The Rogue Prince of Persia Early Access Preview – Jumpin’ Jack Flash
The second Prince of Persia game in 2024 represents a major lesson learned for Ubisoft from a publishing standpoint. If you shun Steam and insist on alternatives, players will ignore you and no one will talk about your game. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is probably the best PoP game in history, but most PC players don’t have a clue because it’s Epic Store/Ubisoft Connect exclusive. It has been six months since release, but it might as well have been thirty years. It lies buried deep in the sands of time (groans), waiting for Ubisoft to release it on the singular storefront PC audience cares about.
With The Rogue Prince of Persia, Ubisoft backpedals like BMX Bandit from 1984. The game was released ONLY on Steam, skipping even Ubisoft’s own digital platform! It’s currently cooking in early access, and although Epic and others can handle that format, Steam is by far the best regarding player feedback. The Rogue Prince will remain there for at least six months. Right now, the game is not particularly rich in content – everything it offers can easily be experienced in a single day.
Dead Cells with parkour or 2D Hades wannabe
The Rogue Prince of Persia is the brain/fingerchild of Evil Empire, the studio famous for Dead Cells. Both games share a similar concept, although the Prince offers parkour platforming and it feels more dynamic because of it. If comparison with Dead Cells doesn’t ring your cortex, maybe „2D Hades wannabe“ will? It’s a procedurally generated rogue-lite with light meta progression, branching paths, and (currently) super-unbalanced boss fights. Compared to Hades II, which caused Ubisoft to delay its release, The Rogue Prince of Persia is a much less ambitious game. That’s reflected in the price (20 vs 30 USD/EUR), but the balance of content VS price still lies much more heavily in Hades II’s favor. Comparison with brilliant Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown would be even less flattering, even if you play an actual prince here, not one of the Immortals.
This young Prince, impatient and reckless, engaged the conquering Hun army prematurely and died. Except he’s not dead, as his magical bola necklace snatched him from the jaws of death in the last second. Awaken and confused, the Prince realized that the Huns had devastated his kingdom, defeated the Persian army, and vandalized its cities. He needs to do something about it and fast. Unfortunatelly, the Huns possess the shamanistic magic he doesn’t have the answer for. So he’ll repeatedly bash his head against the proverbial wall until either his head or wall breaks.
Meta-progression and experimenting with playstyles
So you’ll run, jump, slide, and stab, trying to survive each level and get enough equipment upgrades to handle progressively stickier challenges. Every run through procedurally generated levels ends when you die. Hopefully, by the time you croak and bola rewinds the time and reset the world, you’ll snatch enough Spirit Glimmers to make it worthwhile. You’ll use that resource to unlock extra weapons and amulets, which should appear in subsequent runs as obtainable items. The gold and weapons you get in a run disappear after death, so the Glimmer is the only thing that passes from one life to the next. Generally speaking, the meta progression is fairly limited, and it doesn’t offer the slow buildup of potency that Hades does. The only way to prevail here is to get good.
Having a bit of luck with the upgrades also helps. Your offensive and defensive capabilities are determined by your weapons and amulets. You start with dual daggers and bow, unlocking various other stuff as you go. Medallions are mutators with the potential to radically change the way you play. For example, if you get your hands on the one that splatters sticky goo every time you use a kick, you’ll open every combat encounter with it, prioritizing it over everything else. Some amulets are arguably much better than others, like the one that restores a bit of health every time you reach a waystation. Health is super-important, and the game offers very limited chances to replenish it, this amulet makes it almost too easy. Almost. When you reach the first of two bosses currently in the game, you’ll realize how fragile you are.
The limited narrative pulls it down
Besides his martial prowess, the prince utilizes his acrobatic skill to get on top of his foes, often literally. The key component to parkour is wall running, which combined with chain-jumping and platform-grabbing make a powerful acrobatic framework. It’s extremely satisfying when you get the hang of it. The whole system provides the player with a blank canvas to hone and express their skill and find a unique fighting voice. This is not the easiest thing to accomplish in a 2D environment.
The Rogue Prince of Persia has a vibrant visual style, dominated by cell shading, high contrast, and detailed animation. I still prefer The Lost Crown aesthetics, but I guess the distinction between games was important for the Evil Empire guys. The audio component also rocks, or, more accurately, „beats and drums“ in an oriental fashion. I would say those rhythms have more Arabic than Persian vibe, but I’m just a layman with Tunisian and Egyptian holiday experience. I could be wrong.
The thing I didn’t like about Rogue Prince was the similarity between runs. The entire experience grows dull after a while. Hades had a narrative/dialogue flow that made every post-run almost as exciting as the run itself. You can expect some new characters and bits of fresh dialogue here, but the amount of actual content is laughable compared to both Hades games. All three games offer repetition and the opportunity to learn as the main gameplay loop, but only two of them bother to fill the narrative void.
My final advice will be to wait and see if devs would fill those important holes with worthwhile meat. You might be hungry for more Prince of Persia after the fantastic Lost Crown, but in the current state, The Rogue Prince won’t fill the belly.
Highs
- Solid parkour platforming, dynamic combat.
- Distinct cell-shaded visuals.
Lows
- The gameplay loop becomes dull soon due to heavy repetition.
- Relatively weak narrative and lack of interesting characters.
- Generally content-starved at the moment.
