POP The Lost Crown was actually an impulse for me. Ubisoft had promoted it and I requested a copy. Having little understanding of what I was getting into, I dove in. Surprisingly, Lost Crown starts off with an almost Saturday morning cartoon indie vibe that I wasn’t expecting. I kept waiting for it to dip into some sort of cringe territory but that didn’t happen. If anything, the game just kept evolving until I was totally invested.
First off, this isn’t your usual old school Prince of Persia experience. Which is what I’d initially thought when I was it was a side scroller. Instead, I was delighted to find out the game is more of a Metroidvania where you buy upgrades and fill out the map as you gain new abilities.
The story is straight forward enough. You’re actually off to save the prince this time and in the process you’re exploring this huge area called Mount Qaf. Even the intro to the game didn’t really feel like I was being dumped into a Metroidvania, so that was a pleasant surprise.
Combat is actually pretty snappy, and something that you learn to get good at. It’s not quite Dark Souls level of difficulty, but it certainly has a bit of challenge to it. Which, even just in general, you’ll be paying attention to the regular enemies you pass by to keep your health up. It actually has just the right sort of balance to keep you going.
There’s actually a lot of solid moments in this release. I actually kind of feel like it could have had more emphasis put on just how great it really is! The voice acting is fun, the character art for dialogue scenes is well done, the graphics work well, and puzzle solving is fun. Traversing the map flows well too with starting abilities like wall jumping to get you around.
It’s a fun experience that’s really worth the reduced price. There’s so much charm here for a game that I really wasn’t paying attention to at first. But after playing for just a few hours it really won me over. You can even save images to your map to remind you of points to back track later. Which is something cool that I’ve never seen before.
All in all, this was a surprise hit!
