Amazon.com: Prince of Persia 2 Warrior Within: Playstation 2: Video Games

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116 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but pales in comparison to Sands of Time., December 19, 2004

By	sporkdude "sporkdude" (San Jose, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time was a unique and revolutionary game that relied on intuitive and slow paced gameplay with increased emphasis on thoughts and visuals as opposed to button twitching action. This game, the sequel, moves the game more towards the ordinary action, cliched video game, with increased annoyances from large fights, backtracking, and bosses. Original games shouldn't move back towards the standard, formulaic game, but unfortunately, this does.

The first thing everyone is probably wondering is how different is this from the Sands of Time? Well, the puzzles, the intuitive and graceful controls and the fun movements are all there. Many of the same elements of gameplay still exist. Just getting from point A to point B in a large room with pillars, ledges, running on walls, swing on ropes, sliding down drapes, it's all there. Still the same reliance on thinking, visuals. In fact, there is actual improvement. The last game had jumps that were questionable and jumps were made blindly. This game has eliminated much of that. Other improvements include the fact that you traverse the same palace within two different time periods, meaning that the same rooms will have different traps or different lighting. A very interesting and unique concept.

The other changes are more dramatic. The videos and styles are a little darker, they've added chase scenes, and most drastic of all, they changed the fighting system and added a lot more fighting.

First off, the videos, audio, and visuals of the enemies are of a slightly darker nature, which is pretty much the only reason why it's a mature rating. It's worth noting that they fixed the sound problems from SOT and added subtitles. They changed some of the music. While still ambient, fighting scenes switch to guitar riffs from Godsmack (I think). While I like Godsmack and I own a few albums of theirs, the guitar music is annoying and does not fit well in this game. The story is decent, and CGI is pretty good though. Unfortunately, I have no idea why they made it rated mature. Just removing a few lines, and removing the blood, and making small changes would make this rated T or E. It's pretty pathetic when a video game feels it needs to add sexual connotations and needless blood just to increase sales. All it does is embarrass anyone who sees the game (polygon half-naked woman are just lame) and alienates a large group of players.

Secondly, they added more time-based schemes, most notably, chase scenes. Basically, a monster comes in and chases you and you have a limited amount of time to move from one room to another. Now, unfortunately, this does not work. The main reason is that the camera angles switch so often that orienting yourself takes a second, a second you cannot spare. What's worse is that sometimes the cutscenes themselves ruin the momentum and cause you to lose you life. The chase scenes are basically just a sequence of run to room, get caught, start the scene over, run to the next room, get caught, repeat. Just boring, iterative, and badly designed. What's worse is that some controls, noticeably swinging on ropes are poles, are not intuitive when timing is concerned.

Thirdly, there are also other cliched things that just annoyed me. Backtracking is slightly annoying, but the lack of balance is huge. The backtracking means that you'll actually go through many of the same rooms a few times. One time I got really lost and had to refer to a walkthrough in order to get my bearings straight. It didn't help that the map is absolutely useless, and it's one big picture with two markers. Not too fun, and a large step backwards in gaming in my opinion. When I say lack of balance, I talk about the distribution of save points and life regeneration points. To reach one point will be dirt easy, then next would require tons of enemies, tons of timed jumps, and a chase scene, which would sometimes takes forever. Also of note is the fact that life upgrades are harder to find. If you want the "good" ending, you've got to get all the life upgrades. This either requires you to get lucky (good luck with that), follow a walkthrough, which isn't fun, or backtrack a lot and do a lot of random searching. Either way, it's boring and I didn't even bother.

Fourthly, and most obvious is the "free form fighting system". This is another name for superfluous and unneeded combos. While the first game had enemies that were easy to kill with a few moves, this game is a bit more complicated. It'll take some time to figure out the way to kill an enemy, but once you do, it's pretty much the same repetitive motions over and over again, just more buttons. Unlike the first game, the enemies are not a minor annoyance, but a huge annoyance. There are so many that just to traverse between save points requires you to kill tons of the same enemies for no reason. Many times you can pass by them, but a flaw in the system means that the prince will be in combat mode when an enemy is close by. This means that many of the Prince's moves are not available until you kill the enemies, even though there is no need to kill them in order to move on. Sometimes, especially near the end, enemies just keep coming up. They are relatively easy to kill, but you might mess up once in a while. This is fine, except when there are about twenty enemies to kill, and all it takes is a few snafus ups to die, meaning that killing the enemies is very meticulous, but very, very monotonous. It's just the height of tedium and time wasting. The bosses are also an unneeded clich�. For example, the last enemy takes almost a half an hour to kill. I encountered a bug when I was about twenty minutes into the last boss, which required me to restart the fight. Talk about boring.

Finally, there are some huge glitches. One caused me to lose about twenty minutes or work, and another would have forced me to restart if I didn't keep multiple save games on my memory cards. Two huge bugs discovered in my first try. Talk about a rushed game.

All in all, it's a pretty good game, but a little too much like every other game out there. A bad direction for the series, but it still has a bit of the Sands of Time magic to make it very enjoyable.

Pros:
Incredible atmosphere
Controls are still pretty intuitive for the puzzles
Great concept of travelling the same Palace in two different times
Good Videos
No walkthrough or guide needed for most of the game

Cons:
Repetitive, dull, and an unnecessary large amount of fighting
Cameras angles still lacking, especially during timed action
Unbalanced game
Needless backtracking
Needless Mature rating.
Useless Map
Huge glitches
Guitar Riffs don't work well

Time to complete: 20 hours

Difficulty level: Medium/Low (on Easy)

Frustration level: Medium

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars i don't care what people say, the darker the better., December 16, 2005

By	ryobe2k5 "Ryan" (Saratoga Springs, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

first of all, this game is definitely one of my all time favorites. I got hooked into the genre by playing SOT, which was a good game, but in my opinion could have had just a little bit more edge, which is what they did with this game. It could be that i'm just a sucker for the new free-form fighting system, in which you can pull off a slew of ridiculously awesome looking combos,or the fact that it's just dark in general. I don't want to steer anyone wrong though, SOT was great, i thought how they played the prince off as an innocent bystander of the vizier's twisted little plan was good, even possibly legendary, but honestly this is a different time period in the prince's life...it's not even realistic to claim that he wouldn't be battle-scarred after all those years. So personally i think the change is good and thats all i have to say about that.

So anyways, moving on...if you haven't played it yet and have also played the first one, what are the changes?? Well quite obviously as previously stated it has much more edge, it has some sexual themes, which honestly i don't even think are really life-changing, a teen could most definitely handle it, and the prince is much darker and battle-scarred in this one, which i think is great. Also, the added some more obstacles like the wall run rope and the curtain sliding thing. There are also some chase scenes and some godsmack to go along with em. The videos are cooler, the obstacles are harder, and i think it takes a little more thought, you really gotta look around sometimes. But without a doubt the biggest change is the free-form fighting system.

So...why complicate a game with numerous combos, when you can just have a couple......i'll answer this just by saying because it gives the game flair, edge, and by god it just looks really cool. You know what, if you dont like em, dont use em. thats what i say. you can stick to the same moves that you used in the previous game if you really wanna, but why? if you hit random buttons you can make something look cool so why not? give it a shot...reach into that inner gamer thats a sucker for sweet looking moves and just try it for gosh sakes!!! personally, i like knowing what combination of buttons is gunna make the move look like, so i just memorize, but you dont have to and thats why its great.

OK, so what is with the chase scenes...why complain? i didnt have a problem getting through any of them, personally i like them because they make you think quick, which may make it harder, but come on!! you should know when you signed up for this that you are going to be thinking just a little...this is POP, not like dynasty warriors, in which you just kill everyone. its gunna take some thought so why not make you think fast, it keeps you on your toes. Plus, i don't know about you but the "i stand alone" chase theme definitely should pump you up, a little metal never hurt anyone.

ok...the one flaw...expanding your life...this wasn't easy. I'm going to be completely honest. I cheated and looked at a walkthrough. When someone tells me the ending is going to be cooler if you get all of these i gotta do it even if that means cheating a little. Even when you get to the rooms that expand your lifes the traps are pretty friggin hard i'm not going to lie..it just takes some time, but, what doesn't these days.

alrite so finally all i have to say is ignore the rumors that they made the POP genre look bad, its not true, if you like cute little prince's running through palace's with a princess stick to SOT i guess, i don't know why people get so overeasy about the M rating but its REALLY NOT THAT BAD. Its better :)
so go and by it at your nearest video game store today, at least before you get the third one ;)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Far from beating it...but wow!, December 11, 2004

By	incubus1 - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

I don't write reviews for games very much, well actually I never have. But for this one I couldn't help but write one. This is by far the best adventure game I have ever played, for any system. The sword play is simply breath taking and the storyline is about as good as it gets.

Basically the whole plot is that the Prince has to go back in time to destroy the Sands of Time, but while doing so you're being chased by an unbeatable creature called the Dahaka that is trying to kill you. You are also met with a slew of other twists and puzzles that truly test your skills.

Everything about this game is amazing, the acting, voice-overs, plot, action, and gameplay. The thing that I like most about this is how you can incorporate poles, walls, and even the enemies while fighting. The powers you develop over the course of the game are also an enormous treat that actually help you, and that you will use. The graphics are also a thing to behold, the cutscenes when you kill people, may it be cutting them in half (horizontal and vertical), cutting off their head, or just stabbing them are just awesome. It all has just left me wanting more.

I reccommend everybody at least rent this because it is emense fun, and the terrific plot gets you involved to a point where you just want to keep playing just see what happens next.