I recently got my grubby hands on a demo of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown at PAX Australia. While Ubisoft itself had no presence on the show floor, and release is still a few months away, there was a playable demo for Switch available at the Nintendo booth.
In a return to its 2D roots, Lost Crown sees Sargon, the protagonist, navigating a light Metroidvania-style world of platforms and danger. The “mythological Persian” world is, in true platformer style, formed from the standard array of platforms, walls, spikes, and pitfalls. You have to jump across the various hazards while fighting enemies and finding hidden items or abilities. It’s standard genre fare, but the way it’s presented in Lost Crown demonstrates a level of quality that earmarks the designers’ skills.
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Movement is a joy. Sargon feels weighty but lithe, powerful and acrobatic. His moveset of slides, wall jumps, bar swings, and flips are nippy and responsive, letting you be precisely where you want to be when you want to be there. There is a deceptive complexity to movement that slowly reveals itself as you get your head around the options available to you.
This depth is mirrored in the combat. Lost Crown has quite a bit of combat as you jump and slice your way through its numerous zombies and monsters. Sargon comes with swords, a bow, and a chakram, all of which offer interesting flexibility to your combat approaches. Slashing and a rather unforgiving parry is often coupled with jumps, Sargon darting around the screen to deal and avoid damage.
While the combat felt great, I found myself a bit lost in the sea of inputs and abilities on offer in the ten or so minutes I had. There was a whole lot going on, to the point where I tuned out a bit and stuck with basic attacks. It worked, but I ended up feeling like I was missing a lot of what will be on offer in ideal gameplay settings. I can see its potential, even if I could not grasp it in the time allotted.
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To further complicate things, there are also time-bending abilities. I only found one in the demo that let Sargon set a position to warp back to at the press of a button. I didn’t get a chance to use it in puzzles or traversal, and its utility in combat went unexploited, but it wouldn’t be Prince of Persia without time powers.
There is also an amulet upgrade system, which allows you to equip small buffs or additional abilities to your character. There’s nothing revolutionary, but the system does allow you to customize your gameplay style the way you please.
Presentation is lovely, even on the Switch’s small screen. Art pops in the way it should, and attacks and abilities are immediately readable. I did find the screen filling up a little bit in some of the more intense sections, but nothing a little experience with the game wouldn’t fix. It’s pretty and charming to look at, with some great flair that really gives it a unique identity.
While my time with the demo was brief, I found myself helplessly charmed by its slick presentation and even slicker traversal. While I couldn’t fully wrap my head around all the intricacies of combat in such a short time, I can see the depth available to those willing to master its surprisingly complex systems.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is shaping up to be a slick action platformer and a return to form for the series.
