Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time doesn't reinvent the wheel, yet at the same, offers a new and fresh experience.
And thus begins the tale of the Prince of Persia, son of King Sharaman. The game begins with an elegantly stylish pre-rendered cut-scene, of which there are few in the game, and as a result, you appreciate it when you see one. At other times, you will see non-pre-rendered cut-scenes that you cannot skip unless you've seen them before, e.g. if you died and are watching the same cut-scene, you can skip it.
The story itself starts when King Sharaman passes through India on his way to Azad, and he and his army storm a city with the promise of honor and glory. They plan to succeed with the help of a vizier who betrayed the Maharajah of India, and asked for nothing but treasure of his own choice in return for his allegiance.
As for gameplay, it has three faces - daring acrobatics both outdoors and indoors (reminiscent of the increasingly popular Le Parkour), evasion of various inventive traps and, of course, swordfights. On top of those three, the Prince gains the ability to manipulate time when he acquires the Dagger of Time. At first, you're introduced to each of the aforementioned, but eventually you see a combination of all of the above. The player is saved from repetition as some elements of all three are not introduced until a lot later in the game, for example, you gain a new sword three times in the game, each more powerful than its predecessor. The stunts that the Prince performs would make Jackie Chan jealous - you climb columns and jump from one of them to another, you side-walk on narrow ledges, shimmy on them, swing on flagpoles, wallrun and more. Unfortunately, this does not offer the amount of freedom it should, because you do not make your own way around the obstacle by using the environment to your advantage, but follow the "line" of columns, ledges, horizontal poles to swing on, etc. that the developers have placed, so it's pretty linear. Fun, to be sure, but linear.
Lara Croft would definitely quit if she saw what traps the Prince must evade. Nearly every trap is not only rotating, but moving, as well! The traps provide a fun challenge, as some of them are not only placed on the floor, but on the wall, as well. There are rotating saws, rotating spike columns, animated mechanical swords, swinging spike clubs...
While the Prince is more agile and capable than a circus acrobat, he's everything but impressive in combat. Due to his small arsenal of combat moves, swordfights may become tedious relatively quick for some. It doesn't help that you have to finish off sand monsters with the dagger, or they will get back up, which can be frustrating, as the Prince "locks" onto an enemy, and there is no way to switch between the enemies aside from attacking whilst directing the Prince to the desired enemy, which doesn't always work for fallen enemies. Sometimes, another enemy will obstruct the fallen one, or you will be swept off your feet by your enemy before you can finish off the fallen sand creature.
Time manipulation, of course, is one of the, if not the biggest attraction of the game. You are able to rewind time by 10 seconds, and you can cheat death, undo the damage brought to you, correct a mistake that may have sent you to the beginning of an "obstacle course", and so on and so forth. You cannot rewind cut-scenes however, nor killing an enemy. The Dagger of Time grants other abilities, such as slowing down time, even though you're slowed down significantly, as well. Aside from time manipulation, you can also freeze your enemies, either one or all of them, which exhausts the dagger entirely. Killing them while they're frozen will not grant you sands to replenish the dagger's Sands of Time, however, which fuel the dagger's astounding feats.
It is worth mentioning that in this game you have a companion whom you have to protect. Fortunately, she has a decent amount of health and she's not attacked often (as long as you draw attention and/or fight farther away from her). Unfortunately, she's a lousy archer and can hit you if you get into her line of fire. Personally, I've thoroughly enjoyed having her as a side-kick, since there's a lot of humorous dialogues between her and the Prince, and they become infatuated with each other (the Prince becomes infatuated with her, at least), which adds some variety to the otherwise bland and dull lone-wolf adventure.
The graphics might not be ground-breaking, but the level-design is admirable, landscapes gorgeous, and the environments quite believable. The game has bloom, and it is perhaps one of the few games that has bloom that is not only not annoying, but very well implemented. There are also tiny details, such as throughout the game, the Prince rips off his torn clothes until he's bare-chested (a clear discrimination against guy gamers, because his sidekick doesn't rip clothes off), and then there are such special effects as when the fallen sand creatures are sucked into the dagger after turning into sand.
All in all, the game is an excellent reintroduction of the older Prince of Persia games by Jordan Mechner. It sticks to the nature of those 2D games, yet offers new and interesting content that other games have not delved into. The written dialogue is often witty and entertaining, voice acting is pretty good, the music fits the atmosphere, and the story captivates the player and drives him/her forth. Interestingly, this is only the beginning of what is a trilogy, yet the game has great closure - so if the game left you yearning for more, you can play the other two games, but if for any reason you decide not to, you can leave it at that - The Sands of Time does not leave any loose ends.