combat, but misses a step with its Roguelike elements and level design. Plus, on the Nintendo Switch, the loading times are absolutely horrendous. Still, this game’s good qualities far outweigh its bad ones, and fans of good platforming and smooth combat would do well to give this game a try.

Grade: B

.

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

The Rogue Prince of Persia (Nintendo Switch 2)

Genre: Action-Platformer / Roguelike

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

.

Review:

The Rogue Prince of Persia is sadly another example of a game where there’s no upgrade path from Nintendo Switch to Nintendo Switch 2. So that makes the following question all the more important: how do the two versions differ? let’s have a look.

First things first though, even though this is a completely separate version of the game, if you happen to have any other version of the game (including the Nintendo Switch version), your progress carries across if you’ve signed up for a free Ubisoft Connect account, meaning you can pick up right where you left off in any other version. This is a nice bonus, even though I don’t think it’s likely to make you want to buy the game twice.

As for upgrades, the difference in framerate and resolution is immediately noticeable when comparing the Nintendo Switch 2 version to the Nintendo Switch release of the game. I don’t have the numbers, but there’s absolutely a leap here that makes the game flow much more smoothly, and in a game all about smooth movements, that makes a heck of a lot of difference. There are also additional visual effects in this version too, such as added embers in early stages with a burning village as a backdrop.

However, possibly an even bigger game-changer here is the difference in loading times. This was one of my biggest complaints about the Nintendo Switch release of the game, and I feel like it’s so bad there it hurts the game’s pacing. To give you an idea, it took 46 seconds in that version to load to the title screen, another 1 minute 28 seconds to load a game save, and 56 seconds to transition from one location to another. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times are reduced to 14 seconds, 33 seconds, and 24 seconds, a massive improvement.

Just to be clear, I do still think the Nintendo Switch version of The Rogue Prince of Persia is a good, game, but it’s absolutely clear that if you can play the game on another platform, you absolutely should, and the Nintendo Switch 2 version makes the difference absolutely clear. And while The Rogue Prince of Persia still isn’t quite up to the high standard set by The Lost Crown, it is nevertheless a solid Action-Platformer well worth picking up.

tl;dr – The Rogue Prince of Persia is an Action-Platformer and Roguelike that excels in the series’ signature smooth, satisfying platforming and combat, but misses a step with its Roguelike elements and level design. Thankfully, the Nintendo Switch 2 version is much-improved over the Nintendo Switch release, particularly the way it cuts down on loading times, making a leaner, meaner, smoother experience all-around. For fans of Action-Platformers, this is definitely a game you’ll want to look into.

Grade: B+

.

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, Seth Christenfeld, and Vince Verrinoldi. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}