Japan Man

While the new Prince of Persia looks beautiful, there are some glaring problems that probably won’t be addressed. First, I am worried about the Prince’s attitude. In the previous games, he was surly, arrogant, noble, kind, and overall very complex. He wasn’t trying to save the world, but he was trying to save his own skin and Persia.  In this new game he is trying to save the world for…..what? Plus he doesn’t say anything cool or do any flashy, acrobatic moves like before. Lame……

I think Elika gets in the way of the adventure and you actually care about her less…..In Ico, it was your job to save the helpless Yorda allowing you to become closer to your charge. Elika obviously doesn’t need the Prince to go adventuring since she can fly and do all types of cool stuff the Prince can’t. She outshines the Prince so much this game should be called Elika: Arabian Nights.

No time powers….ok fine but they replace it with a woman? And you can’t even control what she does, she just automatically saves you. What if I don’t want to be saved? Also, you can’t use Elika’s powers to magically affect any of the monsters. She just blasts them with some magical dust…..One of the best parts about the previous PoPs was that you could rewind any mistakes you made and it looked cool to see it in slow motion. No other game around lets you do that even now.

And finally, they missed out some great opportunities to make Prince of Persia more like One Thousand and One Nights.  Here are just a few ideas off the top of my head that they could have implemented into the new game:

• A genie system where your secondary character (A genie or some other demon) grants you wishes similar to the time powers (rip it from original PoP series or Full Metal Alchemist)
• A home base that is a castle you can customize (rip it from the Sims)
• As you grow in strength,  your genie/demon can grant you better wishes
• A genie related sidequest to obtain riches and customize your wardrobe (rip it from Fable)
• The option to choose a harem (rip it from Fable)
• The opportunity to impress the sultan in order to win his daughter (more Fable)
• Fights on the high seas (like Sinbad and God of War)
• More fights against legendary monsters (rip it from Sinbad, Fable, PoP, God of War)
• A main villain that is actually a man and not a god (this separates it from God of War)

I could go on for days, but you guys get the point. I am not sure what the developers at Ubisoft were thinking when they made this new Prince of Persia game but how could they run out of fun ideas? It is like they never even bothered reading One Thousand and One Nights but decided to rip off Ico, Okami, and Shadows of Colossus. Ico is the best of those games but even Ico fails to stand up to games like Fable and God of War. Okami and Shadows both had decent ideas but they weren’t fun.

After reading the interview in Playstation magazine, it is obvious to see that the developers at Ubisoft have some type of grudge against God of War, a vastly superior game. Their criticisms focused on Kratos specifically. While I agree that Kratos is all rage sans any complexity (especially in GoW II) I think that the game makes up for his lack of depth with high fantasy, brutality, and fun ideas. I loved destroying all the Greek heroes in GoW II especially the fight against the Colossus. PoP II comes close to that formula and adds some emotional depth, but Prince of Persia needs way more brutality and cooler looking monsters (some of the monsters in the new Prince of Persia are a step in the right direction but they are stll way behind even the mundane minions in God of War)

It is funny that the Devil May Cry team even realized they needed way more brutality and cooler enemies but the developers of Prince of Persia decided against that (why?) Instead they decided to make this game more like Assassin’s Creed which was slow and boring.  They spent too much time making the environments expansive and beautiful, but nobody cares about that in an action game. People want non-stop, brutally cool lookin action. We want to feel like a bad ass and not some pussy who needs to be saved by some flying bitch. And Fable has taught us that being a hero, slaughtering your foes, seducing the babes, and stacking up the riches are a large part of what “fantasy” is all about. Too bad the guys at Prince of Persia don’t understand that.