I actually felt that all three games in the newer trilogy of "Prince of Persia" were very poorly designed and, though I respected their ideals and attempts at originality and innovation, I ended up finding myself constantly frustrated rather than enjoying myself.
But I will only discuss my issues with "Sands of Time" here.
The camera was the worst I have ever seen in a three-dimensional adventure game that was not a budget project. It constantly got caught behind various obstacles such as walls and pillars, blinding you of your character's actions entirely as he fell victim to the game's horrendously limited and stale combat system. By the time the camera freed itself the prince had a blade jutting from his sternum and had to revive himself.
Every area looked nearly identical and almost became impossible to navigate, and the game tried much too fiercely to brutalize the player simply because they had the option to undo their death.
The biggest complaint I had was actually the controls. Constantly I found myself struggling to do even the most simple of actions such as leaping a short gap, only to discover the prince veered unexpectedly to the side, tried to perform the wrong stunt, or simply refused to grasp the ledge that I had told him to latch onto. Essentially, the game had no direction of any kind and left you entirely to fend for yourself without a chance to even know what your goal is beyond a few flashes that helped virtually nothing at all.
As a whole, however, the game did have a very appealing storyline and an excellent method of expressing it. The unique ideals behind the game were all marvelous and gave reason to believe this title would be amazing, and if potential is all you require I can understand why this game was special and perhaps even terrific. But that was the folly. The game was excess potential of all sorts of terrific ideas and elements, but nearly every area fell short of what it could have been and ended up coming off as poorly designed and awkward. If I find myself frequently aggravated with a game rather than able to enjoy it for even a full ten minutes at a time I cannot claim it to be a good game.
But I do respect and appreciate it, and only wish that the sequels had repaired its flaws and continued on in the positive light it had going for it, rather than eventually resulting in a very poorly expressed clone of Devil May Cry.
Though I have not played the newest game, so I cannot speak for it nor can I say my hopes are not at least on the positive end. Perhaps this one achieved for me what "Sands of Time" seemed to do for so many others.
So in the end, I found "Sands of Time" to be a good game that happened to be poorly designed and swarmed with latent potential. It averaged as mediocre with a special quality to it, and would only truly fail when its sequels resulted in turning to the last path they should have. Considering the Prince of Persia series is based on acrobatic stunts, physics puzzles, and death traps, I find it remarkably in poor taste to focus the future titles of the franchise on the combat while massively detracting from what had made it special to begin with.
I am glad so many others were able to enjoy it to such an extent, though.
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