As you kill enemies you accrue experience points to be used to purchase and upgrade magical powers as well as increase health and energy spheres, and increase the rate with which you find health and power up your various super combat moves. Uplay, Ubisoft's own achievement system also gets in on the act allowing you to purchase additional upgrade points as well as an Ezio skin for the Prince and other Prince of Persia themed goodies.

As the Prince traverses the palace in search of his brother you'd expect every room to bring a new, witty comment however this Prince is certainly more concerned with Malik than with making jokes and while it's understandable, the barbs are missed. Part of the problem is that the Prince spends most of his journey alone and it isn't until the last hour or so of the game that he's joined by a female companion. Even then the witty banter that has always served the series so well is limited to just a line or two. The lack of dialog is notable, if only because it's been done so well in the past games and while it probably seems petty to ding a game on what people don't say, in toning down the Prince's personality the game's personality suffers for it.

Due to the constant up and down between excellent platforming and so-so combat, by the time you reach the unsatisfying boss battle, which comes off of the heels of one of the game's best platforming experiences, the unevenness of the design is very apparent. Once the story is over, rather abruptly I might add, you can fend off tides of enemies in the game's challenge mode, and continue to gain experience while doing so, however as the combat is the less satisfying of the Prince's activities, there's not enough there to hold the interest of anyone but the achievement and trophy hunters.

In backing off from the 2008 re-imagining of the series (and, in the interest of full disclosure, my favorite entry), Ubisoft seems to have also backed off some of the more creative aspects of the game that the last entry brought out. The excellent platforming still remains, but this Prince seems to have lost a little of himself in coming back to his roots. It's a shame really as the Prince has always been one of the more entertaining characters in modern gaming; however if this direction continues, he may find that the sands aren't the only thing that's forgotten.