Corruption plays a large role in Prince of Persia. Just before escaping to the larger part of the world map, the Prince accidentally releases Ahriman, the age-old God of Darkness, who spreads his evil seed of corruption across all the land. Along with Ahriman come all of his Corrupted henchmen, who are much more powerful and cunning than any human the Prince encountered prior.

Even though the enemies may be cunning, players afraid of overwhelming difficulty shouldn’t worry too much, as you can never truly die in Prince of Persia. Instead of falling to your demise, or being torn asunder by the Corrupted, Elika always hops in at the nick of time to pull you back up or bring you back to life. While you might worry that this would eliminate the challenge from the game, game designer Thomas Delbuguet explained that the game has been carefully designed to remain fun and challenging to all:

“There’s always a risk in changing up gameplay [mechanics], and we know we can’t please everyone out there. There’s a reason why there are so many different genres of games out there, and the idea of truly making a game that is accessible to everyone is impossible. With that said, we’ve addressed a lot of people’s complaints about the last trilogy by making the difficulty in the game adaptive to the player, so that if you’re having a hard time things will be easier, and if you’re looking for a challenge, enemies will be harder. It’s something new, and it’s something fresh, and I hope people really appreciate that.”

Harkening back to the juxtaposing worlds within The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Prince of Persia has you searching out light orbs to bring back light to the corrupted lands on your map. I didn’t get a chance to find out how the orbs were collected, but my guess is that they’re either dropped from choice Corrupted henchmen, or found along your way. You’re free to progress to any land that you choose (so long as you have enough orbs to open up a branch of paths), making this adventure the most open and nonlinear title in the series yet.

Prince of Persia is more than just a new entry to the series; it’s an entire renovation of the series from the ground up. However, it’s always important to stay in touch with your roots. Delbuguet knows how important it was for the game to remain true to the series, and recounts his happenstance meeting with series creator Jordan Mechner as such:

“I ran into Jordan [Mechner] at E3 and passed him a demo [of the new Prince of Persia] and his support for it seemed genuine. He liked the fact that we got rid of the Sands of Time. He liked the fact that we changed a lot of things about the gameplay. I mean, this game takes a lot of risks. Not from just a technological standpoint, but from a creative one as well, and it was good to know he understood and appreciated what we were doing.”

While each of the Prince of Persia titles brought something new to the series, this eponymous new adventure changes everything. With a new graphical styling that is a mixture of cartoonish cell shading and gritty realism, an updated and faster-paced battle system, and a partner mechanic that actually works, Prince of Persia is certainly a game to keep an eye on—stay tuned for our upcoming review when the game ships in early December.

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