Should've been called "Castlevania: The Sands of Time".
Now "Sands of Time" was a reboot of the Prince of Persia franchise that immediately spawned critical acclaim despite the fact it was a little easy for gamers, but did you know that my first experience was with this game 7 yrs ago when I had my GBA SP unrapped. Sooooo, what do I think of my first GBA game. Well we gotta find out!
The Story begins with a different, younger Prince narrating the events on his first battle. During the siege of India, the Prince ventures through the Maharajah's treasure vault and discovers the dagger of time, an ancient artifact that can control time itself. He keeps it as a sovenier for emerging triumphant from his first battle as the Prince and his Father journey to Azad. The Prince's father, King Sharaman visits the Sultan of Azad and gives him lots of gifts including exotic animals, maidens etc. The viscious Vizier requests the Prince to unlock the Sands in the hourglass. The Prince does so and the Sands of Time are unleashed stealing life from everyone around the room (exept the Prince, the Vizier and a beautiful princess) and turning them into sand monsters. The Prince eventually escapes. Aided with the Princess who cannot completely trust him, the Prince's epic quest for Redemption begins. See, simmilar to the console version!
The Controls are very good for the most part. You move using the control pad, press A to jump, B to Attack, the R button to rewind and L to block (well, sort of.). Overall, really good controls that work well for the most part.
The Graphics are not the best but they do work. The light and dreamy atmosphere does do a good job of representing the atmosphere of it's console bretheren. The Character models are decent and the animations are once again exellent. Decent Graphics overall.
The gameplay is extremely identical to "Castlevania Symphony of the Night", but you control the Prince instead of Alucard. You control the Prince in an extensive Castle as you journey through in your quest for Redemtion. The Castle you travel through is HUUUUGE!!!!! This portable version is seemingly tries to distance itself from the linear structure of the regular games and go for a non linear structure much like Symphony of the Night and Metroid. Along the way you earn new abilities like double jumping, absorbing projectiles, wall running and the fact that this port encourages you to earn your abilities?! Awesome! There is also a level where you get to play as Farah and solve puzzles much in the way like "Portrait of Ruin". I think this a pretty cool feature that spices the game up a bit. The boss battles are pretty good but it's just too bad that there is very few of them. The Castle is pretty huge and has alot of medals to collect which have access to different rooms and stuff. However, there is no demying that it's pretty similar to Castlevania. I mean just look at the simplistic Combat (at that I mean how the Prince attacks with his sword, much like Simon Belmont lashing with the whip) and side scrolling action! The only difference is that the game is a lot more fast paced and it has the Time powers you can use. Overall, good gameplay that borrows heavily from Castlevania!
The Music is sutible for the game but it's just not memorable. At least not compared to the other sountracks of the series of course! The SFX are good and the voice clips are average but they do make good use of the system's capabilities.
The Downsides I found for the game are: that the game seriously borrows heavily from Castlevania and I'm actually not joking! I mean, the whole Castle being a heavy emphasis in the game and the amount of exploration you have to do and the fact that you have to collect alot of items plus the fact that there are monsters to fight and the simplistic combat: HOW CAN IT NOT BE A CASTLEVANIA CLONE!!!! Also the game is a little short on story and it's a little too easy at some stages in the fact some corridors can be cleared through one breeze of a try! Aww come on Ubisoft! You can do better than this! Ahh well, verdict time!
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a good portable game for your ever growing collection of GBA games. It may be a clone of Castlevania but if you want a good action game for your collection, here you go.
The Good: Imaginative level design, two playable characters, fast paced gameplay, huge castle to explore, dozens of unlockable abilities, secret medals are everywhere adding more replay value, Time Powers are remained intact, epic boss fights, makes good use of the system's capabilities!
The Bad: Very simmilar to "Symphony of the Night", Music is forgettable, a bit easy than a lot of games out there.
The Ugly: No ugly points here!!!
Title: I really like it!!!