The Rogue Prince of Persia Early Access Review

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Fast Facts

Establishing a Domain

The Rogue Prince of Persia is a rogue-lite action platformer that focuses on movement. Developed by the same people who created Dead Cells, I was incredibly excited to give this game a shot. Is it worthy of royalty? Find out in this Rapid Review. 

As I booted the title up for the first time, I was introduced to the world surrounding me. My village was attacked, and I needed to retaliate against the Huns for any chance of survival. It certainly did not mystify me, but it served the purpose adequately. The story featured in The Rogue Prince of Persia established my motive but was not developed much.

Unfortunately, passing dialogue between characters is even less intriguing. There are a few characters to interact with throughout my playthrough, but each of them is forgettable and failed to engage me. This could be because I know very little about the Prince of Persia series, but I was a bit disappointed with this. Neither the story nor the dialogue kept me engaged. 

Thankfully, the gameplay was a lot of fun to mess around with. For starters, the game features a very detailed tutorial which showcases my character’s abilities and some practical use cases. It made it easy to get accustomed to the controls. 

However, beyond the tutorial, I was impressed to realize that there was a lot to continue learning. My movement mechanics could be used in many ways, and that in turn made navigating the world very engaging. I also enjoyed that the movement in The Rogue Prince of Persia felt significantly distinct from that in Dead Cells. I was able to find my rhythm in this game, but it did not come immediately. 

Available Options

Part of this rhythm is related to the variety of options available. I could climb walls as well as the background, dash in the air, and perform a variety of attacks. I enjoyed chaining my different abilities together, often leading to faster movement around stages. The developers further encourage this with a temporary speed boost which is granted for engaging with different climbing activities. Each of these components blends to make movement in The Rogue Prince of Persia very enjoyable. 

I also found the levels themselves interesting. While it was typically a fairly straight shot to the end, there are branching paths that lead to the same place. This gave me a lot of liberty in how I chose to get to different areas. Moreover, due to the unique movement mechanics, it was fun to mess around with different sections. On some of my earlier playthroughs, I stayed more grounded whereas I clambered around a lot more on some of my later ones. The levels complimented the main character nicely, in a way that provided some satisfying gameplay. 

While I enjoyed the level designs and manoeuvring through them, the enemies in The Rogue Prince of Persia were a bit underwhelming. They were nicely animated, telegraphed attacks clearly, and certainly served their purpose, but none of them felt overly interesting. Many of them simply shot projectiles or attacked with melee weapons. Though this is not necessarily a bad thing, it made a lot of the enemy interactions blend. For most enemies, I attacked them in the same way, sometimes avoiding attacks with my agility. Though the enemies were serviceable, none of them felt particularly charming or memorable. 

Invoking Power

Even boss enemies, which were far more interesting, were still not as exciting as I would have hoped. They are interesting fights, which required me to pay attention, but their patterns were not overly challenging. Instead, these fights seemed fierce because they had large pools of health. This meant that during these fights I fought through many similar waves of attacks, often searching for a specific opening that enabled me to deal damage. Though these fights were fun, they failed to impress me.

Moreover, I was a bit disappointed by the way I could level my equipment up too. Throughout my run, I found weapons that had a base level to them. This meant that even if two weapons are identical, one found later during my run would be innately better than the other one. While I enjoyed how this encouraged me to experiment with a variety of different weapons, I did not like how I felt forced to get rid of old weapons. Still, if I wanted to maintain a certain weapon, I could upgrade it. While this was somewhat neat, the upgrades did not alter the way I played the game. Instead, I just got a simple damage upgrade. The way the weapon upgrades worked in The Rogue Prince of Persia did not impress me, although they were fun to use. 

On the other hand, there is another set of passive upgrades that were a lot of fun to mess around with. These upgrades get slotted into a case where neighbouring pieces can be upgraded depending on what pieces surround them. It was a simple system, but it encouraged me to build a strategy based on not only what pieces I had but what pieces I could use to upgrade my powerful passive abilities. 

Wrapping it Up

To supplement the gameplay, the developers included a lovely soundtrack to accompany me on my journey. I appreciated how it was different in each of the biomes, and that it encapsulated the atmosphere of each area. The sound design was lovely. 

I also enjoyed the art style a lot. The colour palette is unique and stands out compared to other titles on the market. While some of the enemies are a bit generic, they telegraph their attacks excellently, making combat smooth and intuitive. I also enjoyed the art direction.

However, despite enjoying many components of The Rogue Prince of Persia, it is important to know that this title is in early access. The game is unfinished, and therefore I was not able to view all the content that the developers had planned. However, currently, while I like many things, I also do not think there is enough interesting content for the price being asked. Moving around the game is a lot of fun and I could increase the difficulty by adding additional challenges too. I am optimistic that the game will be excellent as updates continue to launch, however, I would suggest waiting for future updates before diving in. 

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