Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

its a wonderful continuation of the pop series and presents a befitting end to the series.The prince looks great as ever and the various new features which are present in this game add an extra spice to it.The speed kill system is wonderful and makes the job quite easy for the prince,also in this game i cant recall a single instant where the game presented bad camera angles as are present in the previous two games.The game play is although pretty much similar to the previous two games but the platforming in this one is really great.There is one more added attraction in this game that is chariot racing which is quite nail biting stuff.Also in this game there aren't any monotonous boss fights as were in the pop warrior within.All in all a wonderful gaming experience,a must play for everyone and i give it a well deserved 9.5/10.

The Two Thrones is the third and last installment in the Prince of Persia trilogy that started three years ago with the astonishing Sands of Time, a game that turned the popular 2D platform series into a complete and spectacular 3D adventure. Jumping, swinging, grasping, hanging off ledges, solving puzzles and graceful combat made up for one of the best games I ever played. Now I know that many people weren't too happy with the dark and grim atmosphere in Warrior Within, but I was actually quite satisfied with this new style. The extremely spectacular free-fight system that came with it, allowing the player to battle up to 6 enemies at the same time, was especially noteworthy, as well as the great storyline that kept twisting and turning in unexpected ways.

The Two Thrones returns to the sunny style of SoT, with minimal bloodshed and less body parts flying around. The Prince has defied death on the Island of Time, and is returning to his hometown of Babylon, only to find a fierce army murdering and looting its way through the city. It doesn't take long for the Prince to once again go on a quest to destroy evil and restore peace. The Sands of Time, however, have altered him slightly, causing him to change into a dark alter ego, the Dark Prince, from time to time. This is a nice way of bringing some innovation to the game play, as the Dark Prince makes use of a particularly vicious razor-chain, that allows him to make long jumps and dispose of his enemies much more efficiently. Yet, it does not revolutionize the game play as much as I hoped for. Changing into the Dark Prince happens when the story calls for it, not when the player wants it. Life energy slowly diminishes when playing the Dark Prince, which gives a certain amount of pressure to move and waste enemies fast in order to replenish energy quickly, but we already saw something like this in WW, when playing as the Sand Wraith. Other innovations include the speed kills, which enables the player to kill an enemy with a few strokes, and adds a little stealth to the existing game play. It is nice that you can use this techniques to quickly get rid of a few enemies when you are faced with many, but there isn't much variation in speed kill moves, and it takes away a lot of opportunity to go into an adrenalin-pumping free-fight frenzy. Speed kills become much more varied and useful when fighting the mini-bosses, and the resulting battles are quite spectacular to see.

The same can be said from the chariot races that you can do once every while. But just like the Dark Prince appearances, they come only incidentally and they're over just when they become fun. Most of these innovations feel like nice extras instead of fully integrated new parts of the game play, like the 3D platform action and free-fight system.

There are more aspects of the game that give the impression that development of TT was slightly rushed. The story is very straightforward this time, and lacks most of the exiting twists that were so prominent in SoT and WW. As a result, the game is only half as long as Warrior and can be finished in mere days instead of weeks. The graphics and FMVs are okay most of the time, but the in-game cut-scenes look at best five year old. Did production run out of polygons? When not playing as the Dark Prince or riding a chariot, I found that jumping and running along walls was getting a bit monotonous after the two previous games; difficult puzzles are scarce, and finding solutions to situations becomes increasingly simple, with only speed kills offering some variance most of the time. The influence of Jordan Mechner, who wrote history with the original PoP and rewrote it with SoT, is dearly missed at some times.

But as harsh as this all may sound, by no means does this make TT a bad game; it merely prevents this game from becoming a masterpiece like SoT and (to a lesser degree) WW. Although the thrills I got from playing its predecessors were a bit absent, I still got a good time playing TT. Even though not masterly, it is at the very least competently made.

This game has much more innovation than WW had, and beats that game hands down. But still, the only thing which is really focused on is the gameplay. And that is where they should focus, the story was incredibly bad. Just continues in the same track as the previous two games, then suddenly at the end, they rush it incredibly to wrap stuff up, and even failed in that. You have the Prince struggling with his dark self this time around, it's not really what you'd expect and is the games weakest points. When you play as the DP, everything feels rushed and boring. New to this game is the Speed Kill system, if the enemy hasn't seen you, you can get behind them or over them, and start a little "timing-mini game" where your dagger will flash for a brief second, that's when you need to press the attack button. This keeps gameplay fresh, and ties it ties in with the acrobatics in order to get a good vantage point. But it's not all good, they were supposed to be angry and aggressive. They were a bit dull with the slow music and didn't really give the rushes it was supposed to. And you never really needed to time them, there were not much variation, and you could easily learn when to press. It was only the first time through that you were on your toes. The music was ten times as good as WW, but didn't quite have the "catchyness" of SoT, say hello to middleeastern music once more. The game looks incredibly UGLY, I know games out in 2001 that looked 20 times as good. There are MASSIVE amounts of clipping errors, and I believe the 2 earlier games in the series looked better. This looked horrible. Even the main weapon is 2D. Little to now replay value however, you get one different code for each cleared difficulty setting. (Easy, Normal, Hard) And they are not really hard to get to. The gameplay is excellent, even though the DP takes it down a bit. If you want to buy this, don't set your expectations too high, and appreciate the gameplay, that's about the only thing they nailed in this one.

The only bad thing about this game is the bloody conflict between his inner "bad" self and his "good" self, now you think "but hey, isn't that what the game is all about?" you are most certainly right my friends, but that is not what i mean. You can only be the dark prince when you must, there is no choice here.

Good prince :"hm i sure could use a chain here" ZAAAAAAAAP, "yeah baby I'm ready and I'm a dark prince but not really evil because i kill just like the good prince" But surely he must be evil, he is wearing black (well his body is). I hope you understand my point, its kind of silly.

This game would have been the best of the three (with the sands of time theme) if you would have more choice, if you could chose your destiny.

Anyway, it looks really great and like a fairy tale, but i personally like sands of time and warrior within more for their ambient graphics.

The "speed kill" which is new, is the most welcome addition to the game in my opinion, it adds some need for timing and skill. No new skills, the only skills that you will probably need is rewind and slow-mo.

This game could have needed some more time in the plot-making factory and the skill-creating office, otherwise a really really fun game to play.

If you are a fan of pop, do buy this game. If not, still buy it :), at least play the demo or rent it.

Yes, this game is the final installment for this particular prince of Persia, a new one is waiting in the wings. However, as far as this prince is concerned this is the best game he is in. The reason, it does the best job incorporating the fighting and the acrobatics the best of the three. Basically, the fighting is fun and you have plenty of the wall running to really keep you entertained. Throw into that more boss fights than the previous two installments could muster and a nice little change in the prince as he becomes a dark self. It even has the addition of stealth kills that are easy to do and look very cool. The game is a bit short though, and the way it picked up with the sorceress of time alive as she died on the only play through I did in Warrior Within. Which means you should not make your game multiple ending and pick up only one of the possible endings in the next installment. So here we have an old villain emerge, an old ally emerge and a very dark side of the prince emerge. The dark prince side is rather cool and can slice and dice opponents very effectively. His main drawback is that water is a weakness of his and he slowly but surely runs out of health. Still he can replenish it by killing enemies and he does that quite well. The regular prince is still effective to at what he does and fighting and stealth kills are his thing too. You do not go over the same territory in this one like in Within so the game remains fresh. There is a chariot race like scene in this one, but not that great. It is okay, but it does not really add anything. So for my money all in all this is the best of the three prince of Persia games.