Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Review

Two things make this remarkable. The first is the movement and combat, which run at a speed and precision the genre rarely attempts: parries have a tiny window and a huge payoff, air dashes chain into wall runs into shadow projections of your own past position, and the late traversal challenges demand inputs on the frame. The second is a piece of interface design so obviously correct that its absence elsewhere is now irritating. Any locked door or unreachable ledge can be captured as a screenshot pinned directly to the map, so you never again wander a large world trying to remember which corridor had the yellow barrier.

Mount Qaf is layered and legible, the boss fights are the best in a Ubisoft game in a decade, and the accessibility options are generous without diluting the design. Where it falls short is character. Sargon and the Immortals are thinly written, the voice performances are flat, and the art direction is competent rather than distinctive. It sold poorly and the team was broken up, which is the saddest footnote in modern games.