Now, I’ll be honest with you: When the Early Access review for The Rogue Prince of Persia made its way onto my desk, I wasn’t all that excited to jump in. Yes, I had a great time with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (and if you missed it, you can read that review here), but something about The Rogue Prince of Persia didn’t really call out to me.
For those who don’t know, The Rogue Prince of Persia is an Early Access side-scrolling roguelike from Ubisoft and Evil Empire, a studio best known for their work on Dead Cells. As it stands, the game has no real connections to other Prince of Persia games aside from the fact that you, once again, step into the shoes of the titular Prince.
Now, there is no denying that I grew up loving the Prince of Persia games, and even though I’m not good at them, I have a soft spot for Dead Cells as well. Yet the idea of combining those two just left me feeling sort of eh—until I loaded the game up, that is.
The Rogue Prince of Persia isn’t just a game that feels inspired by Dead Cells; it’s a game that feels almost exactly like Dead Cells – in all the right ways. Now, not to sound like a broken record here, but when I say that The Rogue Prince of Persia feels like Dead Cells, it REALLY feels like Dead Cells, which is to say that the combat is excellent.
Players have close-range and long-range weapons and will cycle between those as needed during the game’s fast-paced combat. However, where The Rogue Prince of Persia sets itself apart from its obvious inspiration is when it comes to the medallion system.
Medallions are scattered throughout the world and, when found, reward players with unique passive perks. On their own, the medallions are pretty fun, offering nice little ways to change up the flow of combat, from medallions that drop a sticky goo on the floor when you kick enemies, to ones that throw knives in your foe’s backs when you dodge behind them. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it is fun.
However, this system flourishes when you combine mediations and their effects. Combine the sticky goo with a poison medallion, and you’re left with something that slows your enemies down and poisons them. While, as of writing this, there are only so many combinations for players to discover, it is a fun twist on a familiar concept.
As far as the game’s story goes, there isn’t much to discuss. The basic gist of what’s currently available is that the Prince has a magical bola that will return him to safety if he succumbs to mortal peril. After the Hun army invades Persia with the help of a dark power, the Prince discovers that the bola won’t return him to before the invasion, so now he needs to figure out a way forward without going back.
Now, I’m the first person to get up in arms about a lacklustre story in games, but with The Rogue Prince of Persia, the story just isn’t a core part of the experience; instead, it’s all about the gameplay, so even if this is the only story we ever get, I’m sort of okay with it.
The biggest thing about the game, and where much of my initial reservations lay, is the visuals. The game has a very simple, hand-drawn look and feel that reminds me so much of a mobile game that it was hard to shake. And while I will say that once I started playing the game, the look did lend itself to the fast-paced gameplay in terms of visual clarity, it still didn’t completely grow on me.
One element I did enjoy, even though it took some getting used to, is that the background can be interacted with during gameplay. Even though the game is two-dimensional, players are able to run up and across any environment that has a background, giving it a sort of three-dimensional space for players to use when traversing the world or trying to escape from battle.
The downfall to The Rogue Prince of Persia is that there just isn’t enough of it. While there are different biomes to discover and visit, the enemy variety is slimmer than my patience after I’ve forgotten I can interact with the background for the umpteenth time, and it will take players only a short while before they’ve seen everything that The Rogue Prince of Persia has to offer.
As it stands now, there is about ten hours’ worth of content to squeeze out of the game. Even then, after your first big boss encounter, there is very little else that the game throws your way to keep things interesting.
That being said, this is still an early-access title, and there are plans to introduce new areas, fights, items, and more, all of which the game desperately needs. Hopefully, with these additions, the game will organically develop the type of variety it needs to make each run feel different because, right now, that’s the one thing truly keeping the game from being a genre great.
