Retronauts - 705: Prince of Persia The Lost Crown - Metroidvania Book Club - Book II Pt. 1

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Jeremy Parish, Kate Willaert, Chris Sims, and Stuart Gipp open the book on their next collaborative community playthrough (Prince of Persia: The Lost Sands) by discussing the game's heritage and sharing listener thoughts on the first half of the quest. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This week in Retronauts, the shadow and the flame in this economy? Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish, sounding a lot more alive and excited than I am. I'm not saying that I'm not excited, but I am saying that I'm not necessarily alive, because that's just how it goes. This is episode 705, but those of you who love Metroidvania games will know this as episode one of Chapter 2 of the Metroidvania Book Club. We are talking about, The Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, so many articles. Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, a very recent Metroidvania game in defiance of the Retroids. Metroid, no, the Retronauts, Retroid, yes, that, that one. Wow, good times. I like Retroid a lot.

Someone else is, there's actually another entity out there called Retroids, so can't do that one. The Retronauts Metroidvania, yes. Okay. The Retronauts thing is about game history. This game is not necessarily a part of history. So we are going to devote a segment of this conversation to talking about the history behind the Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown, because I think that it is relevant to what this game is about. But we will also be discussing the Metroidvania aspect of it. And we're going to talk about essentiallyish. the first half of the game this episode, and then there will be a follow-up episode, where we talk about the second half of the game. And if you were here for the first to Metroidvania Book Club conversations we had about Castlevania Order of Ecclesia, you will know that this is a community endeavor. And those of you who are awesome enough to be part of the Retronauts, not Metroid-Nots, the Retronauts Discord have already been discussing the first half-ish of this game, and in fact we are going to incorporate some of your remarks into the back portion of this episode.

But before we do all of those things, I would like for this episode's sponsor of sorts to kind of walk us through what this is all about. Actually, maybe before we do that, we should all introduce ourselves. I've just been talking, sucking the oxygen out of the room. So let's work our way around to the sponsor and start instead with Stewart. Please introduce yourself. I gave it away already. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Stuart. Oh, sorry, let me flip the hourglass. Okay, Stuart Jip. There we go. There we go. That was my comical reference. I know. Every time we mess up, we're going to be like, no, no, no.

That's not how it went. that's not really this that's what that's not really what this uh the prince of persia that this episode is about but that's okay uh chris introduce yourself hi jeremy it's chris sims hey chris again can't wait to talk about all the great games from 1995 there's going to be some serious spider man in this you could you can actually i think you could you could justify talking about some spider man games in relation to uh the prince of persia actually he's not the prince in relation to sargon on athletic wall climbing and sliding prowess.

I think you could sneak some references in there. I'm just so looking forward to talking about how you unlock Cron Hunter mode in Area 51. It was a big part of my childhood, and I was really looking forward to talking about it here on Nersernaz. Area 51 famously, a major part of Persia. And then finally, our sponsor for this episode, please introduce yourself and also So tell us what's up with this pick of a game. Hello, I'm Kate Willard. And I decided to break the retronauts rules by, you know, I did give you guys a choice.

I was like, let's go more retro or what if we go modern? And in terms of like why I picked this one for a modern one, is because I just, all like the more recent Metroid manias, this is the one that I've enjoyed the most. recently. Like, I enjoyed this more than Metroid Dread. And I admit a big part of that is because

I really liked how the numerous difficulty settings let you customize the experience to your play style. And so, yeah, plus I'm, I am a fan

of Prince of Persia's place in video game history. And that's why I was excited. about the game when it was first announced, like, whoa, Prince of Persia has a Metroidvania. It's like two tastes that go great together. Is that how it goes? Yeah. Something like that. Okay. So, Metroidvania fans can enjoy a Prince of Persia game. Prince of Persia fans can enjoy a Metroidvania game. Maybe we'll see. I agree about the difficulty options. That was a deal saver for me when I started playing this game.

I'm sure there will be lots of different opinions about the role of difficulty in a game like this. I'm sure Stuart and I probably sit on opposite ends of that spectrum. So that'll be a fun debate to have. I'm looking forward to having a difficulty discourse. That's not going to be tedious for anyone. No, that's my favorite thing about video games these days. That and people saying, oh, this thing was constrained by time and money. The developers must be so lazy.

I love when they do that. That's cool. I'm just, never mind. That wasn't the joke I was going to make. I think it went more like this. Oh. All right, so, you know, that little joke we keep referencing about Prince of Persia of the Sands of Time. The first time I ever actually saw that in a video game was in Zenogears of all places.

There's like a sequence where you have to jump onto a moving train. And if you get it wrong, then all of a sudden it's like, no, no, that's not how this event went. And it rewinds it, and you start over. And it's really out of place in that game. And it's very strange that it suddenly became like a thing game started to do later. But that is neither. Was that before or after Eternal Darkness? Because whenever you guys are bringing this up, I just keep going, this can't be happening.

I think I first saw it in the Pitman on the Game Boy, but I think that's just a normal rewind. Yeah, I mean, Pitman definitely, or Cat Trap, I believe, is the preferred nomenclature for us Westerners. Yeah, Cat Trap slash Pitman did have a rewind feature, which was maybe the first instance of that in a game and basically said, oh, you messed up a puzzle, a hundred steps in, you don't have to do all hundred steps. just rewind X number of steps. And that was great. But there was no narrative to it. The cat people were not saying, no, no, those weren't the commands I meant to do. They were in my head, Jeremy.

Oh, okay. Well, I cannot speak to the cat people speaking to you inside of your brain. That's something special and unique to you. So Prince of Persia of the Lost Crown debuted last year, 2024. on pretty much every system, I believe. I don't know. I've been playing it on Switch, and I'm not really aware of other video game systems at this point.

So I'm going to assume it was on all systems. Am I? Yes, no. I was playing it on Steam. Okay. Yes. That is not a system. It is a platform, but good enough.

I was playing it on Steam deck. Oh, okay. That's a platform system. A platform system. Anyway, so, yeah, I mean, Ubisoft, the developer and publisher, they always throw entire armies of people at games, and so they need to monetize them to the best of their ability. So it stands to reason that this showed up on every platform under the sun.

I do think games like this are pretty well suited to a portable system, though. Just something feels right about a portable Metroidvania. Maybe that's just conditioning. So it is a Metroidvania game. it is a really big budget Metroidvania game just based on graphics and play mechanics

and the amount of voice acting and the options for voice acting and script and so forth. There's a lot of narrative for a game like this and you can enjoy it in many different languages. So, yeah, it was a spared no expense kind of thing, which is never a good omen

when you hear it someone say it like that, but they spared no expense. And unfortunately, even though the game sold really, really well and received excellent reviews, Ubisoft said it didn't sell well enough. And so they got rid of the team behind it or reassigned them to other projects so that they could, you know, make pottery for an Assassin's Creed game or something. And we'll never see another one of these. We'll never see it's the likes of this one again.

But we do have this one, and that's great. And, you know, I think this game, in addition to being a pretty interesting and largely kind of open-ended take on the Metroidvania, also does a really good job of incorporating elements from across the entirety of the Prince of Persia franchise. And that's no mean feat. I'm curious where everyone here stands on the whole concept of Prince of Persia. Kate, I know you said you're a fan. Well, I'm a fan of the first one, but to be honest, I have not played anything else that has come after, including the big, you know, sands of whatever stuff. I have this huge gap in my gaming experience, like, that is awkwardly, like, so. 35 years.

Like, the GameCube era, I was in college. And so during that era, I played maybe a total of like five games that I can remember. And then I had to hear them all about all these other ones after the fact. Like, I was not like even playing Halo much other than playing a demo once and a GameStop and things like that. I had to go back and backtrack a lot of that era. As is only appropriate for the Metrovania format. That's honestly a very funny. to me, because when I think back to

the GameCube era when I was in college, I played a lot of video games, but I also did not complete college. I think maybe that's the difference. I felt that choice, and I was like, oh, I need to finish college. Yeah, it's funny. I left for college and deliberately

did not bring my super NES with me because I'm old. I said, I need to not take a video game system with me so I can just focus on school. And then after the first semester, I went home for Christmas break, and Secret of Monop came out, and I played it, I rented it.

I was like, oh, you know what? I don't want to not play video games. So it was just a thing. I took my Super Nias back with me and played video games all through college, and I got through okay. My issue was that I spent too much time

working on the student newspaper and stuff. So I graduated a semester late because I was like, I don't need to take a full course load. I could just go and work on the student. a student newspaper, because I'm a dork. What about you, Stuart? What happens when you think of GameCube in college?

What comes to your mind? I don't think they really synchronized. What? But I did play a lot of Prince of Persia on DOS, the original DOS version. I never finished it, obviously, but I played it a fair amount.

And the second one I played on my friend's Macintosh, but we didn't have the passwords to, you know, they had like the copy projection. So you'd have to guess between one of five symbols. And sometimes we'd get on the level two and it was really exciting because we'd guessed the correct one. But we never got through it because it's really hard.

As for all the other stuff, yeah, sounds of time and all of those, I enjoyed them. But I sort of fell off it after that because they just kept making them. They kept rebooting it and then unrebooting it. And I was just kind of like, I've got other stuff to play now. But I like all

of them. And I'm going to mention this because I think this is the best time to do it. That there was actually a Sands of Time Metroidvania, the GBA version, and it's surprisingly similar to this one, to Lost Crown. There's stuff in this that's kind of borrowed from that. I don't think enough people have played it, and I think that they should. It's really

rather good. Yeah, actually, that was something that I was reminded of when I was putting together notes for this, is that there were, in addition to the big budget Prince of Persia games that were, you know, full 3D on consoles, they did come out with some portable

spin-offs that were sometimes pretty much a direct conversion as much as possible, like on PSP. But then you did have, you know, the GameCube Xbox to Game Boy Advance Pipeline where they said, you know what, let's not even try. And they just went with the classic style. And Ubisoft did a lot of those. There were like 2D splintercell games and Assassin's Creed games. Those were actually not very good. So I have to admit I never played Oh, do you want to stand up for Splinter Cell I want to stand up to Vicarious Visions 2D Splinter Cell

Not the other stuff, but I will stand behind those games Because I thought they were pretty darn good But it's me, it's me I'm going to like this kind of stuff Fair, fair Yeah, so I was always pretty suspicious of those Hey, it's a pre-rendered graphics Game Boy Advance 2D take on a much more popular

and much more impressive-looking game. But, you know, sometimes they turned out okay. Consider Ninja 50, the spinoff of a game that didn't even exist. That's how good it was. It erased the existence of whatever console game was going to be tied to. Yes, that one. So let's, oh, go ahead. You know, the other, like, big, like, gap in my gaming history that I had to, I've slowly been trying to fix is that I was always like a console kid.

So Prince of Persia I heard of just because it was big enough to eventually, you know, like, I think I first saw it at somebody else's house who had a computer, but I didn't have a computer. Computers were for rich people. And then, like, later, I couldn't afford a handheld either. So I missed out on, that's why I missed out on all the handheld games that I'm trying to, like, go back and do eventually is that, like, If it's console, and then even console, Nintendo Kid. So, Nintendo family, we had all the Nintendo consoles. I missed out on, like, Metal Gear Solid and stuff like that, because we couldn't afford a PlayStation. That's okay. You played Twin Snakes, right? Right.

Yeah, I did play Twin Snakes. Oh, I'm sorry. That's no way to experience Metal Gear. I know. I should correct that one now. Revengeance, the only Metal Gear game I've played. He's a good choice, though. It's a great game.

So Prince of Persia, the series began 1985, 35 years before the Lost Crown appeared. It started out on Apple II, but it was so popular, despite launching on Apple. Actually, no, I think it was pretty much a dud, like dead on arrival when it shipped on Apple II because who owned an Apple II in 1989 for gaming, like no one. But the quality was there, and it was a very portable game, so like in terms of ports. So they transported it to basically any system that they could possibly manage. I'm pretty sure there was an NES version, definitely super NES, Genesis.

etc, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it's one of those that has kind of remained viable throughout the years. So it's shown up on many collections and so forth. None of those games, I think, those different ports looked quite as good as the Macintosh version that was like double resolution for everything. And they, like, totally redrew the graphics and gave it lots of color. Everything else was like half the resolution of the Mac version. So in a way that's kind of the definitive version of Prince of Persia, the original, just because some people would swear by the Konami Super Nintendo version because they expanded it so much really gorgeous pixel art and stuff, but I would say they probably expanded it too much

in some ways, and you lose some of the essential sort of clarity of the game, but I just thought it should merit a mention because it is so different. Kate, I know this one is a big game for you, as you mentioned earlier. Do you want to to walk us through what made Prince of Persia unique back in the day? Well, so the roots of Prince of Persia really go back to a game called Carataka, which was by the same author, Jordan McNer, where you kind of run through or walk through these levels and fight people one-on-one, move on to the next guy, trying to rescue the damsel in distress. But it was considered very cinematic because he rotoscoped all of the movements and the fights and things like that, which just blew people away.

People hadn't seen movements looking this fluid on the Apple 2. I mean, when you think of Apple 2 and you think of like Oregon Trail, like you don't think of like, oh, fluid anything. So it blew people away, and then it took forever for him to properly follow it up. And that became Prince of Persia, similarly rotoscoped, but he added, like, platforming and things like that. And the type of platforming, instead of being, like, fast, like, twitchy platforming, like, you might be used to from, like, Donkey Kong or whatever, it's this slower deliberate platforming because the fluid animation, basically, Basically, once you press an action button, you have to commit because that animation takes over. You're doing the jump now or the run or what have you.

And this resulted in sort of a whole subgenre that's sometimes referred to as the cinematic platformer that is like all this fluid animation platforming with puzzle elements, games like flashback and later like odd world and debatedly another world. I do not consider another world in that realm because there isn't actually much platforming in it. It's more of a it's more of a cinematic adventure game. Like if you took a point and click and removed the point and click and had like rotoscoped looking fluid animation, you know, But some people, some people like to lump it in because it's got that similar looking vibes.

There's something very French about this style of game. Like, I feel like most of the big games come, in the style, come from French developers, like Delphine, who created flashback. There was Heart of Darkness. I can't remember the name of the studio behind that. I know Mechner has some sort of affinity for France. and French culture, because I know if you look up, how do you pronounce his name? He's said, the American way of saying it is Mechner, but if you're saying it, you know, the way it would be said in France, it'd be Messner.

But then he says, you know, I'm actually, it's actually like a Germanic route. So I don't know, it's all muddled in there. But you get France somehow. And of course, Ubisoft is a French company making Prince of Persia. So, yeah, it just seemed like this kind of. of beautiful animation priority type gameplay kind of took root in France. And the French pop culture has a great affinity for animation and for graphic novels or Bonnese, if you want to call it that. So it kind of fits. But yeah, Prince of Prussia did really stand out from other

platforming games at the time. I've been trying to think of like, were there any other platformers like this that were very sort of slow and precise where, you know, you really had to pay attention to the animation and kind of think a move ahead for your actions because everything was sort of a commitment. I mean, you had like ghosts and goblins that kind of did that, but not in terms of the animation priority, just like you were very limited in terms of your controls. So, you know, when you made a jump or something, it was kind of a commitment and you had to really mean it. But the way it worked in Prince of Persia was, different. And the emphasis in Prince of Persia, the original, was not on combat. It was really on

puzzle platforming. I mean, you did occasionally fight like skeletons and stuff. It had that kind of voyages of Sinbad, Ray Harryhausen kind of vibe to it with some of the animation. But those were just sort of incidental. Like those were kind of like in Karataka or Karateka. If you think back to that, like you were kind of moving. forward and every encounter you came up against was meaningful and significant and really tested your skills. And Prince of Persia, the original, was very much like that. And on top of that, you couldn't dawdle because the entire game had a 60-minute time limit.

You had to reach the end and rescue the princess from the evil vizier Jafar before, I don't know, he married her or, you know, the hourglass ran out and they turned into frogs. I don't know exactly what happens. because the game ends, and you feel bad because you've wasted an hour, and you didn't win. But, yeah, a very cool-looking game and one that really kind of reinvented what it meant to be a platform action game. So Prince of Persia was ported to lots of systems, and also it spawned sequels. The first sequel came in 1993. It was called Prince of Persia II, The Shadow and the Flame, and it was pretty much the same game except with way more

combat, a slightly longer deadline, but a bigger game too, so not actually any easier. And I think the main gimmick to the game is kind of what you see in the title, which is that at one point in the original Prince of Persia, you kind of face off against your magically animated shadow. And that becomes like a, you know, it's kind of just like an incidental, whoa, that's cool sort of thing in the original. But in the sequel, that becomes a core game. mechanic and you have like a shadow version of you that you need to manipulate in order to solve puzzles and things like that. So it kind of reminds me of like odd world where you can chant to possess the slug guards, whatever they're called sligs, and you know, make them

fart and whatever. So yeah, like I kind of feel, you know, like that that kind of laid the groundwork for the odd world games in another sense. But generally a pretty good game, not as successful and groundbreaking is the first, but still showed up on a lot of systems and sold very, very well. Kate, I don't know. You mentioned that you didn't play any of the sequels, so that includes Prince of Persia, too? That includes that. Chris, are you on board with any of these older Prince of Persia games? My experience of seeing Prince of Persia, like the original flavor, Prince of Persia, was very much.

like reading about it in magazines at the time. I think it was on, if anybody remembers, Flux Magazine, which was a magazine about comic books, video games, and specifically heavy metal. The greatest publication of all time. I think they did like a top 100 video games of all time, and I remember going through that list over and over, because, like, Kate, I was very much a console kid, a Nintendo kid specifically.

I have always considered the Sega Genesis to be the province of the wealthy. And, you know, PC gaming, why? That doesn't even connect to your TV. Why would you even do that? And even to this day, like, I play games on Steam on Steam deck because that is a console. But I just have this, like, loop in my head of, like, like the animation of climbing a ledge and slowly standing up and like thinking like, oh, that looks like the Aladdin game for Super Nintendo, which is a very good looking game.

But yeah, I never got around to playing those. So it was one of those things where I kind of had to use my imagination to sort of figure out what this game was about. So I assumed it was a lot of climbing up ledges. And I think I was right. Yeah. so my my first one was sands of time which i liked and i feel like kind of ironically i never played any of the sequels because i remember that being like a big reboot of the franchise for the

new modern console generation uh but i never played any of the sequels because i feel like everything that i wanted to do in that game and enjoyed doing that game i ended up liking an Assassin's Creed instead. Plus, stabbing dudes. I do feel like, I mean, you stab dudes a lot in the 3D Prince of Persia games, but... Yeah, but I think Assassin's Creed, you probably stabbed the most dudes stabbed in a video game. There's a lot less friction for stabbing dudes in Assassin's Creed. It's kind of like press button to murder people.

What is the TTSD rating on that, the time to stabbing dudes? In Assassin's Creed? I think it's pretty quick, depending on. on the game. Sometimes you jump right in and you're just like hopping guys. I think the fastest TTSD in the whole series would be Prince of Persia 2. You break out of a window and you've got to turn around

and if you're not stabbing, you'll just immediately die. You've got to stab straight away. It's incredible. A.B.S. Always B. Stabbing. Very similar to this game where it's always be slashing.

So that's right. We are talking about the lost crown. Yeah. So after Prince of Persia and Prince of Prussia 2, lots of other people said, this is a good idea. We should make games along these lines. And you got like flashback.

And then flashback gave us fade Black, which was taking this style of game into 3D, much less of the platforming. They weren't quite sure what they wanted to do, but that's okay because the following year, IDOS and core designs figured it out with Tomb Raider and basically made Prince of Persia, but in 3D with a cute lady as the protagonist. What it shares, I think, with just to be quick about it, sorry, both Tim Raider and the 2D Prince of Persia games feel like they have grid-based sort of movement. Like, with Prince of Persia, you tap, say, right, you will do a full step to the right and

stop. But if you're holding, say, shift, you'll do a half step, and everything's built around that at the exact distances. And Team Raider is the same. Like, I think Prince of Persia even has to sort of hold the button so you don't just walk off the edge of a ledge thing. It really is just a 3D take on Prince of Persia, but with a lot more slaying of exotic creatures.

But not actually that much in the first Tomb Raider. Like, the amount of killing you do in the original Tomb Raider is pretty modest compared to the later games. Oh, yeah. Even compared to, like, too, when it goes to the moon. Yeah. Yeah. Two is, like, suddenly Laura's bloodthirsty bloodcroft. Yeah, Tomb Raider strikes me as somebody going, like, what if the Pitfall series was a Prince of Persia, but in 3D and a girl?

Pretty much. I feel like having. I feel like having to press a button to not step off a ledge speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of human beings. I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to step off the ledge. I'm just saying maybe that is a decision you make on purpose, as most people tend to avoid it. I couldn't say I try to avoid ledges when I possibly can. But anyway, Prince of, sorry, Tomb Raider was a pretty big deal. And so three years later, when they decided, oh, we should do a 3D Prince of Persia

with a game called Prince of Persia 3D, the developer, Minescape, basically made it Tomb Raider, but kind of uglier. I don't know. I never really got the appeal of Prince of Persia 3D. It just felt like it kind of missed the things that made Prince of Persia great, but also wasn't as good at being Tomb Raider as Tomb Raider was. It has like the worst controls, especially on PC. I think it's, it was Arabian nights on Doomcast, and even there, it's like, you just play any TeamRadar over it.

It's a shame because I do quite like some of the latest sort of stages. There's some really fun, like ridiculously narrow platforms, and that's the kind of thing I enjoy. But it's really, you're fighting the controls basically the whole time, which is not the case on Tomb Raider, generally speaking. But I think it's worth mentioning that, In my opinion, Prince of Persia 3D is where you start to see the seeds for what became the lost crown, because the protagonist has not just a sword, but twin blades, and also a bow that is not used for combat, but for solving puzzles. So, like, this is where they start to just kind of say, what are elements that we could,

you know, use for the lost crown and make this fundamentally Prince of Persia-ish, which is interesting because Prince of Persia 3D obviously is where the series diverges from the 2D platformer style and moves into 3D platforming in combat. But the Lost Crown kind of takes basically 15, no, sorry, 25 years of 3D Prince of Persia game design and condenses it all into a 2D action game. So you kind of start to see, like, this is where you start the hourglass, I guess. I was going to say the clock, but I guess it should be an hourglass, yeah. So anyway, Mechner didn't really, he wasn't super happy with the way the game turned out and decided to step away from the franchise and game development. I think also he was discouraged by how the Last Express did, which was to say

not very well at all. And so he held on to the property rights, the IP rights for Prince of Persia, but said, I'm not, I'm not going to mess with the game anymore. So the games belonged to Bruderbund, which was purchased by the learning company, which was then acquired by, I can't remember. Anyway, Wrights bounced around and they eventually ended up with Ubisoft. And so Ubisoft said, we should do something with this cool property we have, you know, access to. So they reached out to Mechner and got him on board. and said, we're going to do something that's actually good with Prince of Persia and, I guess, sent him the storyboards or whatever.

And he was like, you know what? I'm a story guy, and I like these storyboards. Let's go for it. And so we end up with The Sands of Time, a complete reinvention of the series that really kind of, I kind of feel like this and beyond good and evil is sort of the beginning of modern Ubisoft. I suppose also Splinter Cell. you have just like these franchises that kind of hit in the PS2 GameCube Xbox era and all of a sudden Ubisoft went from being like, who are these guys? Zombie, what's that?

To, you know, to all of a sudden being like a major player. And, you know, you see a lot of good ideas come out here and you also see Prince of Persians to come to some of the things that plague Ubisoft even now, such as the fact that the Sands of Time had multiple sequels a year after each other, whereas the original Prince of Persia took like four years for them to make another sequel. So the good and the bad. But I would say the Sands of Time is wildly successful as a game. I've been talking a lot, so I'm going to throw it over to someone else who loves the Sands of Time.

Hopefully, someone on here, yes? I like it. But do you love it? No. Really? I like it. It's fine. I've never gone back to it.

I played it, I enjoyed it when it came out, but it's not a game that I, other than the comedy of the way the game responds to you dying by being like, no, hang on. Because, of course, it is, you know, it is framed as a story being told by the protagonist, you know, Jake Gyllenhaal. So I thought that was a really fun element to it because it is hilarious to you. imagine telling a story and then being like, yeah, then I died. It was wild. I fell down a hole and died. Yeah, they sort of look at his hands as like, oh no, wait. Oh, wait, no. No, sorry. I had that wrong.

Another guy died. I was different. I was way better than that guy. But yeah, like, it's not it's not one that I go back to and it's interesting to me that there is kind of like you know, Prince of Persia is maybe not like a major franchise in the

way that, you know, Assassin's Creed is or or Castlevania is for me. Even though Castlevania is currently an inactive major franchise. But it's it's weird that there is a franchise out there

that like I've certainly enjoyed the pieces that I played, but that I do not think about it all. Fair enough. I think that the sounds of time was a bit of a sort of bridge to I don't want to say like to next gen but it did a lot of things

more cinematically than similar games were doing them before like prior to that sort of stuff that is quite commonplace now like running into a room and getting a kind of pan over this enormous space and thinking to yourself okay I've got to get up there how am I going to use whatever elements I have at my disposal to do it because it did focus so much on clambering

and little on killing. I mean, when you are killing in this game, that's when it's at its least interesting, I think. It's not horrible or anything, but it's just, I'm always finding myself, thinking, when can I get back to, like, swinging on a pole? You know? I guess that's kind of why the sequel didn't set the world on fire

quite so much because they doubled down on the killing. But I thought this was a really interesting game. It was cinematic in the way that games are cinematic now, while the original Prince of Persia was just cinematic, if that makes any sense. They weren't doing anything particularly new, but they were doing it differently, and that did stand out at the time,

the sense of scale. And the setting was not a common setting, you know, for a video game, I don't think, at that point. So it was nice to have something that did feel a bit different. And it's still fun to go back to, I think. But it's not like, I don't think it's like 10 out of 10.

It's too much fighting. But it's pretty good. Yeah, I would say the sense of time, stands out more for what it meant when it debuted. Like, it was very, I feel very different from anything around it and really kind of made you stop and say, oh, this is, this is interesting. Like, it figured out sort of 3D action crowd management in a way that other games really, really struggle to do at this point in 2003.

And, yeah, like, as you said, it's cinematic in the way games are now. It's like the original Prince of Persia was cinematic in a silent film kind of way, and the stance of time was like, let's not do that. Let's just jump ahead straight to the post Lord of the Rings era of filmmaking. So it just feels like, you know, you kind of skipped over a century of filmmaking tradition there, for better and for worse. But, you know, I would say the way it kind of seamlessly blended the 3D. combat with the 3D exploration much more successfully than other games had done before. I mean, you look at the Tomb Raider games from that era. And, you know, the platforming in Tomb Raider was always really good and really strong. And the combat was always really bad and never got better

until, you know, they kind of took it away from core and gave it to Crystal Dynamics. And this was before that. So you can look at the fight scenes in this game and really sort of see like, oh, this is going to be Assassin's Creed in a few years, or Arch of Asylum, yeah, yeah. It's, well, I mean, Uncharted is much more about ranged combat, you know, cover-based combat, I would say, and stealth kills. But this is more of the melee style. So it does feel like a direct throughline to me to Assassin's Creed. And it's kind of ironic that Assassin's Creed eventually supplanted Prince of Persia. And Prince of Persia never really found its stride after Assassin's Creed kicked off as much as they tried to do that.

But also relevant to The Lost Crown, this is the first game that has a time manipulation mechanic. I mean, time was a big factor in the first games in the sense that you were trying to outrun the clock. But instead of making time basically your enemy in the sense of time, it turns time into, your ally, your comrade, your friend. You have the ability to use the magic dagger to rewind time up to 10 seconds. And then as you gain more powers, you can do new things like you can freeze an enemy or all the enemies, or you can slow time to make it easier to get through some of the puzzle platform sequences or just to kind of get the upper hand in combat. So it kind of introduces is this element of like knowing when to make use of your time manipulation powers and knowing

you have to recharge them and so forth. But it does add a lot to the game. And, you know, between just the nimbleness of the platforming, of being able to just run at a wall and then you continue running along the wall, that's pretty cool. And you weren't doing that in other video games. You would run at a wall and then you would fall down a pit and die and have to start over. And Prince of Persia was like, no, let's not do that. Let's make it fun to get around and let's make your character really athletic and not impose stupid arbitrary limitations on them because of the game engine. Chris? It definitely hit right at the, like at the perfect time for the prominence of like parkour in pop culture, which is something that I think, again,

Assassin's Creed ran with. Ironically. No pun intended. But, you know, like there was, you know, there was a time in this country. We used to be a proper country where every action movie would have a parkour guy in it to the

point where, you know, there's a scene in the Punisher War Zone where there's a parkour guy who gets blown up with a rocket launcher specifically because the director said she was so sick of seeing parkour guys. It's such a good movie, my God. So get that like you know

wall running like action the fun movement of that Prince of Persia game was a huge part of it it was a huge part of what made it fun much more so I think than the than the kind of puzzle platforming aspect which is ostensibly the whole point

of the game but like the fact that you could navigate those puzzles in that way was very fun and and again influenced everything that like you said from Assassin's Creed to Arkham Asylum to, you know, what game didn't have parkour in it? Yeah, I mean, Assassin's Creed whole thing was, one, combat was very Perry-based, which we'll

talk about, but also it had basically a parkour button, hold the parkour button, and you just do whatever you need to do kind of automatically. It sort of takes an element of control away from the player in the idea of just, like, making it easy to get around. And Prince of Persia, I think did a better job of sort of walking the balance between that, where you have a lot of options at your command and you can get around really easily. You're very nimble. But at the same time, it's not just like press button to do everything. It's a good balance. I think it's obviously it's different. With like this game, it's, you'll be on a platform and you'll think, okay, to get up there, I've got to run along that wall, dodge those blades, jump across, land on this pole,

jump from the pole onto this flag by dagger in this flag so I can, slide all the way down it as I tear it, jump off onto this wall, and then I'll be at the bottom. With Assassin's Creed, it's more along the lines of, I've got 10 guys after me, what's the most efficient way to get away from them, and then you just kind of hold the R button and aim towards it. And I don't think, I mean, it's a different thing. It's a different skill, but it definitely is evolution into it, but it's a different kind of challenge.

And I do put some of the parkour into, like, Assassin's Street, too, I recall, there are some areas where you do have to be careful and think about how you're going to ascend, sort of slow climbs, but it is a very different type of sort of cinematic, I guess. Yeah, I think there's catacombs in Brotherhood from 2010. That was, like, I got into those and I was like, oh, this is what Prince of Persia would be like if they were, you know, kind of still sticking to the style of Prince of Persia. And they were very satisfying in that respect. But those were just like little extra bonuses. And they didn't make a lot of them. And they weren't, you know, by any sense, a significant part of the game. But they were fun to experience. Yeah, Parkour definitely,

you know, 2003, we were still three years away from Casino Real sort of putting the definitive statement on Parkour in film. And like, here's nimble guy. Here is bulldozer guy running through walls behind him. And I love that scene where Bond is just crashing through drywall. It's so good. Yeah. Like, after that, do you really need another parkour? scene in a movie? No. So, you know, it still had three years of life. That's how far ahead of its time, Sands of Time was, which is not something you usually see in video games. Usually you see a trend like, say, bullet time from the Matrix, and then three years later, every game has that. And, you know, in a sense, I guess you could say the Sands of Time sort of has

that because you can slow down time, but they do so much more interesting things with the concept of time manipulation. It's not just like slowing things down for a cool panning effect. It's, hey, I'm freezing all the enemies around me so I can get easy kills. Hey, I'm slowing down all these spinning gears and swinging, you know, blades so that I can solve this platforming puzzle. It was, yeah, it's, I would say where the original Prince of Persia borrowed liberally from Hollywood in a sort of pastiche and homage, like an affectionate nod to. classic cinema, the sense of time really felt like, hey, this is a game of the moment grounded very much in what Hollywood is doing.

And, you know, in a way, so was its sequel, 2004's Warrior Within, which the thing that everyone in Hollywood was doing, which was like, hey, we gave you this likable hero having a fun adventure, now things are bad, and he's really grim and angry, and he's going to kill more dudes, and, you know, I think the most, I kind of feel like this game's enduring legacy is that Penny Arcade comic, where the, uh, the villain. is talking about, instead of, you know, anything plot relevant, talking about how she's wearing a metal thong that's just incredibly uncomfortable. And that's kind of, that's kind of the game in the nutshell. It just, it really seemed to miss everything that was good-spirited and fun about Sands of Time in order to make it more heavy metal, thrashy, angry. Like, who asked for that? It's, it's so weird. It's like the absolute apex of that trope. I think, I can't think of a wuss. It's not a bad game. It's just wrong.

I'm going to tell you about Spider-Man 3. Oh, God. Yeah. Let's talk about Spider-Man 3. Hell yeah. Oh, I was wondering what Chris would say. He's just pointing at me. Don't you start with me about Spider-Man 3? Spider-Man 3 is good, actually. It's an excellent phone. I agree with him. Okay, good. Then we can...

I mean, it's also bad, but it's also good. Oh, yeah, no, it's bad. But it's also one of the best movies ever made. This is the shadow of the headshot of the headchalk of the Prince of Persia series. Right, yeah, there you go. Thankfully, they did not give the prince a handgun, but they might as well have. And the thing is, like, they really took the money that they... Oh, that sounds awesome, actually.

Honestly, I would play that for real. Okay. It's like, it's just one dude. It's just like, blah, blah. Like, yes. Yeah, let me play that one. All right. Comment retracted.

No, the thing is, is Sands of Time made a lot of money for Ubisoft. And they said, let's put this into the sequel. And they hired some incredible talent. They hired the animator behind the triplets of Belleville, the movie that should have won an Oscar instead of Finding Nemo. They hired Monica Balucci right after her memorable appearance in the Matrix, the second Matrix movie. Like, she's a voice actress here. They just threw money at this game. But fun to Ultimately, they made the mistake of saying, well, you know, video games have to grow up now. So everything has to be really dark and angry. Take away all the colors. Take away the jokes. It's very serious time.

It's very sad. I feel like that's probably why I never played that sequel. Because I was probably like, yeah, this seems like a bummer. They did the same thing with Jack's, Jack and Axter, too. Don't because I love that game. Yeah, but I mean, did anyone really want? angsty like science experiment jack and daxter i mean it's that it's that point of divergence where after grand theft auto san andreas grand theft auto honestly becomes a slog with a bunch of

people i hate and saints row becomes you don't love your cousin niko history no i don't like nico bellic i do like johnny gatt because i want to be johnny gatt seems through rules let's talk Saints are the 3rd, the best game of all time. So I think UB was sensitive to their goofs with the warrior within and tried to kind of walk it back a bit with the final entry in the trilogy, The Two Thrones. They basically were like, hey, Metroid 2 Echoes, that was cool. We should do a dark Samus.

So once again, the shadow prince becomes a mechanic, just like in Prince of Persia. too but he's also like your venom and he's in your head talking to you and um you know eventually you have to fight him in a dreamscape or something you transform into him and sort of set points in the game and while you are him your health is constantly draining unless you do murders uh because you know of course and the way that's shinobi it's shinobi yeah but the way you stop being him which i think is hilarious is once you get to some fresh water you splash it on your face by pressing on he's like oh few i'm not mad anymore brilliant

Oh, okay, that's Smeagel. Okay. Yeah, basically. The two thrones, my main memory of that is I did buy that, because I like the previous ones. I remember thinking, this is the best games will ever look. There will never be a better looking at the time. I had that same thought about Super Mario World.

Oh, sorry, Kate. They literally did, like, a then modern era, Jekyll and Hyde. Is that what I'm hearing? Kind of, but I mean, a lot of games were kind of doing that. And, again, like I said, you know, you had Lord of the Rings, so. that whole like Smeagel Golem thing, Gallum, it just feels like, again, they were kind of plucking ideas from the zeitgeist and saying, how can we combine this with what already exists in the Prince of Persia sandbox? But, you know, the idea of the Shadow Prince is a

separate character who is kind of antagonistic to you, again, resurfaces in the Lost Crown. So it's like sometimes they stumbled across some bad ideas. I mean, even like, like the lady with the metal fong. She's not, there's no one dressed like that in the lost crown, but there is kind of like this, you know, antagonistic woman who is kind of always you're on her heels or she's on your heels. So it feels like, you know, they looked to this trilogy for different elements of inspiration and found them when creating the lost crown. So I respect that. Anyway, the series took a little bit of a break here and they decided to reboot it in 2008 to tie in with the movie, unfortunately the movie was delayed, and so this whole thing was

kind of a mess, and they just created a game called Prince of Persia. And this time, I feel like they're kind of going with an eco sort of thing, where you have an AI-controlled companion, a woman named Elica. I feel like, what's the Ninja Theory game that does that too? Inslave? Odyssey. Yes, I believe so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that actually came later than this. So, you know, kind of, kind of, um, in the middle of the zeitgeist, I guess. But, but, you know, the imagery of Eco is very much, uh, bound into this. And also shadow of the colossus, where you're trying to purge the world of darkness with the help of your companion who fights enemies alongside you. And also, if you die, like fall into a pit or something, she'll

pull you out. So you never actually have a game over. Um, and then the ending, to spoil it. Like, you discover that she has to sacrifice herself to bring light back to the world. And you're like, no, I don't like that. So you steal all the light and put it back into her and the world dies. But at least the lady lives. So it's kind of a... Does she bring your darks the whole light? She might. She just might. For them. And you buy the DLC. It's fine. It's not fine, though. Like, you know, the DLC's whole thing is that she's like, I can't believe you destroyed the world. world just to save me, you dumbass. Like my whole mission was to save the world. I sacrificed myself

to keep that from happening. And you just ignored it and tried to save me. I didn't want that. So I kind of like that. You know, it's like, again, this is before the last of us and the last of us part too. So I was about to say the last. Yeah, no. I mean, it's, yeah. Like, you know, it's, it's all and good to say, oh, I'm going to make a cool, unintuitive decision for the sake of the person I love, but, you know, damn the entire world in the process. And actually, the DLC is nice because you do have to deal with the consequences of that to a certain degree. So, yeah, I don't know that the reboot was all that successful, but it was pretty well liked. I remember it reviewing well, so that's good. And I'm going to mention it because it's me, I'm sorry, there's a DSP version

of it, and it's really fun and it's completely stylus-based 2D game, and I strongly recommend it. You just said some things there that I find to be diametric opposites. Stylus-based action. Oh, my. It's a massive pain on the ass, but I love it anyway, because, you know, well, of course I do. Okay. Prince of Persia, the Fallen King. You can get it for, like, a dollar probably.

No one likes it. It's great. It's Prince of Persia, the Stuart Gyp Edition, is what you're saying. Oh, absolutely. Like, a quirky, interesting game that people will bounce off of, but you see the appeal in it. All games. I've heard that. I've heard that. Thank you.

Thank you. So, so anyway, just to kind of So anyway, just to kind of wrap up this, this hour-long journey through the prelude to the lost crown, there is the Forgotten Sands, a final attempt to sort of reboot Prince of Persia. It's actually an interquil with the Sands of Time trilogy. And this time, interquil, yeah, it's not a prequel, it's a sequel.

It's in between two games. It's in between the first and second game. So this is why the prince turned into a grim, angsty asshole it's because there was a PSP version but no supposedly from what I've read this was meant to

be an attempt to compete with God of war as opposed to you know like the games that are more spiritually similar to Prince of Persia so I kind of feel like when you start branching out of that direction

maybe you need to stop and say is this really what we need to do it's when you end up with like a final fantasy game that's entirely action based as opposed to having any kind of menu driven turn-based elements at all. It's like, is it still

that thing? Why not just call it something else? I don't know. What are you doing? It's not really that much like God of War to play, so I don't know why they would swing for that. I hate to say it, but I did really like the PSP version. It was again a 2D platformer, which had some

interesting puzzles. Actually, no, I was just, I was just bagging on the PSP for the hell of it. The PSP version is actually really good and really feels like the direct predecessor to the lost crown. And that's kind of where we were going with me talking about the history of Prince of Persia for an hour, which was eventually you got to a PSP 2.5D exploratory action game and you're like, oh, this could be a future for the Prince

of Persia. But it would be another decade and a half before, I guess, a major studio felt like we could put a game like this on a real console as, you know, like a primary title. the series instead of saying, oh, it needs to be relegated off to the secret, shameful, portable zone, because now portable games are cool, because they're the same thing as console games, thanks to Switch and Steam Deck and Switch 2. It's weird to me that portable games were, like, looked down upon, because Pokemon makes so much money. But only kids play Pokemon, and people who played Pokemon as a kid and who are no adults.

At the time, you didn't have a lot of adults playing Pokemon. So people were like, oh, kids' systems. That money spends, Jeremy. That money spends just as good as anybody's. I mean, who was the GBA NDS guy in the video games press for, like, the entirety of the 2000s? It was Jerry Parrish. I mean, that's where the Metroid's Vanya were. Exactly.

You don't have to defend portable, the honor of portable games to me. I love them. I love portable systems. And a big part of the appeal of The Lost Crown is that I can, in fact, play it on Nintendo Switch, or Switch 2, actually, where it's much larger, but not quite so, not so cumbersome as the Steam Deck. I guess it's because so many Bordle games in the GBA sort of era were, as you mentioned, versions of console games, which does create the impression of, like, okay, here's the real game, and now here's the kind of the kid brother version, as I guess they would say, to be derogatory. with Pokemon it was the opposite because the handheld games were the main event and the GameCube games everyone

just moans about I do wish that more companies would have taken the approach of if you're going to do a console version and a handheld version just make a completely different game because some of those

turned out really well like the I believe Wayforward did the DS Thor movie tie-in game, which is really good. And the Batman Brave and the Bold handheld game, which is closer

to being like the I guess we at the time Brave of the Bull game, but like very different in terms of like presentation and and art obviously. But yeah, like

they, there were good games. Like I think part of the I think part of the reason that the handhelds were looked down on came from the previous generation where during the whole initial push into 3D during like the N64 era and stuff, people suddenly lost interest in 2D games because 3D was the new hotness. And so you only got the 2D games on the handheld and they were like, all these weak 2D games. And I feel like maybe that carried over even in later generations. And people are like, oh, those are always the weaker, less graphically, whatever games. But, you know, then Nintendo, you know, with the Wii proves that, like, you know,

it's more about the gameplay than the graphics if you're... I think a big part of... Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And also the fact that portable game technology did not really evolve from 1989 through 2001. So you have basically the entire world. playing on Gameboy throughout, you know, into the PlayStation 2 era. And there were other systems that had more power than Game Boy, but they didn't really find traction. I mean, NeoGeo Pocket Color was amazing, but 50,000 people bought NeoGeo Pocket Color or whatever. So, you know, it just, it didn't catch

on. And so you did have this technology that was growing further and further behind the curve compared to what consoles were doing. And so you did tend to get simpler games. And so you did tend to get simpler games, games that were geared toward younger players. It was just kind of like this recursive loop. But now I think we all understand that portable systems can be and are awesome, and everyone should put their games on portable systems such as Switch, Switch 2, or optimize it for Steam Deck. And if you want to put stuff on PlayStation 5 or Xbox series, it's on you. So, Let's actually talk about The Lost Crown.

And so, Kate, you would recommend that we break this into three discussions. I don't know that this game necessarily merits three full episodes and actually kind of watching the flow of conversation in Discord. Everyone kind of seems to feel like the point that you picked as the cutoff for this episode makes a pretty good, like, halfway mark. It's not necessarily halfway, but that's a lot of it because the game is, kind of open-ended. So you can take a few different routes and, you know, go through a lot of optional extra stuff on your way to getting the clairvoyance power up. So the actual percentage

that you clear by the time you get to clairvoyance kind of varies. Yeah. Like, in a way, it would have really been easier to split up either into two or into four parts because it feels like it feels like the game was structured with four parts like there is a story twist that happens at the one fourth point that that's where stuff starts to diverge and then there you're like why are they calling this prince of persia now yeah and then there's a halfway point where the diverged stuff comes back but uh i i was not really thinking that through i didn't realize how much it diverged i thought it was still pretty linear So, yeah, we had a lot of discussion with people who went one way that was the way I thought we were, would have been the one third point.

And then there's other people who were like, went the other way. And they didn't get clairvoyance until pretty much the close to the halfway point. So some people are a halfway and some people are a third end. It's, it's a kind of good point. I think, I think, you know, like three or four hours of conversation about this game feels about right. And that's probably going to be the case for most games. I mean, there are some games where we're going to be struggling hard to get a single episode out of them, I'm sure. But, you know, for this game, I think two episodes is just about right.

So, why don't we talk about just kind of the general vibe of the Lost Crown and sort of how it works. Like I was kind of getting at throughout the history of Prince of Persia section, I really feel like the Lost Crown tries to take something from every Prince of Persia game and tries to find something, even in the games that people don't necessarily like that much, and say, well, this part of it was pretty interesting. So let's pull this over. And so you've got a 2D action game that does a lot. There's a lot you can do in this game, and a lot you have to kind of keep track of, just in terms of like combat mechanics and weapons and options. There's a lot of systems underneath the whole thing. We might even need to talk about some of that in the second episode. But I do feel like it's important to kind of talk about the play mechanics because as in the Sands of Time, the combat and exploration mechanics are pretty well integrated with each other. Like they feel like they're very much of a piece. And you're using, similar skills and similar techniques to do both things.

Like the abilities you use to get around and fight enemies, then double for getting around and making your way through the world. And there's a lot of puzzle platforming, a lot of traps and challenges. Like, they clearly looked at Celeste and said, oh, that is, Celeste is the baby of the original Prince of Persia. So we need to, like, go the next step beyond Celeste. And I respect that. I actually like the platforming a lot more than the combat, but we can talk about that.

Anyway, I've been talking for the past hours, so now someone else is going to talk, and it's not going to be me. I have a take. I'd like to discuss at this point, because it's not an appearance on retur-notes if nobody gets mad at me for things that I say. I am not a Metroidvania purist. As you know, Jeremy, I declared Super Mario World to be at Metroidvania. You did. And I was right. Oh, you weren't.

I was right and correct. But we can all admit that now. But I'm not a gatekeeper on terminology either, so it's fine. It's good that you believe that. But I am someone who has a lot of personal tastes. I have played a lot of Metroidvania's. if you're a member of the War Rock Agex Patreon, you can read a bunch of little

mini essays I've written about Metroidsvania. And I will say, I tend to like the ones that are that are like Castlevania and Video Night. Like, to put it bluntly. I like the RPG mechanics.

I like, you know, getting all kinds of different items and such that do different things. It's one of the reasons that I prefer the Castlevania side of things to the Metroid side of things because Metroid doesn't have the same kind of leveling up and

equipment management that you get with Castlevania. That doesn't mean that I don't like Metroid. That doesn't mean that I don't like Hollow Night, which is one of my favorite games of all time, or any number of other Metroid'svania. But I will say, it tends to be with me the further away I get from Symphony the Night from Koji Hirashi, the less

I like a game. And as beautiful as it is, as interesting as I found the storyline to be, as much as I like the characters, I had a really hard time playing this game, because

it does a bunch of stuff that I don't like in Metroidvania's. You have my ex on this trip. I don't like necessary parrying systems. I don't like it when there are enemies that have to be parried or else, you know, you can't really start or finish a fight.

I don't like Mitrovina's where, weirdly enough, where combat is necessary. I don't want to be trapped in an area and unable to leave a la Guacamale when I, like, I want the freedom to be able to decide how to approach that combat, whether it's avoid it or engage with it or what nine times out of ten i'm going to engage with it because that's fun but those elements kind of immediately turned me off this game which is a game that i was really looking forward to playing and that i will say when i was enjoying it i enjoyed it a heck of a lot but it did those things where i'm like mm-mm that's not that's not the way i like it and i feel like those are very i mean the the the parrying and

dodging and multiple different flags for attacks, like, not every game has to be Dark Souls. You could make some, you could make some Castlevania's again. That'd be fun. Yeah, I think I'm in a similar sort of position where I, when I'm enjoying this, I'm having a blast, when I'm enjoying it. But a lot of the time, it did feel like they were specifically trying to annoy me, with little small things that bother me. And this game has a lot of stuff. to do and learn a lot of things i mean for me with the combat once i realized that launching is always the most effective to do it thing anyway i didn't bother using any of the i mean you've got like supers that i only ever used on bosses i just there was no reason to use them otherwise but um

it's the little things that that get me in this and it's going to sound so petty but like you can't run at full speed unless you're holding the trigger you've got to go into a dash and you've got to keep holding the trigger and if you leave an area you've got to do it again and That doesn't sound like much, but why didn't they just make you run faster and not have to do that? It's not even that much faster. That's circle of the moon nonsense is what that is. But the parrying was like, I don't mind parrying at all. Honestly, I quite like parrying.

What I don't like is if you get the parry slightly wrong, you take more damage, I think, as opposed to just being like, okay, like make it a hit or a miss, not a hit or a miss or a really bad. miss. It seems weird to me. I don't know. It just missing a parry and getting that freeze effect with this sort of splotch, like, you fucked up kind of thing. It doesn't feel good. I'd rather

just take a hit. I'd rather just maybe do a chip damage. But getting brutalized because of parry timing just felt very frustrating. Because of the Dark Souls thing of, you know, you're chugging your own health with your little potions that run out. You don't have much

health. It doesn't feel like you have much health. They copied over the amulets from Holonite and in Hollandite, I don't know, it feels like in this game you take a long time before you're able to wear more or have more useful amulets

and they give you so many of them that are borderline useless that I would always just kind of feel like there's like a screen where there's like 60 and I'm going to use three of these and you'd go through like a whole challenge, you'd find a secret area or something, you'd open a chest and it would give you like an amulet that you're never going to

and I just was kind of like, that's kind of a bit of a bummer. But again, when I was enjoying this, which was probably most of the time, I was having, I liked it. I just, there was so much about this that I found too long or too much. It just seems like there's so much that you can do, but you don't need to. And that's too many moves. Like, it's, I just found it frustrating and confusing and, sending you running all over the place

all the way back to your little hub and to buy six different types of upgrades and such and I don't know it just felt maximalist where like Prince of Perjur is so minimalist you know it felt like

Hollow Night they would have things from Hollandite because they were in Holland Night not because it felt wait they would benefit this Yeah, like, I'm Yeah, like, I'm really. Uh, yeah, like, I'm, I'm really, I'm really, glad it's not just me.

But also, like, I would never call this game bad. Oh, no, no. Again, most of the time I was really enjoying it. But it teeters on being almost good, which is like the worst thing it can be. Kate, do you want to step in and defend the game? Well, I will call out, call out Chris. You're like, oh, it's stupid for Tomb Reader to have a button that you hold so you don't sailing off a cliff but now you're like it's stupid for prince of persia to have a button you

hold when you do want to go full war which way do you want it chris i want to not fall off a cliff jeremy i don't feel like these are mutually exclusive anyway so rather than defending the game right away what i want to say is first of all i feel like part of it is that the game is so we're all saying we think the game is overall good but you know something Sometimes when something is so good, it makes the things that are bad to stick out even more. And so then, because you're like, this could have been even better. This could have been even more good if it wasn't for just these little annoying bad things, you know. So I feel like that's part of what's happening.

But also, since we're all talking about the things that we didn't like about it, I want to continue to pile on and talk about the thing that I didn't like. Which, for me, the thing that almost caused me to not even buy the game was the demo. I played the demo when it came out because I was excited that like, oh, there's a Pennsylvania, as I like to call it. That sounds right up my alley. But this demo, so I wrote some notes. Let me take a look here. I will say while you're looking, Pennsylvania is very, very good. You could just call that a void.

Yes. So when it comes to story and video game, I do not judge story in video games or comics at a different level than I do TV or movies. Some people judge story in like video games and comics at like a lower level. Like they're more forgiving of it. I don't do that. You know, so when it comes to like story and video games, I'm very sensitive to like just bad writing. And so this demo, you load it up. And is there like, they want to start you with story. They have seven characters standing around, expositing at each other. Are they delivering any sort of story hook? Like, no, they're just delivering really pointless information that you don't even need to know at this point. But that they feel like, got to set this up. So we have seven people literally standing around delivering line.

lines that are so interchangeable that any of the characters could have been saying any of these lines, kind of like Huey Doey or Louie, you know, like there is literally, they are not- Those were my favorite immortals. They're not indicating at all any sort of like personality, any sort of like how they know each other, character dynamics or anything. They're just like expositing, standing around. And then once you finally, get done with that you get to run in a straight line for like three screens and then more fucking exposition and then after that exposition is done you run in a straight line again and you get to jump like two or three times and then there's more exposition like this was trying my patience i was like this is bad like i i already am unsure about this game now So it's a good thing that after that exposition, I get to run in a straight line and then an entire cutscene of them standing around in the cutscene delivering exposition.

And I'm just like, what is happening here? And then, like, after that cutscene, you finally get into some action. You get to fight some people. I'm not even not into combat. I'm here for the exploration, and they kind of hint a little bit. there's like a locked door and it's like, okay, there is, this is going to be a Metroidvania eventually. But the demo was just so completely awful that I almost didn't buy the game. Once the reviews came out and we're all glowing and talking specifically about all of the really good Metroidvania elements, I was like, it must be good.

So I want to play this, you know, but that demo, my gosh, was like, that could be taught in a class. And like, here's how to not do a demo, you know? It is perhaps unfair to constantly compare games to Castlevania Symphony and Night, which, as you may have heard, is quite good. But I was thinking about that for the entire time that you do that first little tutorial thing, and then you've got to, like, wander around the castle, and then another conversation in a cutscene, and then it's, like, finally, like,

okay, now here's the game. and I was just thinking about like man you could have had you could have just had us fight Dracula and then the dark pre-shaft tells us about him for like two minutes I even think that's a little too long

before you get into Al-Guard showing up yeah something of the night within about a minute you're like destroying in one hit a dog the size of a room so that's pretty much peak right there you know I I found the opening in this game

similarly frustrating because I did play the demo a while back and this is I don't want to I really don't want to be too negative

because again I did actually have fun with this and I'm going to you know carry on with it everything about the story and the presentation of the story in this game to me

was so like I've seen this shit so many times I mean the cut like even the cut scene direction you know he's going to jump forward he's going to yell

he's going to do slash everything's going to go into slow motion while he's got a cool expression on his face then it's going to go back into regular motion again and then it's going to stagger around a bit and it's going to keel over and I could have sat there and written the script out by hand as it happened and I wish I had because I think I could probably monetize that skill but at this point to be perfectly honest I could I'm about ready to skip every cut scene ever so I'm just kind of over yeah and I want to be clear I want to watch I want to be clear that in the game itself,

like the demo, the way that they kind of, they altered some things like to make the demo flow differently. And what's weird is, first of all, you get to the action faster in the actual game. Like, they have you beaten people up, like,

pretty quick after the, that initial, like, weird, painted cut scene. And the story is, like, marginally better. Like, the demo, I found aggravating. The story in the game, I find nearly bland, like bland and boring, you know? So, like, it's a minor improvement.

But, yeah, like you're saying, like, I'm still, like, totally not invested in the story. I understand now, like, when I played the demo, I was like, why do you even need seven people standing around expositing when you could be a conversation between two people? You play the game and it's like, oh, I get it. There's seven people because eventually there's story, whatever, you're going to have to. like fight them. So when you're, when you start like fighting them, you know, I don't feel that invested in them. I'm like, oh, this sucks for my character.

But I don't actually feel, I didn't actually feel the twists, you know, that are happening. It's like, because it's also just like boring and monotonous, the story, the writing. I feel like the issues that I have with it overall. aren't necessarily, like, issues with this game specifically. I think they're just AAA problems. I hate saying that because I sound like a dick, but there's sort of storytelling in this game. There are so many other games that do this.

There are so many other games that use the same sort of direction that I'm just tired of that. And it's a bit of a shame because it feels like something like Sands of Time, which at the time would have been, I guess, the equivalent of what AAA is now. It felt so different. And, you know, the original Prince of Persia was so different and sort of unique. And with this, I just kind of feel like they watched, I don't know, like Avatar or something, and they just kind of copied it.

Which, you know, if that's what people want, it seems to be what they want. So who am I to knock it? But for me, it's just all too familiar. And it's a shame because there's so much that I did like here that has all this stuff getting in the way, unfortunately. Yeah, so since we're all back on this, I will get my, my grievance out of the way as well. And just say, like, if I did not have to. play this game for this podcast series, I would have stopped at the demo, or not the demo,

the intro, because, like, I don't care about the exposition. I can just, I tune that stuff out. I don't care. Like, people talk, usually you can skip it or just ignore it. That's fine. But, you know, all of that led up to a boss fight where immediately you are led to understand, oh, it's one of those peri games where the game wants you to perform. form a very specific sequence of actions in order to overcome different enemies. And if not for the fact that you can totally tune the hell out of the difficulty and the expectations of the game, I don't know if I'd have stuck with it, because that's just so annoying to me. I feel like, you know, the Wind Waker came out and gave Link the ability to do cool combat paris

and evasions and stuff. And that was really interesting. And then, you know, a few years later, you had a bunch of developers say, we should do that kind of thing, but make it a little more accessible and more streamlined. And so you get Batman Arkham Asylum, you get Assassin's Creed, you get Dark Souls. And those games just made an entire section of game development, that community, the business, just lose their minds and say, oh, well, this is what every action game has to have now. And that's not necessarily the case. It has its place. And I don't begrudge the existence of a FromSoft game? Great. That's what those games are all about, top to bottom. But a game like this, you know, a Metroidvania game where there's so much exploration and navigation and getting

around, I don't want to constantly have to stop and fight through a throng of respawning enemies. Every time I enter a room and perform perfect paris and, you know, just go through the rote of what I'm supposed to accomplish. according to the developers and the encounter design they came up with just to go on to the next place and, you know, backtrack to a room that I couldn't reach before, but now I've got a new ability. That's just, it's super frustrating. I don't like meat walls of difficulty when you have a boss that's disproportionately harder than the rest of the combat in a game, like, you know, Order of Ecclesia was kind of guilty of that.

But I persevered because it does have the Castlevania. leveling system. This doesn't have that, but it does have the ability to just say, screw all of that. I'm turning the difficulty to super easy. I just want to like, you know, get around. I feel like the platforming in this game offers plenty of challenges on its own. Like, trying to get through rolling spikes and whirring blades and flipping death platforms and who knows what else with, you know, the power of my air dash. and my chakram. Like, that right there, that's very compelling. That's very interesting and it feels very true to Prince of Persia. Doing all of that, but then also losing a ton of progress if I don't

counter, you know, an arrow attack by some guy picking away at me from off screen while I'm fighting some other guy who's up in my face and having to go back through that gauntlet of challenges all over again, it's not really what I'm here for. So I applaud the developers for recognizing that some of us just don't want to deal with that bullshit and saying, it's okay. You don't have to deal with that bullshit. But for those who do like to deal with that bullshit, you can set the difficulty level so high that no human being could reasonably ever finish this game on those settings. Go for it. God bless.

Yeah, a friend of mine who's been playing through it had said they'd put it onto like the highest difficulty. setting and I was just like, I can't even conceive of being bothered doing that, considering that it's, I guess what the things like Castlevania have that this doesn't is also, you know, options and loot. And yes, there is

stuff you can find, but it's all very incremental in and sort of a psychologically different way, whereas in sort of Castlevania you've got so many different types of weapons you can use. If there's something you're having trouble with, maybe you can switch to some other weapon. But in this, it seems to be more along the lines. If it's something you're having trouble with,

either get better at it or just turn the difficulty down. And I don't want to do difficulty discourse, but for me, I feel like that's not very good. I feel like it shouldn't make you do that. But I don't have a very good reason as to why, because I think options are good. And if people want to do that, they should be able to. But it's like I was recently playing Doom the Dark Ages,

and I was just finding myself thinking, I don't think this is very well-tuned and it feels like what they're saying to me is do it yourself. I don't want to go through all the sliders and find my exact sweet spot. But then also when I say that, I know it comes across like I'm just saying this should be for me

and only me, but I don't know how to describe it. Does it make any sense what I'm saying whatsoever? Because I don't want to be the gatekeeping guy, but I also just kind of don't want to go in the menu and fix the difficulty when it didn't used to be an issue. I think there is, you know, a fair criticism here to be leveled at just the way enemy spons are tuned, the fact that if you zone out of a room and then duck back in immediately, hey, all those bad guys you just fought are back again. Like that instant respawning, I think really kind of misreads the way a game like this should work.

If you look at something like Breath of the Wild, which has the blood moon, where all the enemies across the world that you've killed, respawned. but they're permanently wiped out until that point. That's a pretty cool way to handle it. You know, the Castlevania games, I think, instantly respawn, but those enemies are almost never that difficult. The Metroid games are pretty good about

like you kill something and it'll be gone from a room for a little while but then after time it kind of respawns. So it gives you some time to go back and forth without having to grind through the battles every single time. I think just

kind of pushing it a little more in that direction and giving you some breathing room, not immediately respawning the enemies. I think that would make a huge difference. I don't think the enemies that you fight have to be permanently dead. And that would actually make the game way more difficult because you wouldn't be able to farm, you know, the resources you need. But maybe give players a little bit of space like five minutes or so before the guys come back. That'd be better. Just sorry, Chris, just real quick, I know. I mean, another thing, thing is that there aren't really fodder enemies in this game. Everything takes at least two

or three combos to kill, right? I mean you can level up and you can get more options, but I mean, after a while I would just jump over the enemies and be like, no, absolutely not. I've had enough of these guys. You know, they'll block you and they'll parry you sometimes and

you've got to cycle them and you've got to juggle them and it's the only way I found effective. So I just stopped using any of my other tools because all of them just seemed to take longer so stewart you just gave me an idea because you when you're talking about not wanting to tune it yourself i just thought you know you know it would be incredible uh would be you remember back in the day you always had to go into options to figure out like if you wanted to do uh why access

inverted or not and then one day like there were games like halo that were like made it a part of the story like hey what if you what if what if a game started with an opening level that tuned the difficulty for you. Like, we know that it's possible, like, Fortnite like kind of tunes difficulty for you to put you into similar matches. Why not have a single

player game that has a level that figures it out based on your performance and the opening thing? And then there you go. I would, I mean, I would say that's got to be a thing, but I can't think of an example right now. You know, I'm

just, I'm not sure how they would do it. Chris, did you have something to say? Yeah, you mentioned earlier, Jeremy, Celeste, which is, honestly, in my opinion, like, it is up there with, like, Tetris as a perfect video game. And that is a game that gives you, like, a lot of control over, over difficulty. And obviously, there's kind of, you know, like, one fail state for Celeste, so that's very easy to, relatively easy to account for. but I feel like that game presents its difficulty in a way where you are encouraged to keep playing and you are encouraged to

like if you turn off dying in Celeste I feel like most people who do that are eventually going to like turn it back on just to be like okay well can I make this jump can I do this? I don't know how to do that like that is essentially magic to me like the creation of the video game Celeste but you know I went in to to turn down like difficulty and like couldn't find the setting because I was like oh this is a Perry game and I went in and I know I pass the option at the start of the game to turn a bunch of stuff down and didn't and felt like a fool so maybe I was just missing it maybe I am in fact in the accessibility like a separate menu, I think. Yeah.

But I don't remember. Okay, so we're kind of actually running up against the optimal two-hour mark for this. So I would like to throw it over to the community for the community commentary. And if everyone can open up your show notes that I put together, oh, it seems like you're all on the page with me. So there we go. We can take turns working through the community commentary. We can talk about the good stuff and the actual game design. next time around, I guess.

But I want to make sure that our community is integrated here. And they can paint a picture of the game for us. So, you know, people have been chatting about this game since we announced it back in, what, May? So two months ago. So there's a lot of comments. I pulled the most interesting and substantial of them and sometimes combined comments, multiple comments by various people into a single, chunk of text. So I'm not going to read this all myself. I'm going to, we're going to take turns

collectively, so it's not just my voice again on this podcast. Because no one wants that. But let's see what the community has had to say about Prince of Persia, the lost crown, up to the point where you collect the clairvoyance skill, which we haven't actually talked about. Ian Stock says, I love the way this game plays with a general flow. of your typical Metroidvania. You don't get the double jump until pretty close to the end. Oh, my God, spoilers. Yeah, a big spoiler.

They really want the dash mechanics to shine before they add other movement options. The platforming in this game is a very Celeste-like, tough as nails, but respectful of your time feel. A friend of mine described the combat as, like a fighting game. Do we agree? No. If it was like a fighting game, I would be having less fun, because I am bad at fighting games.

But it's definitely halfway, though. In that I am also not good at fighting games, yeah. All right, who wants to read Scott's gigantic comment? I'll give that a go because we share an initial. There you go. Scott says, it was funny hearing the comment about how the last game felt like a proto Dark Souls, because it feels like it fits square on the other side of the Dark Souls phenomena, and it's a Metroidvania that has borrowed heavily from Souls,

specifically in its combat and progression. The save points that refill your limited healing potions, as well as that same sense of, can I make it to the next save point, etc., which I actually really don't like here. It's maddening to venture off from the save point to take an errant shot from something to have to turn around and heal back up to do it again.

You are very fragile, and one hit can make the difference. The regular enemies are absolutely frustrating here. Huge damage sponges that can take a surprisingly large amount of damage to kill, and having to recognize whether I have to dodge or parry or if it's the special parry or whatever, it's all too much for what I look for in combat from a Metroidvania game, having to memorize your character's combos

in addition to parry timings and which attacks to parry and blech, not for me. I think that's what that is, bleak, I don't know. And this is why I'm so frustrated because the platforming is so fucking good. It's fast and precise, and you have just enough at your disposal to really move around through the air very gracefully,

jumping into dashes into wall jumps into slides into jumps into dashes it's so fluid and seamless and feels great but then comes the expiration the map is huge the fast travel points help some but multiple times i run off to explore what seemed like a new area did a lot of running to get there only to find it wasn't actually the right area and now i just have to turn around and walk all the way back i was very surprised by how big the early areas are in that way Chris, you want to read what Guillermo J said? I'll do that. We share an initial as well. Hey! The only thing I'd add to The Lost Crown is a Super Metroid-style mini-map in the corner, so you don't need to pause every time you need to check something in your immediate vicinity. Weird that a game with this many accessibility features doesn't have that.

Is the Lost Crown the first Metroidvania to allow you to put screenshots directly on the game map? It's a great feature, and I expect a lot of games to copy it if it hasn't happened already. That's nice. It's a hard degree on that. Yes. I want everything on that. Definitely, that's a good... It was great, yeah.

And I think it is the first. Especially, like, look, we all love that gate shaped like Ridley or whatever. But the bigger the game gets, the handier it is to have ways to remember things. I am amazed. If this is the first game that's had it, because the first one I can recall, I'm amazed it hasn't happened before, because it just seems like such a no-brainer. You have something marked on your map, sure. But what the hell was it?

Is it this kind of gate or this kind of... And then this, you can just look at the screenshot and go, oh, no, it's that. I can't do anything with that yet. I won't go there. That is top tip. Yeah, I think it's just an evolution of things you saw, like Order of Ecclesia had icons that you could put on the maps and, you know, kind of differentiate that way. But it relied a little bit on sort of your internal filing system, and you kind of had to keep track of like, oh, I put this kind of icon there. What does that mean? Whereas this is much more straightforward. And yeah, it's a real boon

to the game, I think. Kate. All right. Gigasop 6 says about half an hour through the opening. Enjoying the flow of things, kind of sort of getting the hang of pairing a little, but using the analog stick for 2D platforming just makes

no sense to my brain. I suppose I have plenty of time to acclimate. I saw someone mention Hollenite above and made sure to go with make my map as useful as possible, please, in the starting options, just in case it was like Hollow Night in that way. That game was a nightmare, and I constantly felt lost. I did not like the intro. I realized they had to teach combat since it matters a lot, but it felt rather forced emotionally and doesn't seem to have much to do with the point of the game.

I know in the media, I know N Meteoraz is the way narratives tend to work these days, but man, that's a lot of dead people to be a tutorial. Jimmy Shannon said, very grateful the game allows you to just retry bosses rather than make you take the path there every time. If I'm really invested in the world in atmosphere, like in Dark Souls, getting back to the bosses and internalizing enemy patterns on the way is a really interesting, rewarding experience. If I don't particularly care about the world, it's the quickest way to burn me out on your game. Gelbana says, Just Got the Bow. Combat got some time to get used to, but I'm having fun.

It's slightly mean they enthish you to all these alternate paths, but following the main one is the only one that leads you to a hub, giving essential combat pointers, stroke upgrades. I honestly feel the game is more fun not buying the maps from the girl who sells them. They just kind of spoil what's in front of you and don't even give meaningful direction. It's a lot more fun to just wander around yourself And yes, I also know she eventually sells treasure maps

With locations for all the treasures Which I think Stu might make at least one snide remark about In one of the episodes I don't know what you're talking about Jimmy Shannon also says I have reached my Metroidvania kill screen Where I quit all of these games Which is the third time I have done a loop

Of the current area unable to find any way to proceed Walkthroughs are often not helpful for this genre because if you don't follow them from the start, it's hard to open one and know where the relevant information is because you don't know what you've missed. It seems like the game really hold your hand on a narrative level, characters telling you where to go,

but I was directed to the archives, and I did a good amount of exploring, and then every potential path was blocked. I don't think any story beats occurred to tell me to go somewhere else. I tried the depths again, but that also led to a dead end. So, I mean, maybe that's a mark in favor

of the girl selling you maps and giving you pointers. I will say, I really do like the phrase the idea of having a personal kill screen. That's very fun. Jimmy, that's a good bit.

I don't mind getting lost, though. Like, I liked, I mean, I loved Animal Well. I did get to the point where, like, I was finished with Animal Well, and Animal Well was not finished with me. But that was fine. Having put together a strategy guide for Axiom Verge 1 and 2, I can tell you that making a coherent, cohesive, well-organized strategy guide for a pretty open-ended game with plenty of backtracking is really, really hard. And coming up with a visual language to help kind of filter through that was an amazing.

immense challenge. One of the hardest things I've ever done in terms of publishing. So I sympathize for anyone who is given 25 bucks in a bag of popcorn in order to write a complete strategy guide for a site like IGN. They're brave people and they're running on fumes and I respect them. Anyway, on to J.B.'s brother's wizard friend. Oh, I love that guy. I'll do this one if that's okay. Yeah. What are people's positions on parrying?

It was a sticking point in Metroid Returns, slash dread, and you really do need to parry to fight some enemies, but it feels like there are more options available. Or maybe it's that enemies don't occupy intense platforming puzzle spaces. My position on parrying, negative. It's my position.

I think we've talked about it. Kate, do you want to yeah, go with what Scott had to say? The funny thing is, I love Third Strike, parrying in fighting games, yay. Pairing in Metroidvania,

boo. I have heard a larger conversation going on of how souls and wanting to be like souls has become too pervasive in modern game design. And I do look forward to games like this and clear obscure as examples. They are games that have things about them that I truly enjoy, but their inclusion of Souls-esque mechanics feel like they hold them back rather than add to them. Yeah, there's a whole conversation that I screenshoted from Discord talking about this. Just to kind of summarize it, Guillermo J said that they enjoy pairing in The Lost Crown. It seems intuitive, and there are defensive and offensive moves, so you don't have to depend on it. Can we, sorry, can we, like, each take one person's role and do a dramatic reading?

I think that would be a lot. Okay, yeah, yeah, I was Guillermo before, so did I be McElis and give them Yogi Bez voice? Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll do Jimmy Shannon again. And I'll do Jikis 6 again. And it all works out. How dramatic do you want this to be, Kate? As during, like, like 11. I enjoy perrying in The Lost Crown.

Seems pretty intuitive to me. Yet there are so many defensive and offensive moves, you never need to depend on it. Also, enjoy parry. in Metroid Dredd. I like parrying more in Samus Returns, but maybe it's because I was better at it. I liked it in Samus Returns, too. But you can combo it far better on Dread.

I haven't played Dread yet, Boo-boo. I have about a 50.1 success rate. 50.1% success rate with parrying, which is all I need for it to feel like a viable mechanic instead of something to be ignored completely like how I play Dark Souls games. Jeremy, how does your accent work? My accent? Was that supposed to be an accent?

Yeah, can you maybe give us a little bit, like a little more? I have about a 50.1% success rate with Perian, which is all I need for it to feel like a viable mechanic instead of something to be ignored completely like how I played Dark Souls games. Okay, so we got Yogi. Amiga Hocobari Hounds. We're nearly got a Laf Olympics here, people. Okay. I'm bad at Peri-Sing. Let's not telegraph with yellow stink eye, buddy bear.

Let's hear what J.B.'s' wizard's best brother's friend had to say. This is me again? Sure, but in your normal voice. I'm really viving with the combat difficulty and wide variety of encounters. I like the cadence of a Metroidvania. That is, the incremental exploration and new powers functioned both as keys and new ways to move slash fight. But until relatively recently, Metroidvania's never incentivized difficulty,

so your powers feel superfluous. Even early Metroid, so much of the difficulty is overcome by tanking damage because the enemies largely just run into you. And Igavania becomes a game of how many potions can I stock up before the next fight. I don't know if it was Hollow Night, specifically the innovated on that.

I'm just going to call them this in honor of Paper Mario badges. But being able to customize your kit beyond just making a flat number go up has gone a long way to making both the jumping and fighting engaging. It really worked well in dread for me. By the time you get a super gun to kill the murder robots and the game achieves a level of difficult to eat on par with Super Metroid and the final boss was the most fun to fight encounter in series history for me. It actually felt like an epic anime fight worthy of Samus's struggle. Lost Grounds regular goons are harder than any boss so far. T.B.H. I don't agree with that at all. What about that

dog lady or whatever it was. You have to keep parrying in different directions, and if you got it wrong, you just get marked. Oh, boy. So, Runners Dial Zero says, I'm stoked to hear the episodes on this game. I started it shortly after it came out, and it did the thing I always do

when I drop off for a while and came back to it. I fired it up the other day at 78% and thought I'd clean up some of the remaining unexplored areas and get a few more upgrades before hit. the final boss. Turned out I was right on the boss's doorstep, so I went out and got my final health upgrade, then went back and beat it in one try, which I wasn't expecting since the midpoint boss of the game nearly hadn't quit out of frustration. It's a shame that this team was wiped out so soon after finishing the game. It's a fantastic Metroidvania, and I would have loved to have seen

them continue making games together. It controls beautifully, and they really knocked it out of the park. The combat could be a little too challenging for me at times, mostly because I suck at paring, but there's enough ways to work around your personal limitations by way of metals, health upgrades, accessibility options, and the combined freedom of movement and combat options that it makes it so good. If only Team Cherry had a similar design ethos, I will finish Hollow Night. I will never finish Hollow Night. Excuse me. There was a lot of of a bagging on Team Cherry in the discord, but we won't proliferate that. Let's do one more round of comments, you know, readings by each person, and then bring this thing home and then

prepare for episode two, where we actually talk about the game and not just why we hate the game. So, J.B. says, I've seen nothing but love in this thread, and first impressions are it has supplanted everything else in my platonic ideal of what a Metroidvania is. So I'm interested in hearing whatever negativity you've come across, and ideally, if those same people also dislike Hollow Night. To summarize my thoughts, this game steals from everywhere, yet somehow coalesces into a coherent hole, which is kind of where Igavania began. I'm trying to identify the genre's juice, and I've come to this hard-to-describe feeling of progression. Few other genres, even RPGs, have this spark that wells as you start with nothing and end up on top of

the world. Maybe it's because, from the very beginning, you can see the locked doors and the keys also expand your moveset. I wonder how an RPG can translate that same feeling of progression without obvious gating like powerful monsters. How do you express to players in this other genre? In other genres, you can go here eventually. I vibe with the Lost Crown more than blasphemous, and I vibe with blasphemous a great deal as a game that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a soul's game or vanya. Another Metroidvania with anemic enemies,

and you move far slower than I prefer. Lost Crown feels mostly iterative of Hollow Night, but that game is on the opposite end of the spectrum, where you're light as a feather, and a lot of the combat meta for me was filling up the suspicious white liquid gauge and hoping a boss would give me a three-second break to heal. Hollow Night's badges also felt particularly weak.

I've been switching up a bit in Lost Crown to create... Oh, I've been switching up quite a bit in Lost Crown and create a time bubble on Perry has a lot more juice than HoloNites, which largely exists to make your stats incrementally better and to show you on the map. So, one vote for much better than Hollow Knight.

So let someone take Porifera. We've been building up to their comments. They always have a lot to say about Metroidvania's. Hello, shall I do Perifera? Yeah. I'll do Perifera. I just want to say, I'm just not on board with all this Holonite by getting 10 out of 10 game.

Yeah, Polar Night's amazing. What is going on? Well, you know, I don't want to say it, but, you know, I don't want to say it, but you know what I'm thinking? Anyway, Peripha says, this game's combat system

and enemy design aren't quite good enough for so much of the game's designed to be resting on them. Still, I'm sure this team can iterate and make something a lot better with a sequel. Now I'm going to take a big sip of coffee

and start reading about the general state of the game industry. I don't want to be mean to this game because the more I play it, the more I find to like, like the emphasis on puzzle platforming that's pretty unique in the Metroid-Vinia space, as far as I'm aware. It's a million little things that I imagine wouldn't be as big of a deal

if I were playing at a lower difficulty. Animation clarity is a problem, lack of interesting enemy behaviours, lack of crowd control options despite combat encounters featuring lots of crowds, sponginess. I've been playing like five or six hours at this point, so I wouldn't be surprised if things coalesce a bit better as I go along. It does fairly unique doing this juggly type of combat in this genre.

I really wish they would have been given a chance to iterate. I keep comparing it in my head to three other non-Metroyd non-Carsylvania, well, kinder, Metroidvania as I've played. Momodora, Reverie Under the Moonlight, Bloodstained, Ritual of the Night, and Blasphemers. In so many ways where it can be directly compared, it comes up short, but I appreciate the ways in which it's unique. I would agree with all three of those, because I like all three of those games more than I like this man so far. Mobodora is really fun. Oh, yeah. That's a candidate for the future.

Chris, do you want to tackle Spencer C? No, I want to do Rouse Now, Kate, do you want to pop up it in? I can do Spencer C. All righty. One thing I've found that I don't like about this game is that there seem to be quite a few places that seem like they want you to try and get to with various methods of jumping, climbing only to find nothing. I wish there was more hidden rewards to find tucked away in the corners. I am a fan of that is a lot And Chris

I wanted to do this one because I like the movie The District of Science Theater episode from which the name Roused Hour comes I'm having a great time so far Yeah the combat can take a little bit to get used to Especially as all the buttons fill up with different combat moves But luckily the options provide enough flexibility

To make it enjoyable to anyone Platforming is top notch I really enjoyed the platform puzzles of the depths And the Shadow and Rush simmered powers Really make the level exploration work for me Should I resume, repeat my role as peripheral? Sure. Bring it home for us, Stuart. Am I missing something, or is the healing in this game really stingy?

Missing something. Unrelated. I'm about a quarter of the way through, which feels like a very, very little, considering I put in like nine hours so far, but whatever. Something this game is good at is creating navigational distinctive and interesting zones. This is something that a lot of California games struggled with. I feel like the real reference point would be something like Hollow Night or Ori and the Blind Forest, but what I heard going in is that this game dips into a lot of Metroidvania stuff without having a strong identity on its own and I was curious how I would feel without any strong familiarity with the games it's drawing from

so far I'm like 50-50 on that assessment as someone who isn't an expert in it but really likes the history and mythology of the ancient near east I give this game a lot of points for being about that wanted to do a big that for the end very good So we are, we're out of time for this episode, and we're out of time for this episode. And we haven't really talked about Prince of Persia of the Lost Crown, how it works as a game. game, although the community did kind of step in to help flesh that out. Had I known that we were going to spend more than half an hour just talking about how much we hate the combat and how

frustrating it is, as opposed to just kind of like passing on or like touching on that and then moving along, I would have structured this episode differently. But you know, you live and you learn. But next time... It could work, because next time it's just going to be a pure positivity. Well, I mean, next time is just going to be us talking, you know, in depth about the entirety of the game. So it may be a bit longer than usual. But I think it will be, you know, this was like the prelude episode. This was the demo. I'm sorry if you don't love the free demo that you just downloaded. But I promise if you pay for the full game, it's much better. It's not just seven people exposit. It's a full. It's a full. it's a full adventure, a full journey into Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown. No, you never know how these things are going to go. So this was not the episode that I expected, but it was still a good conversation, very interesting, and I would say certainly heartfelt. So thank the three of you and also the community for chiming in. And we'll be back in a few weeks, a couple of months,

I don't know, to, I think, bring it home and wrap up Prince of Persia of the Lost Crown. And if it did sound like we were being kind of negative here, please understand that there was the constant refrain that, yes, we find these things that we're talking about frustrating, but it was kind of like getting it all out of the way because there's a lot that we like about the game. And I'm glad that Kate encouraged us to play this game because, you know, once I kind of got over the fact that the game wants me to. to fight people all the time and figure out how to mitigate that. The exploration, the puzzles, the platforming, the flow, the skill acquisition order, and kind of the openness and flexibility of it all, it's all very satisfying. I see a lot in this game that I like, and I'm looking forward to clearing out the back half of it and completing it. And I do think that, you know, when we get together next time, the tone of the episode will be much more.

more positive and upbeat. Because there's so much good stuff in The Lost Crown. We just had to, you know, get our caveats out of the way, I think. So thank you, Kate, Stewart, Chris, and community for weighing in. You are now free to advance to the end of the game. It's a spoiler. Spoilers for all. No spoiler warnings whatsoever. Just spoil the hell out of everything. It's a no hold barred. So dig in and get ready for the next episode, which will be along before too long, jump into the Metroidvania Conversation channel on our Discord and share your thoughts with one another and with us. You too could be famous on Retronauts, possibly sounding like Yogi Bear. Thank you for a lot.

So anyway, yes, of course. This has been Retronauts episode 705. That's a lot of episodes, and we're going to keep making episodes. If you want to enjoy the 704 other episodes that we've made so far, I encourage you to go to Retronauts.com or check out pretty much any digital delivery platform besides Spotify, because we're there. And you can listen to us. You can also support this podcast and help us to make future episodes 700 more, maybe more than that, by going to patreon.com slash Retronauts and subscribing to the show, If you subscribe at the, what is it, $2 a month level, then you get early access to episodes without advertisements.

That's awesome. But if you subscribe at the $5 a month or higher level, then you can join the Discord and talk about this and future Metroidvania games, among other things. With us, you can banter with me about Prague Rock if you want. That's a special Discord exclusive, just for you, the cool Retronauts subscriber. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. that's my pitch now i'm going to let other people make their pitches kate please pitch at us oh oh hello i i'm i'm critical kate willer uh you can find me on the internet by searching critical kate on blue sky or youtube or possibly even google sometimes um i research and write about

forgotten video game history uh chris simms what do you can find me by going to t h That's my website. It's got links to all the stuff that I do, including the weekly War Rocket Ajax podcast, which is about comics, pop culture, and swords. We are spending a good chunk of this year, rating swords submitted by our listeners. So if you want to know where the Dragon Slayer stacks up against the Batlet or the Master Sword stacks up against the Moonlight Great Sword, it's the show for you. Is it a Batleth a sword, not a polar arm? there's no pole in a bat left Jeremy come on

you gotta hold on to something it's all metal it's all metal it's a sword I did have a debate with a friend over what do you put a flag on you put a flag on a metal pole come on I did have a debate over whether it was a sword or an axe with a friend

but a pole arm come on it's like a sort of a half a semicircle that you sort of wield isn't it? It's a bad sword like a giant knuckle duster that you hold with both hands with spikes on it yeah

bad sort but having said that haven't listened to the episode so I can't comment obviously you know you can also if you want if you want me to make things up about people in your video game you can hire me to do that too just go to my website like I said all right and Stuart Chip yes hello I'm Stuart Chip you can hear me mostly on retronauts you can read my book all games are good which I plugged earlier in the show and it's obviously a tremendous book which you know I would say that but it is and also I'm going to be at a Long Island Retro Gaming Expo Convention this year, which is genuinely terrifying. But if you want to come up to me and say nice things about Marie Hell, you can feel free.

I'll be delighted. Don't talk to me about video games, though. I'm not interested. Thank you. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, on the internet. At this point, I don't think I need to promote my videos because people know me more for my videos than for Retronauts, which seems wrong. But my face does appear in my videos, so that's probably why they're like, oh, it's that guy.

I recognize that, you know, the fact that he looks like a 1914 Irish newsboy. One and only Jeremy Parrish. So, yeah, check out my videos on YouTube or just listen to Retronauts. You'll get your fill of me no matter what. But until then, there are more Retronauts episodes coming your way along the internet. Look forward to them. And please subscribe to the Patreon because that's how we make the things. They don't get made for free.

because we got mortgages to pay. Oh, my God. That's it. We'll be back to talk more about the lost crown before too long. You know, Kate, can you do Snagelfus? What does Snagelpus sound like again?

Haven't the Megatroyd? Absolutely. I don't think I can do snagletopus without some frap. You've got to get that quaver in the voice yet. I think it's like, I think snaglpus is a little bit like close to, what's his name? Pairing is not optional here at all, I think. Is that a Christian? Okay, those barrenous. That's pretty good.

That was, like, trying to do a walk-in, because I think walking is like, you can almost get to a snagglebus from a walk-in, kind of. I just want to do it. I want to have a go at snagopuss now. It's been, it's already quite long, you know. Parrying is not optional here at all. It's not like it. Parrying's not optional here at all.

Okay, I think we went off the rails with this. So let's... To Metroid. Let's... That's... that's good stuff that's good stuff that's the best that's my best joke in the whole show