The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 8th

Poor sales? Team disbanded? No no no, that's not the way it happened

Today's door is shimmering and promises dark magics within. It's an unlikely marriage of big budget publisher and a genre beloved most by smaller development teams. What mastery will unlock the door and expose the vast arenas within? Why, clicking to read more, of course.

It's Ubisoft metroidvania Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown!

Graham: Indie developers have led a resurgence of metroidvanias in recent years, creating games like Hollow Knight that can challenge even the namesakes of the genre. As a major publisher, Ubisoft bring a budget that smaller teams can't compete with, resulting in a 3D rather than 2D world, cutscenes, full voice acting, and many more bells and whistles.

Do these things matter? Not even slightly. Ubisoft's take on the genre is great not because of their budgetary excess, but because they understand the fundamentals. The Lost Crown's sidescrolling world map is vast and knotty, your gradually expanding moveset rewards mastery, and it offers a bountiful supply of combat and platforming challenges to overcome.

This is a Prince Of Persia game where you don't play as the prince. Instead you are Sargon, the youngest member of the crown's protectors, on a rescue mission. The prince has been kidnapped and taken to a mysterious palace where physicsy, timey-wimey magic has warped and twisted the environment.

What does that mean? Well, it means there are skellingtons whose attack patterns you must learn so you can block, counter and defeat them in swordplay. It means there are platforming challenge rooms riddled with switches and spikes and swinging blades. It means there are bosses to defeat and powers to gradually collect, letting you fire arrows, cast time bubbles, perform wall runs and double jumps.

This is not a cinematic platformer like the original Prince Of Persia, but all these elements make it feel like a modern reimagining of many of the same ideas. But whether you're a long-term fan or a total newcomer, what matters is how The Lost Crown feels in the hands. By the end of the game you're chaining together slides, leaps, blocks, arrow attacks to manipulate the environment and overcome tricky bosses and feeling great doing it.

All of which makes it the kind of game I wish big publishers would make more. Not because I want more cutscenes and voice acting, but because I want more games that know themselves this well and feel so good to play.

Jeremy: I have many feelings about how Ubisoft mismanaged Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This is a game that suffered confusion and unfair reception from the getgo, as fans who were waiting for the still-in-development Sands of Time remake thought they were being sidelined. When The Lost Crown was released, it got blazing good reviews, including one from RPS, but it also emerged in the midst of a PR kerfuffle where a Ubisoft director said that consumers should get used to “not owning” their games. Finally, it was confined to the Ubisoft Connect store instead of Steam, and then sidelined itself a few months later when The Rogue Prince of Persia was unveiled.

Considering all of this, when Ubisoft announced that The Lost Crown team had been dismantled due to poor sales, I fumed and wrote something in the work Slack about sending a really good product out to die. Because The Lost Crown deserved better. From its exquisite Metroidvania map that kept me busy for months, to thrillingly tough bosses that clearly pull from the Soulslike pool, to a soundtrack that uses actual Iranian instruments, The Lost Crown is Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia revitalised for a new generation, updated with aesthetics, difficulty, and cultural considerations appropriate for 2024. The main hero might not be the fellow who originally ran through those dungeons on the Apple II, nor is he the guy who turned back time in 2003, but he is thoroughly and completely worthy of the Prince of Persia lineage.

The world deserves more games like this - more revitalisations of a series like this. PoP lives on with The Rogue Prince of Persia, which is great in its own right, but I will forever be dismayed that the Lost Crown seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a one-and-done. If you missed it the first time around, you have no excuse to not try it out on Steam for yourself, and dream of a better world where we’d get at least two more sequels starring Sargon.

Head back to the advent calendar to open another door!