The King's Road

Ugh, another chariot sequence. If it helps, think of this as another opportunity to curse at your television! But really, if you survived the last sequence, you can survive this one as well, although it'll probably take a few tries to get past the aggravating parts. You should hopefully have a full load of sand charges at the beginning of this chase, so you'll hopefully have plenty of opportunities to correct your mistakes, but if possible, save as many as you can for the boss fight that comes after this chariot sequence.

Boss Fight: Sword and Axe

For lack of a better word (or words), Sword and Axe are what we'll use to refer to the pair of bosses here, since...that's what they're going to use to kick your butt. And kick your butt they will. It's going to be kicked so hard that it'll grow a second, smaller butt, which will in turn be kicked itself. That's how bad these guys are.

Well, in truth, they're tough, but not impossible to defeat when you learn the trick to beating them. As mentioned, one of the soldiers here wields an axe, and one wields a sword. Beyond that, they're mostly identical; either of them can quickly and savagely dish out a huge amount of unblockable damage if you're not careful. Axe is the more dangerous of the two, though, since he can't be attacked directly, and will in fact kick-counter any attacks you send his way, plopping you to the ground.

Thus, you'll have to focus on Sword for most of the fight, as your inner child will let you know if you wait around long enough. If you keep attacking him with your dagger, you should be able to prevent him from attacking you by locking him up in recoil animations. You won't be able to actually hurt him, but if you press the attack, Axe will eventually come up behind you and attempt to slice you in two. When you see the subtle slo-mo effect come into play as he raises the axe upwards, quickly dodge out of the way to avoid the blow; Axe's axe will then be stuck into the ground, and he won't be able to defend himself.

Video Walk-through

Defeating Sword and Axe requires skill and a bit of luck. Sand charges help, as well!

Watch It »

At this point, you obviously have to start hitting Axe with all you've got. Unfortunately, his friend Sword won't take too kindly to this turn of events, and will usually take advantage of the fact that you're hitting his friend by coming up to you and unloading on you from behind. Now that's darn rude. There isn't much you can do to avoid, this, unfortunately; there's no magical obstacle you can use to keep him away from you. All you can really do is attempt to keep Axe between you and Sword in the hopes that Sword won't be able to reach you and strike at you. You can also jump over Axe and slash him on the way down if you need to quickly get on the other side of him, but Sword can and will hit you while you jump. We wish we could make this easier for you, but it's pretty difficult no matter how it shakes out. Luckily, Sword will occasionally just stop moving for a moment; when this occurs, go to town on Axe and try to land two or three dagger combos before he pulls up his weapon and the cycle starts over again.

Now, after you take off around a third of Axe's health, you'll get a speedkill prompt, so hit the appropriate buttons and do your thing to take off a significant amount of health from Sword and Axe both. When that's done, you'll have to repeat the same process of attacking Sword, then dodging Axe's chop and attacking him, until you get the prompt for another speedkill; after pulling the second speedkill animation off, you'll win the fight. The timing required to actually hit the dagger blows during the second speedkill is much tighter than it was for the first, though, so if possible, save one or two of your sand tanks to try and rewind time if you mess it up.

When the ensuing cutscene ends, you'll turn into the Dark Prince again. Fight your way through the hordes of enemies that appear until the door nearby unlocks, then proceed through, wallrun forward to reach the balcony, and scoot over until you can jump through the screen. After turning into the Prince again, you'll find the next save point.