Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a stellar side-scrolling surprise

Time bends to your will

It’s nice to see the Prince of Persia series back in action. While the Sands of Time remake is still cooking, the series is going back to its 2D roots with The Lost Crown, an Ubisoft Montpellier project. And after playing a small slice of it, I’m pretty excited about the full game.

The Lost Crown feels like it pays homage to the foundation of Prince of Persia. The player takes up the role of Sargon, a new character who’s part of an elite band of warriors looking for the kidnapped Prince Ghassan. In the demo I played as part of Ubisoft’s presence in Los Angeles during Summer Game Fest 2023, I got a fairly good look at how Sargon’s journey plays out. There’s a whole lot of running, jumping, parrying, and plenty of spikes to dodge.

The seeker

While some fans are more familiar with the 3D era of Prince of Persia, this iteration looks back towards the 2D. It is a search-action, Metroidvania-style game. Sargon can walljump, slide around, dash, and move at a decent clip. It’s not terribly surprising to see, as Ubisoft Montpellier has quite a legacy in 2D action with Rayman Origins and Legends.

The studio feels like it’s in full form here with The Lost Crown, as navigating is a joy. Within minutes, I was already experimenting with ways of combining my movement abilities to smoothly fly through the level. I played it twice, once on a hefty PC set-up and again on Nintendo Switch (which Ubisoft says is running at 60 FPS, and was very solid in my experience). It felt great to explore a level with all I’d learned, effortlessly flipping and sliding past spikes and enemies.

Of course, it’s not just platforming, but those aforementioned enemies too. Some kind of undead plague has struck the temple Sargon and crew are exploring, and zombie soldiers are milling about. There’s a basic attack, that you can chain together into a combo or hold to charge up for a knockback. Sargon also has a limited pool of arrows and a chakram he can throw, and he can expend levels of a fighting game-like meter to execute special attacks, like a wave of damage or a healing circle.

On top of all that, there is a parry mechanic. Normal enemy attacks can be parried, which builds meter and opens up combo opportunities, while red attacks cannot be parried. Those with a yellow flash open up a special parry, which lets Sargon do a special execution with a cut-in and animation.

There are even deeper systems, too. I found out I could wall-bounce enemies for combos, and perform a launcher attack before pelting them with arrows while they hung in the air. Animation cancelling and little optimizations are all here, too. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has both platforming and action locked down already.

A wrinkle in time

Add on the extra mechanic of time-warping, and The Lost Crown gets even more interesting. Sargon can leave a static image that he may warp back to, a bit like a rewind mechanic. Theoretically, this could be used before a big platforming section, as a “save my skin” safety.

But it can just as easily be used to get around enemy defenses, set up interesting combos, and dodge attacks. The use cases felt limitless.

The impressive set of tools gets further enhanced as you explore and collect gems, which you can trade to a merchant for amulet charms. Different ones enhance Sargon’s abilities in different ways, allowing him to fire three arrows instead of one, or adding extra attacks to his basic combo string. A favorite of mine was an amulet you could purchase that boosted Sargon’s damage while poisoned. And that’s a very interesting mechanic thanks to the boss fight that sat at the end of the demo.

Of gods and monsters

Closing out the demo is a boss battle with a massive chimaera, who has a pretty hefty arsenal of attacks. It can strike the ground with its tail, creating pools of poison. The beast flies up and down, slamming the earth when it lands, and also unleashes claw attacks, a floating magical cloud of death, and more.

This battle was a great challenge to end on, as it pushed me to make use of all my tools. In a single fight, I felt like I was carefully managing my meter, dodging attacks and timing my strikes. It was rewarding when I landed a good parry and got a solid combo in. And eventually, after a few tries, I brought the boss down. It felt even better to pick up the Switch version, speedrun to his arena, and fell him in one go.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is sincerely one of my favorite games from the last week or so I spent in LA, and that’s a welcome surprise. It’s a winning combination of a solid franchise and talented studio, and really feels like it could be a home run if the whole game pans out like this. It’s still a ways off, with a planned launch date set for January 18, 2024. But it seems like The Lost Crown might be worth the wait.