Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones (Xbox)

Level Design

There’s something that scares me about the designers of the PoP games, the levels are extremely complex and in this game there’s some true works of art. The puzzles and acrobatic sections are worthy of nail-biting and hair-pulling but the sense of satisfaction from completing them more than makes up for it.

Graphics

One of the best looking PoP games to date, this one really has shown the engine’s maturity over time. The use of lighting and subtle shadow effects brings to life the ruined city of Babylon before your eyes and some of the views when combined with the excellent Level Design are truly breathtaking. The textures on the models and the level of animation are all excellent, especially when you see the Prince/Dark Prince in action in combat; they have been fine-tuned from the previous games and show that the design has also matured into a grittier and darker direction.

Camera

This is where it falls down; the camera is a lot better than the previous games but still suffers from some annoying problems. Especially in combat when your life is on the line, a switching angle can obscure the fight at the wrong time and cause you to lose the battle. There are a number of fixed camera angles in certain acrobatic sections that leave you wondering where to go and having a non-locked fully moveable camera would have solved this problem.

AI

Simple AI, that’s about the best I can say about this game. It doesn’t really need to be complex it seems, so the combat AI in the game is rudimentary at best and seems like a step backwards compared to the last couple. It does the job and nothing more, thus the battles don’t seem as tactical or exciting as they could be.

Sound

Two Thrones has nice sound. The ambient sound effects and the spot sound effects are all crisp, clean and provide an impressive aural backdrop to the game. The clash of steel and the screams/cries of battle are all well rendered and there isn’t a glitch in sight.

Music

The soundtrack to Warrior Within kind of annoyed me after a while, there’s only so much Godsmack I can take on replays through and through of the annoying Dahaka sections in that game. So I am happy to report that musically things are very much back to sounding like Sands of Time in this game. The score is suitably dramatic and sweeping; it compliments the sound effects and graphics nicely.

Voice Acting

Apart from a few badly written lines the actual voice acting in Two Thrones is pretty good, they have made the Prince a lot more mature than the previous games and given his voice actor a chance to try out a new darker side as the Dark Prince. The script isn’t too bad apart from a few places, and all the Voice Actors have done a pretty good job with it. I have always been fond of Farah so it’s nice to see she makes reappearance in the game and her voice-work is top notch.

Final thoughts

We’ve come a long way in such a really short time with this series and it is going to be sad to see it end. There will probably be another Prince of Persia game down the line but I doubt they will use the Prince as his story is wrapped up quite nicely at the end of the game, it made me smile when I saw it and I have to admit it felt worth-while going through the game to the end to get there.

It’s a flawed gem in the crown of a similar semi-flawed series of games, as a single game it is probably the best of the three. As a whole series the games are the best of their genre and have provided an elegant story with a fantastic conclusion. Now if they’d have sorted out the camera system and AI, this game would have scored much higher than it did.