The Rogue Prince of Persia: Early Access Review
When Evil Empire agreed to continue developing Dead Cells for Motion Twin Games in 2019, perhaps they didn’t imagine that game would be such a big influence on their next project, but after such a turbulent end to a relationship, nothing like immediately presenting The Rogue Prince of Persia, an idea so obvious that now that I’ve seen it I’m only surprised that no one has presented it before.
When there is a video game character with such a troubled relationship with death, creating a rogue-lite around that peculiarity is the option that stands out, and in fact the relationship between the Prince of Persia and his bola that makes him immortal is the ideal motto to create this game.
The game begins with the Prince of Persia waking up after having underestimated the Huns who devastated the Persians in battle, and it was at that moment that he knew he fucked up! Now the fight is to recover his kingdom.
I loved Dead Cells, which led to The Rogue Prince of Persia immediately being on my radar as soon as the first trailer was shown. I have to say, I love that Ubisoft allowed smaller studios to play with the franchise, the ideas they implemented were excellent, creating a much more diverse and fun world, dispelling the idea that the franchise was dead, it just needed creativity and good execution to revitalize it.
Although Dead Cells gave the pedigree and probably boosted the credibility of whoever developed the game, the truth is that working on an already created and developed universe also created many gameplay limitations that were perfectly visible when we played. Here what counterbalances our immersion is the constant and unfair comparison between games. The Rogue Prince of Persia always feels a little clunky compared to the first. Of course, the movements made when jumping from platform to platform produce some interesting choreographies, and even the fight can be interesting, but there is always a feeling of slowness and that some movements do not fit fluidly into the next one, as well as the moments when there are many enemies packed together makes it very difficult to understand the one we are hitting, making these sections a simple quick button mashing and hope that it works. In Dead Cells there were ways to deal with this greater number of enemies, especially using turrets, something we don’t have in this game, given the limited lore already associated with the franchise.
Although there are a good number of different weapons, in the end, the way we approach combat never changes much, and that feeling of freshness is essential in a game as repetitive as this one. In Spiritfall there are much fewer weapons but in each of them, we notice the difference in approach they offer, something that rarely happens in The Rogue Prince of Persia where I limited myself to successively choosing the highest level one.
Adding to this we cannot look up or down, which means we have to make many leaps of faith, hoping that in the section below there is nothing that hurts us, and this is very important, as two or three unexpected hits make all the difference between advancing another level or not.
The difficulty offered by the enemies does not change significantly as the game progresses, and only the bosses offer a huge difficulty spike. There is a slight increase in difficulty throughout each level, but only one of the new enemies requires us to change our combat routine.
There are two currencies we can earn. One to use in each run, another to unlock permanent upgrades for the character, this is also a bit usual in these games. There are also weapons and medallions to unlock, which later appear in each of the runs.
Something I loved about the game was the way the story was presented to us. I don’t want to explain how because it spoils some of the surprise, but the way our character collects information and reconstructs the events that happened is amusing, justifying each new run and, more than that, offering a reason to explore each level, to find the connection that we discovered at a previous moment.
It’s been an excellent year for the Prince of Persia franchise, first with the excellent Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, now with The Rogue Prince of Persia. Of course, this one still has a lot of rough edges to iron out, it is still incomplete but it has a lot of potential, and I have no trouble recommending it to anyone who likes the genre.
