Warrior Within at first blush is a perfect storm of turn-offs, from the female villain's full moon in the intro video to the Godsmack soundtrack to the Prince's angry quips to the fatality moves. None of it is something that would be out of place in, say, God of War or any other number of brawlers and action adventure titles. But as it was in the day, coming off of the dreamy escapism of Sands of Time, the dark vibe is jarring. Two Thrones, the final installment in the Sands of Time trilogy, dealt with the disparity by fusing elements of both games into a fairly cohesive whole that stayed fantastic but had some hard-hitting action as well. That leaves Warrior Within as the unbalanced black sheep.
I don't want to hate on the game completely. It has the classic platforming mechanics I love. The stylistic choices aren't something you can really criticize objectively (I'll go on record as agreeing that the changes suck), and there were some definite attempts to improve on the original with regards to presentation and combat. The game looks good on all the platforms, but probably the Xbox gets an edge, espcially if you're running a modded system with XBMC as your dash. With it you can turn the built-in flicker filter down to zero and then apply that setting to all games - it gets rid of the vaseline-smeared look and restored much of the clarity to the model textures and environments. This is especially enviable with LCD and Plasma televisions - levels pop and the special effects look great.
The combat, however, is another story. I feel as if the combat is designed to force the player into taking damage. There's a couple of reasons for this: first, the standard attacks cause almost no damage. The enemies gradually turn to sand as you attack them, and even once they're down to a few grains of snad attached to brittle bone it takes - count them - 8 to 12 attacks with the normal slash to take down a mid-level enemy. What?!! Add to that the way the enemies love to block these standard attacks anyway, and that when they begin attacking you there is no way to cancel their combo until the first hit (usually two) has landed. During this time you usually take a fourth to a third of a lifebar in damage. Basically the only way to cause real damage to the enemies without being cheesed to death a quarter at a time is to use the acrobatic attacks.
For some reason, flipping over an enemy and throwing them against a wall causes more damage than cutting them in the face, and the Prince is typically invunerable during that period as well. The drag is that this style basically looks stupid, in addition to being unintuitive, and the dynamics of grabbing, throwing, and vaulting are inherently wonky when dealing with three or more enemies. Of course the catch is that water spouts that refill your health and save the game are quite common. It's combat from the Ninja Gaiden II style of thought - the point is to get through with a sliver of health left, not to get through without taking damage. Take that as you will, but I find it frustrating and unrewarding. I certainly don't feel like a badass Persian fighter.
On the plus side, Warrior Within is more native to the gameplay choices of the last-gen trilogy than the 2008 reboot or Forgotten Sands. It's just stylistically rough - perhaps a period of learning for Ubisoft as they explored how far they could play with the formula established in Sands of Time. Now that this period of the franchise is done and over, it's a bit easier to forgive Warrior Within than back when the messageboards were bridling. As an aside, both Forgotten Sands and Battles of Prince of Persia struggled to explain the Prince's attitude reversal from the first game. Neither did a convincing job.
For some reason, flipping over an enemy and throwing them against a wall causes more damage than cutting them in the face, and the Prince is typically invunerable during that period as well. The drag is that this style basically looks stupid, in addition to being unintuitive, and the dynamics of grabbing, throwing, and vaulting are inherently wonky when dealing with three or more enemies. Of course the catch is that water spouts that refill your health and save the game are quite common. It's combat from the Ninja Gaiden II style of thought - the point is to get through with a sliver of health left, not to get through without taking damage. Take that as you will, but I find it frustrating and unrewarding. I certainly don't feel like a badass Persian fighter.
On the plus side, Warrior Within is more native to the gameplay choices of the last-gen trilogy than the 2008 reboot or Forgotten Sands. It's just stylistically rough - perhaps a period of learning for Ubisoft as they explored how far they could play with the formula established in Sands of Time. Now that this period of the franchise is done and over, it's a bit easier to forgive Warrior Within than back when the messageboards were bridling. As an aside, both Forgotten Sands and Battles of Prince of Persia struggled to explain the Prince's attitude reversal from the first game. Neither did a convincing job.
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