Beebom Score
The Rogue Prince of Persia is another reboot of the Metroidvania Prince of Persia games of ancient times, but with a mix of rogue-lite elements. With the success of Lost Crown, fans of Metroidvania and the Prince of Persia franchise have held high hopes for The Rogue. Being a massive fan of the franchise, having spent my entire childhood on the old trilogy, I couldn’t miss the chance to review The Rogue Prince of Persia.
Thanks to Ubisoft, I finally got my hands on The Rogue Prince of Persia. It is a mix of metroidvania and rogue-lite elements, similar to Dead Cells, with a story progression reminiscent of Hades. After playing and completing the game in 10 hours, here is my complete review.
Parkour Alone Will Make You Fall in Love
The Rogue Prince of Persia has come a long way since its early access. It starts by giving players free rein in a beautiful Persian city devoid of enemies. This way, the game gives the players full freedom to explore its parkour system without worrying about fighting. And that’s also how they make you fall in love with the game.
Unlike Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (review), where the parkour was more intense, Rogue is more focused on providing a satisfying experience.
Every movement, jump, slide, and wall walking feels crisp and incredibly smooth. How you make your way through the level is completely up to the player, giving multiple branching paths with different parkour elements to choose from.
The majority of the difficulty of The Rogue Prince of Persia comes from the environment itself. Don’t get me wrong, the enemies also pose a challenge here and then. But the way you tackle the environment and parkour will either let you dominate or make you a sitting duck to enemy attacks.
Vault over an enemy attack, and kick him from behind to push him into his own attack or a wall of spikes. I have abused this mechanic so much throughout my playthrough, and never once was I bored doing it. The game is incredibly smooth.
Massive Arsenal of Weapons with a Free Thinking Combat System
The combat of The Rogue Prince of Persia is closely tied to its parkour. You have to avoid enemy attacks by running up walls, vaulting over enemies, or grabbing onto poles. If those don’t work, kick them or throw stones lying in the environment to stun them.
The environment is not just visually appealing; it plays a very crucial role in both combat and parkour. From the beginning, you will learn that the background wall is climbable. However, sometimes the wall will be missing, like an opening in a cliff or a window inside a building. If you don’t pay attention to the environment, it can act as a perfect trap, preventing players from parkouring around attacks.
But parkour is not your only strength, as the game features 23 weapons and 11 tools. Weapons are the main equipment used by the Prince of Persia to slay enemies. The tool, however, is a secondary weapon that can be used by spending energy. Every weapon and tool is vastly different from each other, which keeps the combat fresh and not repetitive to an extent.
Every weapon has a basic attack pattern and a special attack. Some special attacks let you dash through enemies, while others deal a massive chunk of close-range damage. The Iron Mace’s special attack not only deals a good amount of damage, but it also throws smaller enemies away. Compared to it, the Baatar’s Horns special attack unleashes a power beam that also costs energy to charge.
Now, tools are equally important. Properly using tools can save you in difficult situations. For example, the Stealth Spirit tool lets you teleport behind enemies and hit them. This tool can also be used to avoid attacks when timed correctly.
With all the weapons and parkour skills, the Prince is given complete rein on how to tackle enemies. You can skip them to the next area, kick them to oblivion, or slash through them the way you want. The combat feels very fluid in this regard, and is one of the things I loved about the game.
Music and Story Work Together Like a Persian Symphony
The music in The Rogue Prince of Persia is absolutely incredible. After playing games like Clair Obscur Expedition 33 this year, I never expected another game’s music could take my breath away so soon. The game has a mix of classical music and softly woven tunes that you can just listen to for hours. Ubisoft has done a phenomenal job with the background score for this game, and they should be applauded for it.
With enough said about the music, let’s take a look at the story. The Rogue Prince of Persia has a fairly simple story design. The Huns are attacking Persia, led by Nogai, who is the Huns’ king. The Huns are the superior force due to their use of magic, which has made them much stronger than the Persians, while also corrupting their minds.
Now, the Prince of Persia has a special pendant that rewinds time to when he last slept every time he dies. Using this power, you have to constantly go through the levels, fight enemies and bosses to complete the game. Dying will simply reset the progress, bringing you back to base but with new resources and experience.
It is similar to Hades in that sense, but for the Prince, the time rewinds instead of him reviving after every death. This also leads to interesting interactions with the bosses, because they meet you for the first time during each of your encounters.
Now, the story is not just about the Prince defeating the Huns; it is also about him saving his family. As you explore the different levels in the game, the Prince will start acquiring clues about his family. Some will be imprisoned, while others will be injured. This is where the game’s main loop comes into effect.
The Prince has to piece these clues together by replaying through the same levels, mainly by dying every run, to eventually free all of his family members. Now, you can defeat the final boss before you free all the members, but it won’t give you the true ending but instead implement the corruption system.
The Rogue is Not Very Rogue-Lite
The Rogue Prince of Persia is a mixture of a Metroidvania and rogue-lite, similar to Dead Cells, as mentioned above. The rogue-lite aspect comes from Medallions, which give passive buffs or additional effects to your weapon and tool attacks. Other than that, the only upgrade you can get is through the main skill tree and weapon upgrades. That’s about it, and it isn’t very rogue-lite in nature.
The medallions don’t offer enough versatility to provide a true Rogue-lite experience. Also, you only have limited medallion slots every run, making it harder to use them unless you get a slot-unlock drop. I expected more rogue-lite elements going into the game, and was fairly disappointed to not find them.
The RNG can also be pretty terrible. Even your weapon and tool selection at the start of every run is random. This means you cannot choose the weapon you want to start with.
The Endgame is Quite Disappointing
The Rogue Prince of Persia is about 10-15 hours long, depending on your parkour skills. The game is made in a way that you have to do multiple runs. Every mission requires you to find clues, which are more often found in new areas that are not possible to enter during your current run. This keeps the repetitive playthroughs interesting, but can also be annoying, as you have to lose a run to complete a quest sometimes.
If you defeat the final boss without completing all the quests, the game basically resets again and unlocks the corruption mechanic. This mechanic adds further challenges or penalties to your runs, making them harder to complete in exchange for better rewards. That’s basically the endgame for The Rogue. Overall, I didn’t see too much long-term value for the game, which is often true for other rogue-lites. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the 10-15 hours of gameplay are this good.
Light as a Feather and Runs Like a Dream
The Rogue Prince of Persia is one of the smallest games I have played in recent times. The game is less than 1 GB in size, which seems almost impossible for a game that looks this good. The Rogue also runs flawlessly without any hiccups, giving around 300 to 400 FPS without an FPS limit. This was causing a bit of screen tearing as I use a 180Hz monitor, but turning on V-sync or limiting the FPS fixed the issue.
My Setup:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900x
CPU Cooler: CORSAIR H150 RGB
Motherboard: GIGABYTE B650M Gaming X AX
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
RAM: 32GB (32GB x 1) ADATA XPG DDR5 5600FSB LANCER
SSD: 1TB AORUS Gen 4 5000E NVMe storage
Monitor: 1080p @165hz
Network: 100 Mbps
Overall, I don’t see the game having any issue running on even older PCs. It is extremely lightweight with gorgeous graphics, all packed inside a neat 1 GB box.
Wait, Where Did All My Health Disappear?
Although the game ran fluidly, there were slight bugs and story inconsistencies that did bother me a bit. First, the health bar can get bugged, showing a larger bar while having fewer health points. I was fooled more than once by this bug, assuming that I had a lot more health due to the health bar size, only to realize that it was bugged and my actual health was only 10 hit points. This bug was definitely infuriating, especially during boss fights where you don’t really have time to double-check the number on the health bar.
Next, the story had some inconsistencies, which did ruin my immersion at times. The game would automatically assume that my death was caused by the objective I was pursuing at that time. For example, I died to the final boss but got a dialogue about being defeated by General Altan back at the oasis. Now, I had not met General Altan at that point, but the active quest I had was supposed to lead me to it. So, the game basically assumed I died to him instead of the final boss.
There are more slight inconsistencies like these in the story, and it does put you off. However, I didn’t find them a big enough hassle to completely ruin my experience of the story.
Verdict: Is it a Worthy Return to the Persian Empire?
The Rogue Prince of Persia is one of the best games from Ubisoft in recent years. It is lightweight, fluid, features a fair amount of content, doesn’t have virtue signaling, and is genuinely fun to play. Also, being a fan of the The Prince of Persia franchise, it is always great to see new games that involve its loved parkour mechanics in a new light.
Overall, I loved The Rogue Prince of Persia and would recommend it for fans of the franchise or those who like Metroidvania to give it a go. The music alone is worth enough to give the game a proper chance. Although hardcore metroidvania fans might find it a bit on the easier side, those who don’t like too many complications in their games would surely enjoy this iteration of The Prince of Persia.
Hopefully, we will continue to get more Prince of Persia games in the near future. Tell us your opinion of the game and whether you want a reboot of the entire Prince of Persia franchise or not.
Rishabh Sabarwal
