Prince of Persia: Rival Swords review

Combat, on the other hand, is kind of tedious and button-mashy, and while the Prince can bust out a nice assortment of acrobatic dodges and attacks, fighting still boils down to busting out repetitive combos until your enemies die. It's far more satisfying to just bust out stealthy "speed kills" whenever possible, which let you sneak up on enemies and hack them to death through a series of timed button hits. (These are also instrumental to winning the handful of boss battles, so you know.)

Fighting gets a hell of a lot more interesting when the Dark Prince shows up. A by-product of the internal struggle between the original charming, naive Princeand the "battle-hardened outcast"he became in Warrior Within, the Dark Prince is a shock-hairedwraith with a razor-sharp whip imbedded in his forearm. Most of the time, he's just a sneering voice in the Prince's head, but he takes over when the story calls for it.

The problem with the Dark Prince is that he loses health constantly, and can only heal with magical sand - which, conveniently, is stored in enemy torsos. So if the Prince's segments aren't frantic enough for you, turning into the Dark Prince gives the game more urgency and a sharper focus on combat as you plow ahead as fast as possible, looking for the next enemy to get your sand fix from. It's not all bad, though; the Dark Prince's chain whip makes fighting (and death-from-above speed kills) a lot more interesting.