The Lost Crown is the best game of the Summer Game Fest

If you watched the trailer for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown at Summer Game Fest 2023 and didn’t immediately get a furious hype, you certainly have our understanding. To be clear: it’s a trailer that could be defined as “cinematic”, one of those that zooms in on stylized characters when necessary in a disturbingly similar way to mobile games or in the same way as Fortnite (but also one of the many mobile games that imitate Fortnite, let’s face it).

Combine it all with a rap song that had nothing to do with the monologues on “destiny”, and the negative reception given by the network is not so difficult to understand.

The first impression was that Prince of Persia had been placed (again) in the wrong hands, especially after the reveal – and the postponement to a later date – of the remake of The Sands of Time. But we’re here to tell you that despite the rather out-of-focus reveal, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is actually one of the best surprises of Summer Game Fest 2023. We can’t remember the last time we went from not giving a damn to anxiously waiting to be able to go back to playing a title we had just tried, but that’s exactly how it went this time.

The sands of time —

After playing it for about 30 minutes at a dedicated Ubisoft event in Los Angeles, held in conjunction with SFG Play Days, we found that – despite all the character zooms and cinematic shots – The Lost Crown is an side-scrolling and, looking at it from this rather distant shot, the style chosen for the characters has its reason: the distinctive features are simple enough to identify from a distance, and with more realistic and sweet proportions it would not have been the same thing.

The first sensation, controller in hand, was the right one: the game is fluid, reactive, immediate. We took a moment just to jump and test the different directions we could launch from half a height: in the air there are four directions, resulting in a downward dive, and ground attacks can also be directed upwards. It’s a lot like the base moveset of a Smash Bros. character, but faster.

At our disposal there is a shot, also fast, and we can use it very frequently, in order to quickly go through the levels once the short cooldown moments are understood. A slide forward gives us further momentum and also ends with a kick that can push opponents into the air, where we can in turn jump and use swords or bow and arrow to create more elaborate combos. Controls this satisfying, so immediate, we frankly haven’t seen many of them lately.

Yes, there is also the parry —

Once we’d assimilated all of our options in combat, we started slicing through enemies with as much flair as possible, as well as completing the challenges the platformer threw at us as fast as we could. We can combine the ground sprint with an air sprint, a wall jump, or grab onto a pole and sprint again, and so on. It is as if the combos are not only about fighting, but also about the simplest exploration.

Midway through our demo, we discovered parry, which fuels a power bar and makes opponents easier to attack. Yes, a parry, and yes, a slash. In the demo, we could store up to two segments in this bar, one expendable on a big special attack, two on a circular area where we could heal ourselves. For most of our experience we didn’t need to, but that changed with the final boss.

The boss, a huge chimera-like creature with a scorpion’s tail, has a huge health bar, and is named Jahandar. It seemed like an impossible feat at first, especially since Sargon starts with only one healing item at his disposal, but using special abilities is crucial to victory. The above special attack shoots you forward, and during the animation Sargon can move freely, meaning he can dash and attack the boss while the special attack stuns him for a moment. Almost all of Jahandar’s attacks can be parried, including a headlong run, which we can stop by stabbing him with our swords before slamming him into the mud.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the verdict (for now) —

The demo closes with Sargon taking out the boss, which took us five tries (three of which we weren’t told about the special abilities). We were impressed, and if nothing else, this all reminded us of Metroid Dread. And for good reason: the game almost feels like a direct response to the fluid and fast-paced combat of the Nintendo Switch exclusive. It’s hard to say if the level design will follow the same metroidvania format but, after our short play session, we’re curious to find out.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown might secretly be one of the best games announced at Summer Game Fest 2023: trust me, Ubisoft Montpellier is creating the best Prince of Persia in years.

Written by Dave Aubrey for GLHF