I installed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to test some EAX compatibility stuff and ended up starting another playthrough. 😁

A few years ago, I replayed it on a CRT monitor at 800x600 with a small amount of AA/AF. But this time, I have the game fully maxed out, running on a modern LCD monitor at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 16xAF forced in the Nvidia driver panel. Despite the relatively modest polygon count on the characters and some low-res textures here and there, Sands of Time still looks beautiful due to its unique art design. Some areas have an almost "dream like" feel to them, with sand and dust particles floating around and glittering in the wind.

I can also appreciate its soundstage more fully now that I'm playing it under WinXP using an X-Fi Titanium hooked up to a set of 5.1 surround speakers. For example, it's a bit easier to pinpoint the location of sand clouds by the noise that they make. And the EAX effects in underground areas where water is dripping and flowing around you also sound more realistic. The music is nice too, and the voice acting for the main characters is very good. Some minor NPCs are voiced poorly though, like the one guard in the chamber which activates the palace security system who keeps yelling at you in an annoying manner.

Anyway, I got used to the controls pretty quickly, but I forgot how much the camera likes to jerk around in this game. Sometimes, it can be distracting, especially during combat. I get the feeling that this didn't bother me as much back in the day, because I wasn't playing at a locked 60 FPS then, but it's a lot more noticeable now. Well, the game is still fun to play after all this time, so I shouldn't complain too much.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-03, 20:48:

I installed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to test some EAX compatibility stuff and ended up starting another playthrough. […]
Show full quote

I installed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to test some EAX compatibility stuff and ended up starting another playthrough. 😁

A few years ago, I replayed it on a CRT monitor at 800x600 with a small amount of AA/AF. But this time, I have the game fully maxed out, running on a modern LCD monitor at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 16xAF forced in the Nvidia driver panel. Despite the relatively modest polygon count on the characters and some low-res textures here and there, Sands of Time still looks beautiful due to its unique art design. Some areas have an almost "dream like" feel to them, with sand and dust particles floating around and glittering in the wind.

I can also appreciate its soundstage more fully now that I'm playing it under WinXP using an X-Fi Titanium hooked up to a set of 5.1 surround speakers. For example, it's a bit easier to pinpoint the location of sand clouds by the noise that they make. And the EAX effects in underground areas where water is dripping and flowing around you also sound more realistic. The music is nice too, and the voice acting for the main characters is very good. Some minor NPCs are voiced poorly though, like the one guard in the chamber which activates the palace security system who keeps yelling at you in an annoying manner.

Anyway, I got used to the controls pretty quickly, but I forgot how much the camera likes to jerk around in this game. Sometimes, it can be distracting, especially during combat. I get the feeling that this didn't bother me as much back in the day, because I wasn't playing at a locked 60 FPS then, but it's a lot more noticeable now. Well, the game is still fun to play after all this time, so I shouldn't complain too much.

Thanks for all the info Joseph. I wasn’t planning on playing this game but I think I might give it a go. What graphics card did you use?

zuldan wrote on 2024-08-03, 21:15:

Thanks for all the info Joseph. I wasn’t planning on playing this game but I think I might give it a go. What graphics card did you use?

I'm playing it on the i5 3570K + GTX 970 system from my signature. But it will likely run smoothly on something less powerful as well.

I should note that the combat in Sands of Time can feel clunky on occasion, and that some folks find it fairly challenging. But I've played this game a lot back in the day, so it feels easy to me. The puzzles are another aspect that I enjoy, but again, they aren't everyone's cup of tea, especially the timed ones. So your mileage may vary.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-03, 20:48:

I installed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to test some EAX compatibility stuff and ended up starting another playthrough. 😁

One of my all time favorites. Beat it something like a dozen times over the years.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-08-04, 04:40:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-03, 20:48:

I installed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to test some EAX compatibility stuff and ended up starting another playthrough. 😁

One of my all time favorites. Beat it something like a dozen times over the years.

Mine too, and yet I recall only playing through it completely twice. The first playthrough where I aimed to find all fountains and sand clouds, and the second playthrough where I aimed for speed and skipped all of them.

Since you can have separate saves at all checkpoints, I've replayed some specific moments here and there, but somehow it doesn't feel like doing the game justice. It's really story-driven, and as such I feel it should be played beginning-to-end. Yet, who has the time.

For what it's worth - the two sequels I've only played through once beginning-to-end as far as I remember. And yet I still consider them among my favorites.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-04, 06:23:

For what it's worth - the two sequels I've only played through once beginning-to-end as far as I remember. And yet I still consider them among my favorites.

I remember being really put off by the shift in tone for Warrior Within, back when it first came out. In particular, changing the heroic, soft spoken prince into a gruff, angry edge lord was really jarring. The whole aesthetic of the game was altered too much, with the music and the visuals being far less appealing to me. IIRC, Two Thrones was a bit better, and the Prince's original voice actor returned, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first game.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-08-04, 04:40:

One of my all time favorites. Beat it something like a dozen times over the years.

I think I've revisited Sands of Time maybe 4-5 times over the years, but I only played Warrior Within and Two Thrones once. There's something magical about the original game that makes it really timeless, if you'll pardon the pun.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-04, 06:23:

Since you can have separate saves at all checkpoints, I've replayed some specific moments here and there, but somehow it doesn't feel like doing the game justice. It's really story-driven, and as such I feel it should be played beginning-to-end. Yet, who has the time.

The game is something like 5-6 hours long so it doesn't take all that much time to beat it.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-04, 06:23:

For what it's worth - the two sequels I've only played through once beginning-to-end as far as I remember. And yet I still consider them among my favorites.

I've also played them less. Maybe 4 or 5 times for Warrior Within and almost 3 times for The Two Thrones. On my last playthrough of the latter I rage quit near the end because it crashed a lot. It's really a buggy mess.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-04, 07:09:

There's something magical about the original game that makes it really timeless, if you'll pardon the pun.

I agree. The sequels, while keeping many of the iconic gameplay elements, and enhancing some of them, do not reproduce the magic of the original.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-04, 07:09:

I think I've revisited Sands of Time maybe 4-5 times over the years, but I only played Warrior Within and Two Thrones once. There's something magical about the original game that makes it really timeless, if you'll pardon the pun.

The first one feels like an ancient fable, those are indeed timeless and kept grasping at humanity imagination for millennia, for how much society wants to kill certain tropes and behaviours they are intrinsic parts of the human nature, PoP feels like that.

Sands of Time has great platforming, story and art but the combat is pretty dumb, there is one move that can let you win every single fight in the game without taking a single hit.. 😁

The 2008 Prince of Persia is my favorite, after the original.

I never got into Prince of Persia 2 by the way, is it a (EDIT: good) game?

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 07:16:

Sands of Time has great platforming, story and art but the combat is pretty dumb, there is one move that can let you win every single fight in the game without taking a single hit.. 😁

Is there really? Which move is that? I seem to recall that different enemies block some moves and succumb to others.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 07:16:

The 2008 Prince of Persia is my favorite, after the original.

I like that one too, it feels very different from the others.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 07:16:

I never got into Prince of Persia 2 by the way, is it a game?

Yes, and it's my favorite. It's like Prince of Persia 1 but with more varied gameplay, and better graphics and audio. Some feel that the added complexity is a detriment, though.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-05, 09:10:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 07:16:

Sands of Time has great platforming, story and art but the combat is pretty dumb, there is one move that can let you win every single fight in the game without taking a single hit.. 😁

Is there really? Which move is that? I seem to recall that different enemies block some moves and succumb to others.

The move where you sommersault above a unit and hit them in the back; it makes you invulnerable to any other enemies at the same time, so you can indefinitely repeat doing that..

Sands of Time has been on my todo list forever. I played it on my roommates hacked XBox back in college, and I've always meant to revisit it. Got a PC copy in a lot of used games I grabbed a while ago. I do vividly remember spamming the somersault move when the difficulty ramped up.

I think like most, the sequel turned me off. I gave it an honest attempt, but didn't really enjoy it at all. It fell prey to that same nu-metal fad that ruined Jak & Daxter.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 12:52:

The move where you sommersault above a unit and hit them in the back; it makes you invulnerable to any other enemies at the same time, so you can indefinitely repeat doing that..

No you can't, because later enemies automatically knock you off if you try that.

Basically, any enemy that's blue colored is immune to the summersault move. You need to use the wall bounce or regular attacks on those.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 12:52:

.The move where you sommersault above a unit and hit them in the back; it makes you invulnerable to any other enemies at the same time, so you can indefinitely repeat doing that..

Yes, but the blue guards and blue generals will knock you down if you try to vault over them, unless time slowdown is active.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-05, 13:24:

Basically, any enemy that's blue colored is immune to the summersault move. You need to use the wall bounce or regular attacks on those.

I took too long to post. 😜 Indeed you are correct. And the wall bounce move is also not universal (the blacksmith at least will block it 100% of the time).

Done with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. As usual, the last part of the game where you're stuck without time manipulation powers left me frustrated. The developers want you to execute perfectly timed platforming jumps while the awful camera controls makes this impossible by constantly obstructing your view. Particularly annoying are the segments where you're expected to jump down (not up) from side to side between two narrow walls multiple times, and the camera just won't show you what you need to see. And if you fail, you have to replay the entire section from the last save point, which can be like 5-10 minutes earlier. Just terrible design.

Anyway , that last bit doesn't ruin the rest of the game, which I still find excellent. Oh and, I noticed one extra tidbit this time around. During a certain section late in the game, you're searching for Farah, and need to locate her by entering passages from which the sound of water can be heard. I remember having some trouble with this while playing on stereo speakers, but it becomes extremely easy on a 5.1 surround setup. It's simple, when you hear the water sound coming from only your center speaker, that's the correct passage. Very clever use of positional audio in this instance.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-05, 13:30:

I took too long to post. 😜 Indeed you are correct. And the wall bounce move is also not universal (the blacksmith at least will block it 100% of the time).

Yup, there are a few enemies that will auto-block the wall bounce, so you can't just spam that either.

But by switching things up, as appropriate, it's easy to get a good rhythm and combat becomes pretty easy and fun. At least to me.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-05, 09:10:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-08-05, 07:16:

The 2008 Prince of Persia is my favorite, after the original.

I like that one too, it feels very different from the others.

To me, not so much. It's still a fairy tale like the original PoP and TSoT.

Moving on to Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. For the record, I did briefly try playing Warrior Within before that, but just couldn't get into it. As mentioned earlier, the huge shift in atmosphere and aesthetics compared to Sands of Time was a big turn off. And the subpar acting of the new guy who voiced the Prince in Warrior Within didn't help either. So I just looked up the relevant cutscenes on YouTube to remind myself of the plot, and moved on to the next game.

I definitively like Two Thrones better than Warrior Within, though still not as much as Sands of Time. At least the music once again sounds more Persian, and less "nu metal" compared to Warrior Within. More importantly, the original voice actor for the Prince is back, and he sounds awesome as always. I like that he sort of narrates the story once again, alongside Kaileena. He's also occasionally commenting on the state of his city and current events, which is nice. The art style in Two Thrones is somewhere in-between Warrior Within and Sands of Time, but I can live with that.

In terms of gameplay, I like the new stealth system, which kinda reminds me of Splinter Cell. What I didn't like was how long it takes until the Prince regains his time manipulation powers. In the meantime, you're expected to do a bunch of platforming, which isn't super fun when there's no rewind. Also, the checkpoints (fountains) seem to be further apart here, which makes this even more tedious.

On the tech side, I think the positional audio isn't quite as precise as in Sands of Time, but it may be too early to judge. The EAX effects are still good though. I will also say that the movements of the Prince and the enemies feel slightly less fluid in both Warrior Within and Two Thrones, compared to Sands of Time. It's not performance related, just seems like there aren't enough frames of animation between different stances, or something. Still, the gameplay is fine, and the platforming gets much easier once you're able to rewind time once again. So far so good.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-06, 11:20:

More importantly, the original voice actor for the Prince is back, and he sounds awesome as always.

Both voice actors are there. The dark prince is voiced by the WW guy and does a much better job. Maybe the character itself is more of his thing or they had a better director for the 3rd game.