Hello Everyone. Now, The 2010 Prince of Persia game, Forgotten Sands has a lot of versions. The PS3/360/PC version is different to the Wii Version which is different to the PSP version which is different to the DS version. I want to focus on just the PSP version today.
The Story:
This one is quite brief. So there's this fire spirit called Ahihud who has a prophecy that some member the Persian Royal Family will eventually defeat him. So he starts killing them. The Prince is initially told to stay in his tower by Sharaman for his safety. Prince is restless about this, sees this bright blue light outside, follows it despite being told not to. This blue light reveals herself to be a Helem. A spirit of time who spills the deets to Prince and the 2 team up to stop Aihud. They journey to Aihud's magical kingdom, rescue Helem's magical sisters along the way which give the Prince the ability to slow down and speed up certain objects. Prince reaches Aihud who is using magical elixir to make himself immortal. He escapes through a portal to the ethereal realm. Helem sacrifices herself so the portal can open and the Prince faces Aihud without his powers until the other sisters of time come into help him by letting him use his powers again. Helem also turns out to not be dead. Aihud is defeated, the Prince returns to his world, says his goodbyes to Helem, the palace and its denizens are freed and the game ends.
So yeah, most of the story happens in the first and last missions. Stuff like the whole royal family being hunted by assassins, or the fact that an entire mythical kingdom and fire spirit is messing around are just set dressing, Personally, I'm not complaining. I prefer the story to take a backseat to the gameplay which is what happens here so I'm not going to dock marks or anything. But just for the sake of it, here is a critique of the story: the story is functional. The Prince and Helem's banter is entertaining and adds flavour to proceedings and the game would certainly be worse without it. Though, it isn't anything special. Unlike Farah and Prince in Sands of Time, the relationship has no changing progression. And unlike Two Thrones, there's no dynamic or conflict between the 2. This does somewhat hurt the story when Helem makes her sacrifice as there's not as much of a connection between the player and her. Her coming back so soon after "dying" certainly doesn't add much. I'd rather she have stayed dead to add some heat onto Aihud (lol). Because from the player's perspective, they don't really have much of that. Aihud did kill some of the Prince's cousins, but we don't know his cousins. Aihud took over a random kingdom and stole its elixir, but we don't know said kingdom. Having him be responsible in some way for Helem's death gives the player some reason to want to take him down aside from him being the antagonist. Helem's sisters are basically unvoiced and don't even directly interact with the Prince. I think it would have been a lot stronger if they all took over for Helem and when the game was over, thanked the Prince and mourned Helem together.
Aihud is about as Saturday Morning Cartoon as you can get for a monster-like antagonist. Though, there is some dramatic irony with his situation seeing as he's doing all this to escape his fate from the Prince of all people and it's his attempt to escape that causes more problems. The icing on the cake is as the Prince defeats him, he says "You can't escape your fate Aihud. There are the consequences for messing with time". Since all the Forgotten Sands Games take place after Sands of Time but before Warriour Within, it rings a bit seeing as the roles are going to be reversed for the Prince in a matter of time.
Also, I have no place to fit this in, but we learn in a cutscene that the world is flat in the POP universe. And I find that hilarious.
Gameplay:
Unlike the console versions of Forgotten Sands and the past PSP POP games, the PSP version of Forgotten Sands is a 2D Side Scroller. It plays like a 2D demake of its big console brethren rather than as a version of the Original POP games. You can run, jump, wall-run, climb and do just about everything you expect only in 2D. And the controls for moving the Prince around are great. The animations are quite detailed. Levels are linear with some hidden rooms for elixir and some levels have alternate pathways and unlockables like new swords.
The big new gimmick are the 2 time powers given by the sisters of time. One is being able to speed up things. Which can be used to speed up pillars of sand so they can push things farther or higher, speed up traps and enemies so they can complete their cycles faster. The other is slow stuff down, allowing you to freeze pillars of sand to use them to platform, and freeze enemies and traps. These powers aren't mutually exclusive as some platforming segments require you to combine them. For example, using Speed Up to cause a whirlwind to come up to catch the Prince while using slow to turn other pillars of sand into poles to swing and alternating between the 2. Or freeze one whirlwind, and use Speed Up on another sand pillar to push the frozen whirlwind while maneuvering on said whirlwind to avoid traps. In addition, unlike powers in other POP games, these powers don't just work on specific obstacles in the world. Enemies and traps can also be affected and this can be advantageous. For example, speeding up one blade in a pair of moving blades to offset the pattern to create a way through. Or Freezing one blade so you can navigate through the rest. Don't think that just Slow Down is useful. Speed Up has lots of utilities as some traps move slowly initially. It is a very creative use of a power set and is pushed quite far in levels.
Sadly, there are some issues. In some situations, you need to alternate between which of the multiple targets you want to affect. You can use the analogue stick to change targets but it is finicky and frequently results in shifting to a different target or back to your original starting point making precision adjustments frustrating. There are a handful of segments that use this approach and those are some of the low points of the game. The game is better when there are only 2 targets to switch between at a time as you only need to move the stick briefly to switch targets or physically move the Prince and have the game switch for you in something of a Precursor to Rayman Legends' Murphy. Another issue is with some puzzle sections. These require you Speed Up a moving object, then freeze it, then swap to the sand it is shooting out and speed it up so it activates something. And repeat this 4-9 times. These sections are boring and also annoying seeing it's very easy to over and undershoot the correct time to freeze and repeat the cycle.
Unlike other versions, the PSP version doesn't have a rewind system for correcting your mistakes. Instead it uses a lives system. If you fail a platforming section, you are automatically rewound to the last safe spot at the cost of one life. Run out of lives and you restart at the last fountain you drank from (as an aside, I find it funny in that past POP games, it's just regular water that heals the Prince, but now he needs to drink from magic fountains). I am not really fond of this. With the classic rewind system, the player is able to choose how far they want to go back. Some players can rewind back in the middle of a failed jump and correct it there to save time and keep their momentum going while others may prefer going back to more safety. There can even be a trade off in some places as rewinding as far back as possible gives you less of a safety net to rewind further. None of that exists with a lives system. If anything, it can make the section feel worse as there are some minute long platforming sections that a single mistake takes you back to the start of the section as that's only the safe ground during the section while the rewind system could have let you go back a couple seconds to immediately try again.
Levels themselves have collectibles in the form of Elixir which can be spent at fountains to either upgrade the Prince's health or unlock more combat moves. I find the health upgrades far more useful in tanking mistakes from traps and enemies. More on the combat in the combat section. Completing a level also has the level rank you on 3 factors, how many Elixirs did you collect [The More the better], how long did you take [The Faster The Beatter], and how many times you lost lives [Fewer the Better]. As mentioned previously, collecting more Elixir unlocks upgrades. But not losing lives also rewards you with gems which can unlock extras in the main menu like concept art and music. You don't seem to get any rewards with the time challenge though. You can't replay levels until you beat the game. Some Elixir can't be obtained on a first run since you don't have powers by that point.
Now for the combat, which is by far the worst aspect of this game and drags an otherwise good experience down significantly. Combat in this game might arguably the worst of any modern POP game. There are some positives, the animations look cool and being able to speed up and slow down enemies out of their cycles is neat. Some environments have traps you can speed up or slow onto enemies. Now that's where the positives end. You have a basic combo that ends with a powerful attack that can take out around 20-60% of an enemy (depending on the enemy). You can jump on enemies and then press O to throw them into other enemies or into traps and hazards. But these get repetitive fast and you can't skip combat. Most enemies fight the same so it becomes a case of doing a combo one enemy while freezing the other until they die and then killing the other in rooms without hazards and repeating the process as more respawn. You can't jump over enemies. If you jump on an enemy, you must then press O to throw them or they will throw you. You can't damage them or jump off them afterwards (unless you upgrade to unlock a jump attack). Some flying enemies move out of your way so you need to keep using speed up and slow to get them in the right position to hit them which can take a long while. The worst are big shield enemies. These enemies have a shield so you can't hit them directly and need to wait until they make an attack and attack them afterwards. But only one of their attacks can be countered and if you miss they will do a follow up which will do a lot of damage that you can't avoid. They can't be thrown and are immune to Speed Up and Slow Down and they can heal other enemies. This can drag out combat as you're hitting an opponent and Shield guy here keeps healing them just below how much you can damage them. This all comes to a head in one particular level where you need to fight 2 of these guys at once and it's just a chore. As you damage one, the other heals up the one you are attacking and since they block after every combo, their health is quickly restored. If they do an unblockable combo, you need to dodge away which gives them time to be fully healed. I had to constantly dart back and forth between them and it took forever but I eventually managed to kill one which let the other just be a tedious enemy rather than one who keeps undoing my progress.
This is where the upgrades come in. The first combat upgrade gives you a counterattack that works on one of the shield guys attack. It's only useful here since every other enemy can either be slowed or jumped on or just blocked normally. The other upgrades are less useful. You get a running wall attack which is useless against shield guys. A charge attack which is somewhat useful. That's why I recommend the health upgrades. Because they can help you far more.
Bosses are also lacklustre. They either have very simple patterns but take forever to get to them and you can't use Speed Up on them to get them to go through them faster at more risk or something. The only decent boss is Aihud's Assassin because his gimmick is you have to use the powers on the environment to drop traps on him which is also quite quick and more in your control.
Seriously, combat is by far the worst aspect of this game. At least in other POP games, the combat is usually just tolerable or even skippable, here it's annoying and boring. I feel the game would be a whole letter grade better if it removed combat entirely. There's only one fight I found interesting, where you need to stand on a plate in a room while there is a regular enemy and arrow traps shooting at you since it incorporated the powers and platforming and obstacles in a more interesting way.
Other Stuff:
Occasionally, I found it difficult to see which walls I could wall-run on or when certain whirlwinds were against green slime, particularly when the camera zoomed out. These sections were rare.
Subtitles are inconsistent. Some cutscenes don't have them. Some don't have them for the first half and then they start.
Connecting with the PS3 version of Forgotten Sands gets you 2 upgrade points and the Sands of Time Skin in the PSP version.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, The PSP version of Forgotten Sands is a good game and one I would recommend checking out for not just fans of the Prince but also platformer fans in general. Its story may be little more than set dressing but the levels and gimmicks are worthwhile. It's held back by the lack of a rewind feature and the terrible combat but if you can look past that, it's a worthwhile game.
Thanks for reading this. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Next up for me is either Battles of Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed Bloodlines. See you then
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