PdR The Rogue Prince of Persia Review

Pros: I absolutely loved the game; I looked forward to sitting down to play it every day, because I probably needed this! A soundtrack this good is incredibly rare, and it's been added to my "videogame" folder, which previously had 16 songs. It was a huge benefit that it went back to the drawing board last year! They listened a lot to the feedback since it was in early access, AND the simultaneous closed beta launch of Hades II, which had over 100,000 players on Steam, must have been a fantastically useful experience for the developers. The parkour elements are absolutely fantastic; something as simple as 2D wall running is a brilliant idea, and they used it incredibly well. This PoP setting really suited the Evil Empire team; they have a great feel for it. Of course, "Dead Cells" was a huge inspiration for them, and roguelikes weren't foreign territory, but still! The story fit very well with the previously known PoP lore. Plus, the "Sands of Time" time mechanic made a comeback, which perfectly suited the roguelike style. The motivations for the bosses were in some places very interesting to READ (more on this below). The "Mind map" function also felt refreshing in how cleverly it fit into this era. I felt frustrated by the phrase "one more run!" on an incredibly small number of occasions. Perhaps when I was chasing an achievement/trophy where the boss couldn't hit me at all, and here the fight had just started, not even 4 seconds had passed, and I GOT hit. However, this doesn't ruin the experience. Cons: It suffers from technical issues, even though it started in early access last July: It has long loading times between levels, which was completely surprising to me. It happened more than once that it took 40 seconds to go from one level to the next. The music, despite being great, also lost its fluidity during loading screens between levels. The rhythmic parts would start or the song was already so far along that it felt disconnected. It also happened many times that a track would start in the middle of a level. In the first few days, there were some stutters that required restarting the game multiple times and sometimes even the console (PS5 Pro), even though it doesn't use U E 5. However, an update came out that eased things. I can't ignore the fact that it has a €30 (PS) or 11,300 HUF (Xbox) price tag, because that comes with expectations. WHERE IS THE GAME'S VOICE ACTING? Hades did it in the €25 price category; this should be a minimum standard if a "competitor" has already done it. The 3-4 unachievable trophies were the icing on the cake. Of course, I didn't buy it for the achievements/trophies, but I was so drawn in that I wanted to dive into the world of PoP, so I thought I'd get them. Then, after I finished, I saw they were completely bugged and others had the same issue (the psnprofiles website also shows this). This has since been fixed on console a few days ago. The first Hades is the king in this genre, but The Rogue Prince of Persia came close to the throne. However, much more is needed to craft the crown.