Average game time to beat= 7-8 hours
Gameplay-10: Terrific. The game generally flows like a movie, with the swift movements of the Prince (protagonist of the story), decisive blows thrown at enemies from the sword and dagger, and the amazing ability to alter time. Plainly, there's two parts in this game; One, solving puzzles and walking around to find the next area in the palace, and two, fighting sand monsters (discussion about fighting will be done in that topic later on in this review). The puzzles aren't too difficult to solve, since there are future visions of what the Prince must do, but once in awhile, you'll get stuck and have to think for a moment. If you mess up something, just REWIND! Even though you will need sand each time you use the rewind ability, rewind is an incredible skill to use that helps throughout the entire game that you have it. Also, the Prince can do acrobatic moves like swinging on poles and running on walls (much better than the acrobats and gymnastics these days....hmph)! This game is very much like a Zelda game within its puzzle-field.
Graphics-10: Eye-candy (with a little drug put in them so you can't stop looking at the screen)! This game has the best graphics for any PS2 game I've ever seen so far, HANDS DOWN! And the best part........seeing THE SAND!
Audio-8: Egyptian, anyone? Fantastic voice-overs and narration, and great music, but nothing extraordinary about the music in the background....
Storyline-9: It's been awhile since I've come across a good Arabian tale....anyway, this story is excellent. It revolves around a Prince and how he wants to prove his qualities to his father (the king), so he obtains the SANDS OF TIME and the DAGGER OF TIME. Yet lurking in secrecy is a secret (who would've guessed?) and an untrustworthy Vizier focused on obtaining the SANDS OF TIME. The problem I had with the plot, though, was that it was in just one place, so the game was shorter than what was required in being perfect.
Fighting-8: Another creative, mind-blowing style of fighting. The Prince has a sword to strike enemies and a dagger to absorb them for sand (and to plainly get rid of them for good....). There are also time-techniques to torture and terrify your opponents (gotta love alliteration)! There's rewind, so you just wipe away a mistake like....mmmmmmm.......DYING! Others include Slow-Mo, where the monsters go slow for about 10 seconds, Slow-Strike, where the Prince hits an oppenent with the dagger so it goes slow for 10 seconds so the Prince can slice them with the sword, and my personal favorite is Fast-Annihilation, where every opponent for the next 10 seconds is in slow-strike mode and you just point the analog stick in an opponent's direction and attack with the sword to destroy them. Everything sounds excellent for this way of fighting, but there are three problems I have come across....One, many glitches. Not just one or two that I have found, but numerous ones that have made me restart my PS2 one time (not the game, though). One glitch, for example, is how in the middle of a fight, all of the enemies turned invisible, yet they could still hit me?!! I know, that's WHACK! Two, there aren't many bosses in the game....In fact, there are only 2. For me, that takes a point off for its score.....And three, difficult fighting at times. I'm not trying to be a baby or anything like that, just that if you get hit and don't rewind, you're probably going to die, because every monster will attack you once you get up or if you stay down longer than half-a-second....Also, the last boss was easy enough to beat in one minute, flat! WHAT A RIPOFF?!!! Overall, it was satisfactory, and I appreciated the new way of attacking foes....
Score: 9/10
Another review finished! Games like these make my job much easier as a kid and a gamer that reviews on his crappy site. I cannot wait to play and review the next game in the Prince of Persia series coming out next month!