An incredible accomplishment by Ubisoft!
The Bad: Intense combat; somewhat repetitiveness of the action. Not quite enough puzzles; too short.
Prince of Persia had me drawn in from the beginning. It's charming presentation was lovable and will keep you enthralled. You start having the Prince stealing a powerful, magical dagger from a treasure hold. After that, the Prince is tricked by the evil vizier into releasing the Sands of Time into the land, which in turn transforms everyone except for 3 survivors to sand zombies. After that you're pretty much on your own, except for for one of the other survivors named Farah. She sticks with you through most of the game and helps fight and solve puzzles. The one other survivor is the evil vizier who is trying to steal the dagger and hourglass of time to become immortal. You must stop him.
I was really impressed with PoP. It relays the story using an almost storybook type feel. You listen to the Prince narrating the adventure as if he's telling a story to someone. The story itself is pretty sweet. You're always wanting to keep playing to the next checkpoint to see what's gonna happen next. It feels really light. It doesn't have much pressure to it. In fact, this game is quite easy and you'll have finished it within 6 or 7 hours. With that said, that's kind of a good thing. It gives it more of a pick up and play feel to it.
The checkpoints are actually pretty unique. When you reach a checkpoint you see a vision of different things you're gonna encounter in the next area. It flashes through the fights you'll do or the puzzles you'll solve and this is great if you get stuck and need a hint on where to go. This game looks pretty good. It has a really ambient look to it. As I said before, it feels just like a storybook...
The sound is pretty nice too. You'll hear some pretty cool music during fights and there's pretty decent voice acting by the Prince and Farah. The clang of swords sounds pretty cool too. Combat can get somewhat repetitive though. You'll be fighting zombies throughout the game and they'll throw different combinations of enemies at you. You have the double blade type guy, the giant sword wielding captain, and then even blacksmiths with big hammers. You'll be just hacking and slashing, and then picking up the sand from the creatures that you knock down. Combat can sometimes get pretty intense as you're surrounded and being knocked around from all directions. That's where the dagger comes in handy. Whenever you die or feel that you lost more life than you needed to, you can rewind time. It's a pretty nifty trick and you'll find yourself using it often.
The Prince's acrobatics look really good. With different obstacles to jump over and different puzzles to solve, this will get really exciting. It is pretty satisfying when you pull off some awesome flips and jumps. The puzzles are pretty unique too and they'll make you think. Though there are a little too few of them. So enjoy them while they're there.
Gameplay: The storybookness of this game is awesome. You'll be thinking you entered a fantasy world without it feeling corny...
Graphics: The graphics look pretty nice. The cinematics look good, but the cutscenes are only okay. It had a good framerate though.
Sound: Again, this is extremely good for me. I love the ol' Egyptian-style music.
Value: OK. It falls flat on it's face here. With only 7 hours of gameplay and not much replay value, there's not much to do except maybe try to play the old Prince of Persia games you can unlock.
Final Words/Tilt: This game is reccomendable to anyone. It has a great story and gameplay that is fun and addicting.