A charming, beautiful experience let down by a loathsome combat system.
The story goes like this: Upon wondering in the canyons for his precious doney Farah, he bumps into an escapee running away from hostile soldiers. So without agreement, you decide to pursue her in her adventure. Little do you know what's in store for you. The evil god Ahriman is released by none of other than Elika's father, in which you are forced to take him down. Along the way, you most heal corrupted lands, while using complex platforming techniques and bumping into various hostiles.
First of all, I have to say the voice acting is terrific, and extremley sympathetic, even if it does get a little cheesy at times. Elika is the more pleasing of the two, and unlike the Prince's, dosen't become tedious in the slightest. The story, although straightfoward, is told in a pleasant and lively way, and for all you people who don't really connect with storylines, who choose wether to approach it or not. Along the story, pressing the left trigger would cause you to speak to Elika, and hear she reveals the current events, and even past of each character and the land itself.
The platform components work perfectly, as we expect from a PoP game. You use free-running, sliding and grappling techniques (to name a few) to get to the other side. Despite it being fun and all, the game limits in difficulty, due to one button per obstacle. Once you click the required button to pass the barrier, you could be waiting 5 seconds due to it automatically doing it for you. Manual manuevers would be much more prefable.
But the combat is where the game really slopes, thanks to clumbsy controls, and repetetive fight system. It's basically button smashing, but it dosen't help when you're fighting the same boss every 10 minutes. Again, it bounds in difficulty, and eventually becomes tedious and almost repetitive. The combat system does nothing, and everytime you see a black whirlwind ready to respawn my next foe, I silently sigh.
If there's one thing that keeps this game on it's toes, is the phenomenal artistic design in both the enviroments and characters. I garuntee there will be some point in the game where you stop for 10 seconds, twirl the camera, and appreciate the game's scenery with great interest. The fact that each frame was painted, was unbelievable. I will take this game's visuals over Crysis' any day.
For you achievement freaks, it's an easy 1000 GS. These include collecting pigeon equevilent's 'Light Seeds' in which brings in the game's difficulty to it's peak. There's also achievement's for facing bosses with limited actions, such as not use grab on a certain enemy. Then there's plenty of story achievements on offer, in fact I think they are worth almost half gamerscore.
Overall, a nice break from shooters. Whilst being far from the game of the year, it's a fairly enjoyable platformer that we've been for for time. It dosen't match to Sands of Time, but may be equel rating wise to Warrior Within. For those expecting a challenge, prepared to be monumentaly disappointed. I ask to treat this game as an experience rather than an actual game, and you will be vastly fond of it, and hopefully dismiss the majority of it's flaws.