Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Review

If you played Sands of Time before this game, you will have a good foundation as to how this game’s gameplay mechanics work out. A lot of the game’s controls apply to this game, especially with the wall running as such. What changes however is the newly implemented combat system, called the Free Form Fighting System (or FFF system) After about the first hour or so of REAL game combat, you should be pretty familiar with all the basic combos that the Prince can utilize with one weapon and two weapons. If you can’t seem to get it from the in-game tutorials, there’s a built-in menu in the game itself that you can read which will tell you every single thing the Prince can do with one weapon or two. The game isn’t terribly difficult to learn, whether or not you’ve played Sands of Time, so a maximum of 2 hours is probably what’s needed, just to take care of any possible newcomers to the PoP franchise!

The graphics in Warrior Within are excellent. Warrior Within features an expansive castle that you visit in both the past and present time periods, so you will see environments that are beautiful from an ancient era’s stand point as well as environments that are completely run down and shoddy in the present time period from years of wear and tear. If you can’t appreciate the work that Ubisoft put into the graphical presentation in this game, then you should be ashamed. Why is that? Well simply put, whatever you see in whatever period really looks very similar to each other. For example, any kind of pillars and traps you might see in the past will still be there in the present time, but they will either be run down and desecrated or downright nonfunctional for obvious reasons.

One great thing you will definitely notice when traveling between the time periods is how the lighting affects each era. In the past, you will see beautiful lighting through openings in the walls that will make everything around you bright and colorful. In the present, however, a lot of the areas won’t be as well lit because most of the openings in the walls won’t be there anymore because of the aging castle. This can definitely pose a challenge in the present area when you are in a very poorly lit area and can’t see very well. This can make it difficult to see certain objects that will aid in your navigation such as ledges, and that’s really intriguing because it adds to the realism of what environments like that could be like today.

Another great detail that one should notice when playing this game is the level of detail in all the environments, as well as the characters you see and meet. As for the characters, you see quite a bit in just the Prince himself. Whether it’s his body wear, his hair, his weaponry to the very amulet that you eventually receive from Farah in Sands of Time, you see it all. The Prince dawns a somewhat “dumbed” down set of leather armor, with the normal straps and openings in the chest wear that exposes some of his skin underneath, and that is very descriptive of the particular time. You will also see the strands in his hair, the color of his eyes and the expressions on his face as he interacts with the few characters that he does indeed interact with. This adds quite a bit of realism to a game that doesn’t feature a lot of character interaction because it helps to push the story along without making it seem forced on you or boring in anyway.

The same can be said about the environments around you. While they might not be as colorful as the ones presented in the Sands of Time, they still look great regardless. The greatest part of your surroundings is you will see various particles falling or coming off of a bunch of things that you encounter. Whether it’s the small metallic sparks from rotating saw blades, to dust coming from pillars, the walls and ceilings or the Sands of Time that lie on the ground after you defeat certain enemies that leave it there for your obtaining. The castle is old, no matter what time period you are in, and the graphical effects accentuate that every time. One of the coolest features of your environment actually, is when you get the chance to slide down a large curtain with your sword dragging through it. Seeing the actual split in the material is very cool!

The final two things that you will definitely notice is the realism of two things, the blood when you decapitate some of your enemies and the water that you drink and walk through. Yes, this game is quite bloody, and that’s one of the many reasons it’s rated M, but it’s definitely impressive how far Ubisoft went to make it look realistic. This includes the water that you see in the game as well. It’s not as much as you might see in Sands of Time, but when you do see it, the effects couldn’t look any more real. The clarity of some of the water, the “mucky” water in certain areas, it all looks so great, and the detail accentuates whatever time periods you’re in.

So overall, while the graphics in this game weren’t as stunning as some of the visuals in Sands of Time, they definitely do their job and offer for some amazing looking environments. The graphical effects are excellent and the level of detail is satisfactory. They are great, with only suffering from a few drab and dull looking areas, but that’s almost to be expected with this game!

It is truly a shame that this game had so much potential in regards to this category because of the more “mature” theme of the game. It was driven by a more “metal/rock” type soundtrack and audio selection and voice acting that really could’ve been done better and should’ve been better.

Now don’t take what was said wrong, the audio and sounds in this game still sounds good, but it is VERY glitchy.