What makes this good?

[GlovesWithPockets]

I've been told for a long time that this is not only the best of the Prince of Persia franchise, but even one of the greatest games of all time. I finally bought along with the others during that last sale. I'm about 50% through now, and, God, what an utter disappointment. Platforming is simplistic. It's just as fluid as the other games, and still fun, but not comparable to the more complex puzzles of the later games at all. Nothing stand out about the story. The Prince is a likable enough guy, but there doesn't seem to really be anything actually happening. I wouldn't call it bad, simply dull.

Combat is really what's ruining it for me. Combat is a chore at best, and needlessly frustrating at worse. It's incredibly repetitive. Wall jump+dagger, wall jump+dagger, jump over enemy+dagger, again and again and again, while enemies respawn again and again and again, and Fera gets herself killed, I get hit while trying to finish one with the dagger, and it just goes on and on and on. It's not necessarily difficult, it's just so freaking long. You fight the same enemies using the exact same two moves for the entire game, in needlessly long battles sometimes lasting more than twenty minutes. Then I get ten minutes of platforming, followed by another fifteen minutes of fighting the exact same enemies I just finished defeating.

Am I missing something? It can be pretty fun once the platforming gets going, but it's interupted so often and so long by this stupid combat, it barely seems like I'm doing any platforming at all.

Is this just a case of the game being dated? Or is there something about this that makes it worth slogging through to the end? I'm very close to simply giving up on it and moving on to Warrior Within.

[[FR] Tooms]

I agree with you, the combat is a pain in the ass.
I just bought the PoP trilogy because i played Warrior Within and The Two thrones when they came out but never played the first one.
Its not a bad game, I think people like it because of nostalgia.

It gets better with WW, they put combos and more enemies, so its less repetitive.

[Mr. Popo]

It is dated, even compared to the other games in the trilogy. I really like the game, but it is because of nostalgia mostly. I think you should finish it, the story is worth seeing to the end, though the combat is very repetative and basic.

[Cacaw!]

honestly? the later games makes this kind of good. Just to see the beginning of the story. The gameplay is not bad, but the fact that the steam version is a buggy mess makes this game insufferable mostly. The amount of glitches and bugs is ridiculous, combined with the often horrible camera angles makes this an experience that you must force yourself through. It can be fun though sometimes, and the dialogs are pretty funny. Thank god it is not very long..

[El Fuerte]

I LOVE the combat in Sands of Time. It's way tougher than the sequels and you can do so much cinematic, crazy and creative things. Of course you can just jump + dagger to instakill every enemy but you will be doing it the wrong way, and missing a lot of what the combat system has to offer. I try to use every move avaiable in combat and it is pretty awesome considering it's a game from 2003.

I love when after an enemy is on the ground and the Prince is far away atacking another enemy, you can push Directional + Dagger to that fallen enemy and he does a long flip jump sequence all the way to stab that enemy on the ground. WW has this too but doesn't look as smooth.

Warrior Within expanded it to a more flexible, combo based / violent aproach, which i love as well...but it made things too easy. Specially the counters which didn't required exact timing.

[BallZack]

The combat is annoying but it makes sense as the only way to truely kill the enemies is with the dagger of time, other than that i love this game, played it back on the PS2 and loved it, got it for PC and finished very quickly. The one thing that truely annoys me is SPOILER ALERT: when you enter the dream world and you have to navigate your way through the "doors". Pain in the ass.

[Sword O Mighty]

One of the best platformers I ever played, and much better then the rest of the prince franchise, well except for forgotten sands, which holds its own, though lacks a deep combat system :(.
What I liked about it?, that kinda aladdin ish artstyle, the actual story. Oh and the entire theme, and vibrant world, the music, the voice acting, superb, and diffently what UBI Soft is known for. The other games feel like they where influenced by God of War, which is most likely since god of war 1 came out after Sands of Time, and idk..........i never really ended up liking any of the other games. The 2010 reboot was nice though, totally a differnt game but nice. I think of the orginal trilogy the only one I think is pretty good, other then sands, is two thrones, is it two thrones? I think so well what ever the third and final one is.

[sirpetethegreat]

The biggest issue is its age. When this came out for PS2 and Xbox, it was groundbreaking in gameplay, story, and the whole lot. Since then a lot of games have taken notice and heavily improved on the major gameplay components. The Assassin's Creed games are a perfect example.

[Mr. Ζαγρεύς]

Still in our hearts! Good story, and nice gameplay for time when it released!

[BallZack]

To make the game a little more interesting, most of the game can be completed without fighting, the main sequences you can't skip are the one where you kill your father and the elevator scene. You just need to be fast.

[Lettmon]

I played this for the first time in 2012 and it's become my top 20 game since thanks to the visual style, atmosphere and platforming. I consider this game one of the best looking ever, it's just another example how art style > technical quality. Yes the combat is annoying, but everything else - perfection. I don't like the sequels with their dark theme and even more combat.

[NineInchNall]

Wow. I'm only at the 25% mark and already I'm hating the game's face. I guess I've grown out of the target audience demographic for this sort of game.

[Peasant]

If you're looking at the gameplay, absolutely nothing. The platforming MECHANICS are cool but the actual challenges are ruined by the atrocious camera and time limits.

I couldn't even list all the ways combat is broken but the worst are, once again, the camera and the inability to select targets. In a combat system that's all about flow and crowd control, it's unforgivable (yes even for 2003) to have neither free aimed multi-target swings nor player-controlled lock-on. Instead, this abomination has single-target, lock-on combat BUT YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE LOCK-ON. I don't even...

The whole time, it feels like you're fighting for control over your character against an idiot holding a bungie cord tied around your waist.

[twistupdave]

I'm in the midst of replaying this. It's been a decade or so since I last played it, and I've probably played through it a half dozen times total. So I've got some thoughts about how it "holds up" and what makes it "good."

Purely on its own merits, the game's strength is in its 3D puzzle-platforming design. On the one hand it was a direct iteration of Ico (which was then a relatively obscure game), and on the other hand it was an evolution of its predecessors (the old 2D Prince of Persia games). Interestingly, Ueda (the lead designer of Ico) claims that Ico was influenced by the original Prince of Persia. Anyhow, this is all to say that the biggest strength in Sands of Time was the puzzle-platforming.

The combat is rougher, but no less remarkable. At the time, most people faulted it for being so repetitive and easy (it's pretty easy once you get a couple basic rhythms down). BUT the core design was really smart. The strike-counterstrike system vs. mobs has had a direct influence on other later games like Assassin's Creed, the Arkham games, and the latest Spider-Man game. On its own merits, the combat system is pretty dull, but in context of game design history, it's really smart.

EDIT: I've now been playing for a bit and have a major correction to make to what I say above. My prior times through the game were on the Gamecube version. This most recent replay is my first time playing the PC version. This version is seriously buggy and gets buggier the further I get. I usually forgive games their glitches and funkiness, but these are getting to the point of being unplayable. For example, sometimes when I approach a ledge, my character just randomly flies high up into the air, lands, and dies. And the camera regularly gets caught (and lost) in wall geometry. It's frustrating. And I figure that now that the game's been out this long on PC, the current state of the game is the game we now get for posterity. Ugh.

[RockyVega]

Originally posted by GlovesWithPockets:

Am I missing something?

I know your post is like 5 years old but honestly no.
I just uninstalled it after being absolutely through with the absurdly trash combat and horrid camera problems. Don't get me started on some of the other bugs I ran into during my unfinished playthrough.

I managed to beat this game years ago on the original Xbox and while it wasn't perfect either I don't remember it being THIS bad.

Platforming is the most fun but that's ruined so much by iffy camera angles and slight misses that wouldn't even happen in better games.

It has to be something about the PC version because the game is just absolute, worthless DOGS@#%.

[Fennek]

The bugs are a terrible annoyance. Literally couldnt walk through a broken door @ 88% of the game because of an invisible ledge that my character couldnt surpass. had to kinda bug it out by trying to weirdly walljump above it somehow, which took me 5 minutes and i was close to giving up because it didnt seem possible. The bugs are a mess , glad i could finish it after all though.