The Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

I finished off the second game in the Prince of Persia trilogy, 'Warrior Within' a few weeks ago, but I've been too lazy to actually make a write-up for it. Well here it is! Warrior Within is set a few years later than The Sands of Time, and in the first scene we see the titular Prince fleeing from some sort of malignant force known as the Dahaka chasing him down as vengeance for messing with the sands of time. The Prince escapes, and eventually sets sail for the island where the sands were created, puzzling over how to fix this situation without sacrificing his own life. For the first half of the game (8 hours or so- this is significantly longer than Sands of Time) I was very disappointed. The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time may be a perfect game in that it does exactly what it is supposed to and the only improvements to be made are the graphics as consoles get more powerful. It controlled perfectly, which is exactly what you need in a platforming/parkour style game. I found that all of the subtleties that made The Sands of Time great were absent in Warrior Within. Camera angle was the number one offender- Often wherever the Prince needed to go was difficult to see, leading to frequent deaths. In more linear sections, the camera would often jump around needlessly, causing the controls to change at a moment's notice. This also lead to frequent deaths and frustration. My other big gripe is the combat- while The Sands of Time had little focus on combat, instead offering up a platform-heavy game, Warrior Within went overboard with combos, wall fights, and battles mid-platforming. The problem is, most of this was pretty terrible or unnecessary. There's a huge list of combos, but they were all fairly useless and impractical. It wasn't just me being bad at the game either, as a guide I checked would comment on the uselessness of the combos with every new one you learn. The Prince also developed a habit of running up walls when near an enemy and kamikaze-ing himself off towards the enemy. Of course, if this fight was taking place near an endless hole, then the Prince would just dive-bomb himself over the edge for a self-death. Terrible! Anyway there was still some potential in the game. The level design is non-linear and very well done, and the aforementioned 'Dahaka' will periodically show up for some tense but quick chase segments that I felt added a lot to the game. Still though, as I left on a work trip to Ohio with the game half done, I was ready to really lay into the game in my post. After I returned a week later and finally finished off the game, I felt like there was a significant improvement in the second half. I can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps I simply just got used to the random jerky camera movements and figured out a cheap if time-consuming way to just cheese my way through fights without taking much damage. The predictable plot twist of the first half of the game was redeemed with the story taking a turn towards crazy towards the end, and while it didn't tie up perfectly like in The Sands of Time it did have some pretty cool moments. So Warrior Within wasn't as bad as it could have been, but clearly a good deal worse than The Sands of Time to me. Hopefully the trilogy's final installment, The Two Thrones ends the series on a high note.