The game makes yet another bold move in not allowing you to die. Ever. When you fall down a chasm, Elika will save you from certain death, bringing you back to the last sure-footed setting. When you get slain in battle, Elika will revive you and you’ll continue mid-battle, the only punishment being the enemy will have a slight health increase. This gives the Prince (and by extension the player) a Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day level of quasi-suicidal riskyness. No wonder he’s so cocky all the time. This does make the game easier, but really it just trims the fat, so that practically every moment you’re playing you’re doing something new. For platforming sequences, I was grateful for the change as poor checkpointing can make even the most exhilarating sequence become a chore. I was less keen on it being used in combat, however, as I’d like a little more suspense regarding whether I die or not. Perhaps it would have been better if the enemies were to fully replenish their health (i.e. like starting back at the beginning of the fight), but I understand the designers’ reasoning behind this, as not everyone will be good at combat and wants to get held up for something that isn’t really the focus of the game.

That makes it all the more surprising that combat, the biggest bugbear in earlier POP games, is actually really good this time around. Utilizing a simple array of sword swings, grabs, magic attacks, blocks, and parries, combat is a simple, but involving, process. It’s always a one-on-one affair (or two on one, if you count Elika, making the odds in your favor), and this allows for a greater focus on the enemy at hand, without having to worry yourself about enemies off-screen. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Prince of Persia’s combat camera does the best job I’ve seen yet of making things cinematic and visceral, while still framing all the necessary action.

The camera is equally amazing for the rest of the game, making it among the best I’ve seen in a 3D platformer. It always points you in precisely the direction you’re headed. This is no small feat as there multiple ways to traverse the environments, but the game always manages to read your mind. 3D platformer designers could really learn a lot from studying Prince of Persia’s camera.

Not all that glitter is gold, however. Aside from the new cast and art style, the core game design is much different, and not entirely for the better. That’s because a majority of the game is a collect-athon. That’s right, a series that has contained little to no collecting in its past has suddenly reverted back a decade to the good ol’ days of early 3D platformers.

The game is split up into an open web of different stages. After you restore an area (something that will rarely take more than a ten minutes), you’ll have to go about collecting "light seeds" in order to gain new powers, so you can go to new areas, restore them, and then go about collecting more light seeds. In all fairness, the restrictions are very limited as you’ll need little more than half of the 1,001 total light seeds in order to beat the game, but that’s what you’ll spend the majority of your time doing. In this regard, Prince of Persia reminded me more of the first Jak game and Rayman 2 than The Sands of Time trilogy. Depending on your point of view, this will either make the game feel padded and tedious, or it’ll add hidden depth if you’re attempting to collect all the light seeds, as some are dastardly hidden and will require a clever understanding of the games’ mechanics to seek out.