Review #518: Prince of Persia - Warrior Within

 Game so edgy it cuts you with its dialogue.

Hopefully the prince will be smiling on the next game.

 Warrior Withing has earned somewhat of a bad name since the day of its release. It's been often cited as one of the worst cases of 'darker and grittier' for the sake of appealing to angsty teens and the such. But being dark and edgy... isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the tone shift is the least of the game's problems.

 Taking place a few years after the Sands of Time, the Prince finds himself prey to the Dahaka, a being that was unleashed the moment the Prince went back in time, and now the Dahaka wants the Prince's life. So he comes up with an idea: Travel back in time to before the sands where created and stop them from ever coming to be. The plot is interesting, and a few amusing things occur during the Prince's journey, however, characters have lost their charm. The Prince isn't as snarky as he used to be, being replaced by an eternal frowner, voiced by the glorious Robin Atkin Downes, and the rest of the characters... well, it seems as if a 12 year old was in charge of designing the females, because it's all about their breasts and butts.

Enemies block everything that goes beyond two hits, save for spinning attack combos.

 The game plays pretty much like the first one, melding combat with platforming and puzzle platforming, but the Prince's moveset has been expanded upon. Platforming is pretty much the same, the Prince can still run on walls until gravity brings him down, scale on a few surfaces and will have to jump from ruins to scaffolding to bars to what have you in order to get to his destination. Most puzzles in the game are about figuring out how to get to where you want to go. There's a few new additions, like slowing down your decent by shredding through a flag with your sword, using ropes to aid you, using your time powers to slow down time and get to a door before it closes or a few enemies that cling on to walls and must be slashed at the right time. Yes, the new additions are pretty shallow, but the previous game did this perfectly, and there was no need to fix what wasn't broken.

 Combat has been completely overhauled. Now the prince will wield his main weapon on his right and can pick up any other weapon with the left, albeit most secondary weapons will break pretty swiftly. There're more options in combat to, if you're fighting with a single sword you can grab enemies in order to strangle them or slash them, or you can use a wall to propel yourself against an enemy or even a column to spin with your sword around it. It sounds like the combat is fun, but... it's as dull as it used to be. You'll be using Square-triangle or square-square-triangle attacks most of the time because 80% of your enemies will block anything that goes beyond two hits unless it's a two-weapon spin attack combo. Either that or spam triangle+square in order to land free hits. Then there's also the fact that enemies can't be finished off with anything less than a three hit combo or a 'special' strike, like vaulting over their heads and slashing or grabbing them and slashing. It's boring. And bosses don't fare much better, you'll spend most of your time blocking and dodging before they open up their guard... or abuse the slow-down time mechanic. So, it's combat better than in Sands of Time? On paper yes, in practice... it's just as lame, since you'll end up cheesing enemies with the same techniques over and over again.

Abuse columns, enemies don't know that they can engage you outside it's area of effect.

 One thing to keep in mind before approaching Warrior Within is that it's a much harder game. While you had sand reserves to spare, which are used to rewind time in order to make up for mistakes, now you've got a paltry maximum of six reserves, and you only start with three and increase your maximum very slowly. Plus, defeating enemies does't guarantee a sand refill. Enemies and traps hit much harder than ever before, which makes tracking down the health upgrades a necessity. Don't feel too bad about using a guide, the game is relatively open ended, so you can basically backtrack and explore at your leisure, but these are VERY well hidden. You'll also have to deal with travelling to and back from the past, by using a few sand shrines scattered throughout the island. The in-game map is absolutely useless, so hopefully your memory is up to snuff. Oh, and shrines must be activated by doing a dumb mini-puzzle, based on trial and error, in which you have to press four switches in the correct order. And absolute waste of time that adds nothing to the game.

 Another thing to keep in mind... is that you should have two save files at all times. The game is notorious for its numerous game-breaking bugs. I didn't come across any of them on this playthrough, but I did when I was younger and I was forced to start a new file. As a matter of fact, the game feels somewhat sloppy. Sometimes when you jump against a wall the Prince may linger on the air while deciding how to collide with the wall. It never happened during platforming sections, it mostly did when I was trying to get to some place fast an started fooling around, so it's not like it will ruin your experience, but it feels sloppy as a whole. There's another instance in which you must defeat a giant miniboss, after which a ladder pops up and you go to the top floor. On the top floor there's a hidden checkpoint and three tough enemies. If you die here, which I did, you don't have to defeat the boss again... but he will respawn below you, and you'll be hearing his noises and the healthbar will appear on the bottom of the screen. Does it affect your progress? Nope, but it's further proof of how poorly tested the game was. As a matter of fact, when I arrived here I was out of sands and running low on health, and there's a health upgrade on this top floor, so I needed to defeat these enemies in order to get enough sand(Since the door shuts down quickly unless you slow down time) to enter the chamber... on one of my retries, these three enemies didn't spawn and I was forced to kill myself.

The prince is a pirate now.

 People claim that Warrior Within is a bad game because it got darkier and edgier. They are wrong, Warrior Withing is pretty good. The problem is... Sands of Time did everything this game does better. Not only that, there's so many bugs or small issues that make the game feel like it was rushed, even though the game works when it needs to... well, most of the time. With a bit more time in the oven, the game could've been as good as the first one, because the basics are here and the combat is slightly better than it used to be, at least there're more things to abuse so you can do something else besides vaulting.
 7.5 out of 10