Looks great as a painting, but as soon as you start moving, it all just falls apart.
Watching the game with the blond haired guy dressed in white pixels evolve into an exotic thousand and one night magical fairy tale that puts Disney to shame, then devolve into a with hardcore music ridden hack and slash fest starring a main character with a personality disorder.
This game lies somewhere in between. It's not the worst in the series, but certainly not the best. As my Freudian slip indicated, there are parts shamelessly taken from some other game, put together and it shows.
The response of the controls are erratic at best and the shell shaded graphics are making it very tiresome for your eyes to follow. The repetitive dia-loges, which are extremely vague, are mandatory; to keep you either interested, or to simply annoy you. It's hard to tell which.
There are a few parts of the storytelling I like. The flashbacks along with it's pretentious ending are nicely done, but that's about it.
All and all this game feels much like its predecessors, contrived, forced and despite the many, many pretty lights without any spark.
This game also has lots of sand yes, but it's far far away from the Sands of Time which is turning out to be more and more of a one hit masterpiece.