Prince of Persia®: The Sands of Time

This is a very very good game The story, art style and characters are fantastic Highly recommend and play the sequels too! The combat in this game is a little rough but warrior withing perfects that too.

Growing up, I recall having fond memories of the Prince of Persia series. Having said that, as an adult, I've returned to this series once more with its first and unfortunately, the nostalgia goggles may have been foggy on my end. This beloved classic of a platformer, action, puzzler game is definitely without its faults, but lets begin with the good. The platforming in this game is pretty decent for its time. While there may be some jittery issues and timings that make specific platforming puzzles more difficult than it needs to be, the platforming still holds up fairly strong. The puzzle aspects of the game are in fact its strongest feature. Early on, the game slowly builds up the fundamentals and asks the player to use them in figuring out the puzzles that appear in parts of the game. You even receive hints at save points as to how you should tackle a problem that is there. Now for the bad. The story is not good or rather, what little story there is feels nonexistent. It takes a full backseat shortly after the beginning sequence with sprinkled character interactions in between. The worst aspect of this game is the combat. The controls for the combat aren't bad, but it's the AI on how it approaches you in combat. There are mechanics such as parrying and blocking that have a difficult time adjusting when there's more than one enemy present. The camera also makes this problem even worse as you're constantly trying to attack and/or move into a better position, but the awkward angles make things difficult for the most part. Did I mention how terrible the combat is? It's not bad when you're fighting one or two enemies, maybe three if you're lucky with parrying/attacking. It's difficult, but I feel like if you learn a mechanic of the game, it should reward you in that process. This game doesn't reward you, instead it just throws more difficult and annoying enemies to deal with. The stun locks you receive from either blocking continuous scammed attacks or getting attacked and falling before having a chance to get up yourself is beyond frustrating. In the end, this game, as tragic as the combat side of things is, provides a clearer look of games of this era where no one truly figured out how to properly handle fights in 3D. All in all, this classic is timeliness for what it offers and should only ever be picked up if it's on sale for an incredibly low price.

Nice 3D action platformer, and it runs fine

Very fun to play! The game was really good for its time.