Personally, I happened to enjoy collecting light seeds quite a bit, but I realize not everyone will. Designing a collect-athon to me says "we want to make a game that’s fun to play, but we don’t want to try." It’s passable game design, but extraordinarily lazy. It’s a shame that with mechanics this stellar, Ubisoft Montreal didn’t push the game design further in a more unique direction. In fact, they arguably went back a step in this regard.

There’s also surprisingly few puzzles here. There are a few lazy crank turning head-scratchers, but that’s about it. There’s nothing like the brilliant "find Farah" sequence in The Sands of Time or the statue puzzle in The Two Thrones. Given that those were among the highlights of The Sands of Time trilogy, the almost complete lack of puzzles here is truly disappointing.

There’s also the issue of how the narrative develops. Most of the dialogue between the Prince and Elika is purely optional. At any point you can hit either of the left shoulder buttons to trigger talking to Elika, but these conversations happen in brief, unskippable cutscenes that really hurt the flow of the game. Sometimes you’ll want to hear the dialogue as it helps flesh out the relationship between the two, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to chat with her while platforming; something you could do half a decade ago in The Sands of Time.

For all its whiz-bang effects, Ubisoft Montreal’s renovation of the classic platforming saga takes as many steps backwards as it does forwards. The graphics are gorgeous, the controls are spot on, the combat is exciting, the setpieces are spectacularly over-the-top, and the new cast shows promise. It’s just a shame that Ubisoft only utilized these improvements for a simple, retro collect-athon. My mind tells me this lazy game design is worth no more than a 7, but I enjoyed it like a 9, so I’m following my gut and going with that. Even if it is just a collect-athon, it’s still among the most spectacular collect-athons I’ve had the pleasure of playing. Sure, there’s a lot of untapped potential, but moment for moment, Prince of Persia was the most fun I’ve had with a game in a long time, and that’s why we play games, isn’t it? To have fun? So go out there and have some fun now, will ya?