Maybe it's not worth unearthing from the sands of time.
Two years ago I decided to give
most of the Prince of Persia saga another whirl, but I skipped two games: The strategy game on the DS, because it made no sense for the license, and the Gameboy Advance port of
Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time since I wasn't so focused on the GBA at the time. Since the Sands of Time are not real and I can't go back in time, I'll absolve my sins past by playing it here and now. And I
kinda wish I hadn't.
The game follows the same plot from the original game, with the Prince accidentally unleashing the Sands of Time and turning everyone into a Sand Demon except himself, the princess Farah and the
mandatory evil Vizier. The plot is told through stills from the cutscenes of the console game and it does a rather
subpar job at conveying the story. As for the game itself, it's a 2-D platform/adventure game with
sloppy 3-D models for the characters. It looks alright and it plays well
sometimes.
The game is slightly Metroidvania-ish in design, with the Prince earning new moves every time he defeats the
recycled Griffin boss, which
at least gets new patterns each time, even if it uses the same 3-D model. Heck, you'll notice as you go along that there are a lot of doors that you just can't reach or open at the time being, but you'll get the necessary abilities much later in the game. You could
try to backtrack, but a few roads get blocked off so it's not really worth it, particularly because once you defeat the Evil Vizier... shenanigans
happen and now you are back at the beginning of the game. You gain access to a cave that provides easy access to all five main areas of the game so that you can backtrack for goodies: Limited, consumable items and medals that open up roads to fight more enemies. The game has 75 'big' Sand Demons, what makes them
important is that killing these fills a hidden experience bar that lets you level up, making you stronger and sturdier. To be honest, once said shenanigans happen you
don't need to backtrack, you can face the final boss right there and then if you so wish for. And, to be honest, the true final boss
might be one of the
easiest bosses in the game. All that said, if you don't have a Gamecube and the Gamecube copy of the game you won't be able to enter through 3 "Gamecube gates",
locking you out of content.
A is your jump button, B is your slash, R is used to absorb projectiles, once you get the ability, and L uses the Sands of Time. Rewinding with the sands of time is a bit
janky, it never feels just quite right, you don't get much Sand storage
capacity and even if you did, you can't go very far back. You can also find the "Slow down ring" and the "freeze ring", which you must equip on the menu, and they change how the Sands work, and it's pretty much
self-explanatory how each ring works. You can restore sand by killing weak enemies or
absorbing the bigger enemies with the Time Dagger, and you pretty much have to unless you want them getting up again. A few sections actually require you to spend Sands to rebuild broken structures, but if you don't have enough sands.... you'll waste all your sands. Heck, a couple of times I got into an area that required me to rebuild something when I had no sands left, and I was
more than 3 areas away from
respawning enemies I could fight for sands so I was
FORCED to use limited, consumable items to restore my sands in order to progress, lest I wanted to aimlessly backtrack hoping I'd come across any enemy, which is
horrible game design.
New to the series, you actually get to play as Farah. It's only during the second part of the game, and you'll have to constantly swap between her and the Prince in order to progress, and it was actually rather
fun. As you defeat the Griffin boss you'll eventually get the wall jump, which is a bit finicky even
after you understand how to get it to come out consistently, and the wallrun, which is also kinda
sloppy. Platforming challenges that involve any of these are a bit on the annoying side, and the game can
starve you for Save Spots or temporary checkpoints, which really, really sucks on a handheld game. The game also includes a few leaps of faith which weren't very fun, particularly because there's fall damage, and if the fall is too great, even instant death. And this was something that
reaaaaaaaaaally grinded my gears, the falling threshold for damage and death is VERY
inconsistent. Sometimes falls that shouldn't have hurt actually hurt me, and falls that looked very short killed me. Heck, I'm sure that a few times I lost health just from double jumping. Couple this with save point starvation and a rewind mechanic that doesn't work very well and you get a very
annoying game. That said, the platforming can be rather fun when it works well, and it does a
good job at adapting the parkour platforming that made the console game so famous: You'll be clinging onto ledges, climbing up and down columns, vaulting on rods and what not, while avoiding saws and moving blades galore, and, when the game's flaws don't get in the way... it's actually rather
fun.
Combat is passable at first, but once you get to the bigger enemies it turns into a
waiting game. Lance enemy? Wait for it to perform its three hit combo
FOUR times then jump so that it throws the spear up and THEN you can attack it. Jumping lance enemy? Avoid the jumps by running below it, and once it gets tired jump up to make it throw his spear up. The whip enemy? Slowly hit their whip when they attack until all they've got left is a 3-chain whip and then, and
only then, do they become vulnerable. Hammer enemy? Wait for it to get tired from spinning and then you can hurt it. It's not tough, it's not fun, but rather boring, lots and lots of waiting, and you'll fight them multiple times, but the strategy never changes and you can
never do anything else but follow the same waiting pattern. Bosses are a bit more involved, and a few were quite tough, but since they were bosses I didn't really mind the waiting part of the battle itself. It is a boss, it is an event, it is
fine. That said, be it basic enemies or bosses, the toughest enemy you'll fight are the overly generous hitboxes the enemies have. Just touching them hurts you, and sometimes it's hard to get in range for your attacks without touching their hitbox. The fight against the Vizier isn't hard, avoiding his projectiles isn't hard, but I kept getting hit because I kept
accidentally touching him, it's really dumb.
And lastly, there are three sections in which you must turn invisible in order to go through
seemingly sentient doors that can
see you. The first one is alright, but the next two? Boy, they are easily the worst parts in the game, it's almost impossible to see the Prince, at least on the Gameboy SP, and you are expected to dodge blades and saws WHILE
correctly jumping on top of platforms and while under a friggin' time limit before the invisibility spell wears off. Man, I hated those parts. And did I mention that the game soft locked once? There's an enemy that hugs you if it catches you, and somehow I hit it as it grabbed me or something, so the Prince got stuck in the hug animation while the enemy sat on its place, slashing at the air. I had no choice but to reset, losing a lot of progress.
LAME.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for Gameboy Advance is very
rough. At time it seems like it manages to adapt what worked so well on the Console original, but for every good bit in the game we get tons of design issues that keep it from reaching its potential. Combat is boring and
wonky, and platforming is janky and inconsistent. It's not a good game, and for the most part, it's not a fun time.
3.5 out of 10
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