Get the demo here

Been playing this demo since this afternoon. The combat system is extremely cool. In one of my first encounters in the tutorial level(a very neat setting, a sinking ship) had me taking a fallen blade, dispatching two enemies at the same time(in slow-motion, decapating one of them), then quickly throwing the blade to an enemy who was running towards me, instantly killing him as well. Lots of cool encounters like that. The final boss at the first level is pretty cool, felt very cinematic with some quick cut-scenes during the fighting. Overall, the fighting just looks more cooler, I think. It almost feels as I'm watching a sword battle when I'm blocking a flurry of attacks from the final boss, then quickly unleash some combos of my own with double blades, only to end in a sword-lock(where you have to quickly press buttons to push the sword from your enemy back, think JO/JA).

The second level is your standard PoP Tomb Raider gameplay, dodging spikes and the like. Combat is still pretty much the same, although at some point, you encounter a few monsters whom you can't kill by the sword(I think), and have to lure over some spikes, and then quickly walk over a button to kill them.

It's only the boss at the second level whom really has me frustrated. I'm not going to spoil him(his entrance was rather jaw-dropping), but #1. When you die, you have to redo the level and #2. The boss is rather buggy. When you've lured him into a corner, he suddenly starts acting weird (moving away, then suddenly appearing back in the corner), until he suddenly stands still, the player can walk through him, and his health meter has dissapeared. The only solution to this problem that I've found is killing yourself and redoing the level to try again. I haven't been able to complete the demo yet because of him.

But that little bug aside, I've really enjoyed the level. I like the overall dark theme, and the prince is a definate change from the adventurer whom we met in Sands of Time. I like it.

Looks awsome. I'm getting it.

I may be the only one, but I absolutely HATED the last Prince of Persia game... Sands of Time. To me, it just sucked major ***. I'll give this one a try though.

Prince of Persia 2? Isn't that the one that actually had outside levels?

Or are they starting the counting again from that Sands of Time one?

I just downloaded it. I have never taken to hack 'n slash games, but this game looks pretty cool

Just finished downloading the Prince of Persia: Warrior Within demo.

Had a look around the usual boards and the consensus seems a bit dissapointing:

- Crappy rawk keyboard-metal music instead of the more ethnic twist.
- Baaaad voiceacting. New actor is very American, did a whole bunch of lame UT taunts. No more soft-spoken initially foppish prince.
- Scantily clad boss goth chick... joy..
- Hamfisted attempts at gloomy gothy bad-assness
- Excessive concentration on combat. Non-controllable cut-scenes every 30 seconds (though SoT started out that way too). Tacky gore. Not much puzzling.

Eeep. Oh well. Might as well make up my own mind since I've already downloaded all 470+MB of it. *installs*

I'll be getting the PS2 version when it comes out. Daeron, those changes sound disappointing. One of the thing that was cool about Sands of Time was the Prince's sophistication. I mean he is afterall, royalty.

Aye, that confused me at first as well. I didn't understand at all why people were suddenly raving that they were working on a Prince of Persia 2. I was reminded each and every time about the PoP where Jafar returned, disguised as the Prince.


That is a bit of a change indeed, and I, for one, did like the original soundtrack(especially "The Fight", that one bloody rules, very awesome for the final monster battle). However, I found the music to fit the atmosphere, and was rather pumped at several points. Especially at the second part when you're pushed off the deck. When the music suddenly went up, it really hightened the atmosphere.


Problem is, I can barely hear what anyone is saying. The only one that I could hear was the boss of the first level, and granted, I found her first few lines a bit... tacky. The rest weren't that bad. As for the prince, the only line of his that I could understand was the B-Word. Can anyone hear what he says when he confronts the first boss? I get "You're crazy..." and that's it.


Errr... I suppose. I actually hadn't noticed.

To each his own, I suppose. A few times that I did some bloody awesome moves, I did find it to be rather 'bad-***'.


Well, as I rather like the combat, this isn't too much of a con for me. I did miss the death-defying jumps that you could do in SoT, but well, this is a demo. I shouldn't be expecting too much yet.

However, on the cutscenes, I have to admit that especially in the first level, I did feel a flashback to the Matrix video game. Namely, that the players gets to watch the Prince do all sorts of neat acrobatic stuff, and not being to try it out myself. And ja, the start has a lot of cut-scenes, but that worked for me, actually. The initial scene is just one big action sequence, and the cutscenes made it whole.

It fits with the contents of the storyline, I think. From what I've read, the prince has been hunted for the last 10 years by some unstoppable creature, and he's basically seen all kinds of unmentionable things. If that doesn't change a man, I don't know what will. It fits with the dark theme of the storyline, I think. To see that the charmastic, friendly and 'royal' Prince has changed into this brooding warrior.

Well, I've played the demo through twice aaaaand:

- My PoP:SoT USB dual analogue gamepad works!
- Not nearly as bad as it could've been according to the comments. Still a bit reserved towards it (I'll wait for reviews and or price-drop).
- The one-weaponed grab moves are fuuuuuun ([secondary attack] [put away/throw weapon] makes you flip over them and grab their arm from behind. Now you have a wide choice of moves like wrestling their weapon out of their hands before stabbing them, slitting across their belly, shoving them forwards, kicking off them into the air.
- The music (in the demo)... sucks. Even though it's by Stuart Chatwood it doesn't sound much like Tea Party anymore. It's your generic Tomtom-heavy drumming and chugging guitar riffage. There was a short ethnic flourish when he gets the second sword, but otherwise it was generic rawk music, just like the Doom3 tune (the menu tune in particular sucks).
- The acting/dialogue... Mbleh. Terminally angsty pissed off-like, with an American accent. :| Not an improvement. Don't see why the change was necessary.
- A bit on the buggy side. Seemed like it was missing a lot of sounds.
- Runs just as smoothly as PoP:SoT. OoooOO. Shiny soaking deck planks. Oooo. Pixel-shaded dungeon cobblestones.
- Thank Cthulhu they included the second level. At the end of the first one it seemed to promise an inferior and disappointing sequel which I would've given a pass. The second level and the trailer-movie at the end redeemed the demo a good bit by having some of the good old fun acrobatic puzzling and trap dodging.
- Strange how the trailers have had blood while in the demo the creatures bleed sand like in SoT.
- No more dagger-stabbage to finish off the baddies. Somehow though I can't get glowing rewind-sand every time from every opponent? Help?

Wishlist:
- Change music and main actor back to as in previous game.
- Fix bugs. Fix sound levels. Fix missing sounds.
- More open expansive puzzly jumpy bits like the Library or Final Tower Ascent.
- Seamless game with no mid-game loading breaks (Probably because the second demo level doesn't seem like the consecutive one following the combat tutorial).
- Fix the first-person camera. Right now the L-R controls get inverted in it.
- Grrr.. no savepoints on the second level. Fun boss-fight there though, reminds me of the Cavetroll in the FotR movie, only not as cute. Judging his arm movements when drumming forcefully on his noggin took a bit of guesswork.

Oh well. I'll give it a reserved thumbs up. It has potential to not suck, though I don't think I'll enjoy it as much as PoP:SoT. The demo did grow on me the second time through. It just seemed like they tried too hard to insert some forced "aaaaattituuuuuude" to appeal to totally different market when fixing the repetitive spawn-wave combat would've done. I just preferred the magically dreamy abandoned expansive palace and its surroundings. Maybe it's because Jordan Mechner isn't involved in this one.

Rumour has it that there's another playable character in the game(Ubisoft Montreal couldn't deny or aknowledge it when asked during an interview).

Go to options, game, activate the blood option.


I'm not entirely certain how that works myself. The Prince doesn't have the Dagger of Time anymore so that's most likely why you can't capture new sand. On the other hand, how is the Prince still able to rewind time? I'd like to see how that's explained as well.

WTF, After you fall through the deck I was getting graphical glitches up the wazoo, and they only increased as I made my way to the boss. It was so bad my screen would go blank for a few seconds at a time, and for most of the time all I could see was the models and the water. No ship.

AFter reading that, I found a simple solution. Don't go near that corner, stay on the otehr side of the room :).

Awesome demo...makes me wish I had the game. I know I would play it all the way through in onesitting if possible, I loved the first game, played it through twice, I have the last 20% memorized due to over-playing it.

oooh, exciting!

For now, bed. Tomorrow, I play.

Hmmm... Very worried about this one. The level design and puzzles in PoP were brilliant, fighting was just a distraction bewtween jumping running and swinging. I like that they've improved the fighting engine, but I really really hope it's not at the expense of what the true joy of PoP:SoT was.

Off to try the demo...

Arrrrgh! The music! Take it out back and shoot it right between the eyes. Now. The music in the first game was so atmospheric, it worked brilliantly. This stuff had me clawing at my ears after 30 seconds.

The fighting seems a little random, but it is cool. Hopefully it will feel less random once I know what I'm doing a little better. The most amusing moves seem to be those you get from a backwards grab, which I found a little hard to get in the right position sometimes.

Definitely a console game, and definitely one I'll be buying when it comes out.

I really need to play this with my PS2 controller. But I think the music is...different. The game reminds me of Painkiller in the sound respect (they even ripped quite a few effects from it, you can tell.)

Well, I didn't play it all the way through, I can't stand using a keyboard for anything other than an RTS, and the mouse speed was all screwy.

As far as I can see, the combat system hasn't been improved at all, it's still a small selection of pretty moves almost all executable by bashing two buttons. No matter how many enemies you're fighting, just bash away and somehow you get out...the only times I got hurt was when I did something stupid like try to block.

I didn't get to do any cool stuff - later in the demo perhaps? But I think it's safe to say it's all still there.

*shrug* more of the same, which is good enough for me. (especially if I can still get my discount! *fingerscrossed*)

The fighting seems pretty varied (Tree-diagram of all the move options). The grab-hold move in particular has plenty of fun options, along with some of the added rebound and riposte moves.

you mean Prince of Persia 4 : Prince of Persia 2