After 13 years Ubisoft presented the trailer of a brand-new game in the Prince of Persia franchise, The Lost Crown a 3D side scroller plataformer-action game full of magic colors and high speed movement with a new Prince design.
The reaction from the fans is overwhelmingly negative to the point I decided to write this blog entry article and try to explain the REAL context of the Prince of Persia franchise.
Prince of Persia the Lost Crown is not a bad game
The negative reaction for this new PoP is not for the game itself but the current general situation this beloved franchise is right now.
The Lost Crown actually looks like a solid platformer game recovering it’s original roots back in the 80s/90s. a side-scroller platformer puzzle like acrobatics, but now modernized with next gen fast-paced combat, movement and graphics, it’s not a bad concept for a PoP game, but the TIMING is very wrong and that’s why it’s “eating” all the negative wave of hate from the fandom.
Where does the HATE come’s from with Prince of Persia?
Tricky question, but as someone who’s been a fan since the early 00s back in PS2 era when Prince of Persia was rebooted into the 3D gaming gen giving us the incredible TRILOGY of The Sands of Time, Warrior’s Within and yes, even The Two Thrones, All the drama started with the last 3rd game of the trilogy, that goes way back to 2005.
Even if The Warrior Within was first highly criticized for it’s dark turn after the magic fabula of The sands of time, now in 2023, (and always actually) it’s considered the best entry of this saga with an unbeatable atmosphere, story, characters, narrative, gameplay mechanic and over the top, the soundtrack.
The drama started with a 180ยบ bold decision of Ubisoft to radically change the plans for the 3rd entry after Warrior’s Within, a project that had the core ideas of what later became Assassin’s Creed.
Prince of Persia The Kindred Blades was the tittle for the third entry with a big open world where the Prince had to hide, run and fight while dealing with a dark corrupted prince awakened inside him. Ubisoft half scrapped that ambitious idea and developed Assassin’s Creed launched in 2007, and the 3rd game was re-vamped as Prince of Persia the two thrones with quick time events and a weird kind of puzzled up story, narrative speaking, which is understandable once you know that they had to almost reboot the dev process when it was already half-baked.
Anyway, the real drama came in 2008, a second reboot, nothing to do with the new established canon trilogy, people wanted a redemption title something that could be seen as a “Warrior’s Within 2” and yes, the 2008 Prince of Persia also suffered a lot of HATE beside if it was a good or bad game, spoiler, it was artistically outstanding but very mediocre in gameplay or narrative.
2011 Prince of Persia The forgotten sands was the last “serious” entry of this franchise, Ubisoft seemed like understood what the fans wanted and brought back the looks of a more Warrior’s Within Prince but into a washed out mediocre narrative, with solid parkour but questionable combat system, it didn’t sale as it should have for Ubisoft to keep this saga going
At the same time, we had the remaster edition of the trilogy for PS3, which sparkled hope for a proper sequel or remake of the trilogy, and some “cheap” mobile games like Prince of Persia the Shadow of the Flame for iOS and Android.
Years pass by and the only news about Prince of Persia is a Crossover event in For Honor featuring cosmetics and weapons Prince of Persia inspired.
The HATE exploded with the Remake
In 2020 Ubisoft announced the remake of Prince of Persia the sands of time presenting an “in-game” long trailer showing cinematics and iconic gameplay moments from the first game, with the premise to recover the magic and joy for what the first game was so highly loved.
The truth is, the graphics of this remake seen in the trailer were very questionable, the fandom exploded after so many years of waiting for a proper new entry or remake only to see another mediocre product. Ubisoft, was quick to read the negative feedback and delayed the remake with no launch date promising to review and rework to be sure to deliver a proper remake of the legendary Prince of Persia.
3 years of silence until present time, 2023, Ubisoft announced 2 things.
First, the Remake is being fully rebooted back to concept art stage and moved from India studios to Montreal, the original Ubisoft studio that made Prince of Persia trilogy.
Second, brand-new game, Prince of Persia The Lost Crown.
After reading the full context step by step of what been happening for 20 years, I hope it’s clearer to understand WHY the negative wave from the fandom. Even I was surprised.
Prince of Persia the Last Crown, doesn’t look like a bad game as I said in the beginning, it’s not a AAA game and the artistic style is more of a animated movie, cartoonish, Fortnite rather than a serious new entry for the franchise, I think the biggest issue here, is that the Prince design is yet again, DIFFERENT! This is not the Prince of the beloved trilogy or even from the second reboot of 2008, this is in fact a brand-new design of a 3th reboot, reimagination of the series, and that is 100% NOT of what the fandom is asking for.
I have big hopes for the remake, knowing that Ubisoft Montreal itself is developing the project, whatever direction they decide, the quality should be guaranteed with the veteran studio.
To be be honest tho, after 20 yeras of Ubisoft “lame” decisions with the Prince of Persia franchise, I do not expect the glory of the original trilogy be reproduced, 00s was an era with it’s own context in gaming industry, now we live in a new gaming era, you have to be realistic and understand that things change and evolve so when the nostalgia kicks in strong, well.. we will always have the original Prince of Persia trilogy to replay!