The Rogue Prince of Persia Review – Where Parkour Leads and Story Follows

The Rogue Prince of Persia Review

The Prince of Persia franchise has a complicated history. Early and beloved successes were followed by years of missteps, disappointments, rumors, delayed games, and the occasional happy surprise. One of these more unexpected and well-received games was Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The Lost Crown was an assured Metroidvania-style action platformer. It felt like a natural fit for the series, though it was a standalone game with no real connection to the earlier titles. The Rogue Prince of Persia was released into Early Access in 2024 and is now in its final form. It’s a 2D roguelike, heavily emphasizing parkour and acrobatic traversal. The Rogue Prince of Persia feels a little like The Lost Crown’s cousin, which is not a bad thing at all.

From Dead Cells to Persian Wells

The Rogue Prince of Persia was developed by Evil Empire, best known for creating DLC for Dead Cells. It’s no surprise that a bit of Dead Cells’ combat and rhythm flows through Rogue Prince of Persia. However, the main driver was the desire to translate the original Prince of Persia games’ fluid parkour, trap-avoiding, and puzzle-solving movement into a modern rogue-lite experience.

As a character, the Prince gets reinvented for every game. Of course, the setting is always some variant of the Arabic world. In The Rogue Prince of Persia, the narrative has the title character attempting to save the city of Ctesiphon. It’s being overrun by the Huns, led by Nogai and an army of human and supernatural soldiers, assassins, and monsters. Each chapter brings you to a different location on the overworld map as you pursue the Huns.

You meet quite a few NPCs, both back at your home-base Oasis and during exploration. Ultimately, the story lags behind the game’s action in importance. Each run of a level includes the same characters, with the same unvoiced dialogue, so the narrative can’t help but feel a little superfluous. Those looking for something equal to The Lost Crown’s story and larger-than-life characters will be disappointed. Mostly, fans don’t come to the genre for story.

Doing the Weave

Where The Rogue Prince of Persia excels is in its movement mechanics and the general flow of combat and exploration. Though it superficially looks a bit like a platformer or Metroidvania, the emphasis is on using a well-honed toolkit to efficiently power through levels. The Prince can fluidly wall-run, jump, climb, and dash. The procedurally generated levels provide ample opportunities for the Prince to demonstrate his prowess. Each level introduces a new set of hazards and traps to play with and/or avoid.

Levels are procedurally generated. Sometimes this results in sections of the map that impede the rhythm and flow. At times, I was having a great run, only to be stymied by a combination of wall climbing and finicky ping-pong jumps that took repeated attempts and slowed the momentum. A hand-crafted map would have solved this problem, but that’s not the rogue-lite way.

Generally, level design is not about finding secret areas or shortcuts, but avoiding traps and hazards, killing enemies, and unlocking or buying better gear. Levels are relatively bite-sized. Sometimes the procedural design can make the route to the exit less direct than others. There are optional small areas that are simply parkour challenges without enemies or loot.

Going With the Flow

I am an action platform game designer’s worst nightmare. Or maybe the best opportunity. You see, platforming that demands tight and precise timing is my gaming Achilles heel. Most of the time, movement in The Rogue Prince of Persia felt intuitive and enjoyable, even to me. Combat feels great, too, courtesy of the game’s wide range of weapons. The Prince carries two weapons, one for melee and another for some sort of ranged attack. He can kick enemies into hazards and has a special attack as well.

Combat ties into the game’s rogue-lite progression systems. Killing enemies earns coins, which can be spent on randomized weapons, upgrades, consumables, and buffs during a run. Upgrading weapon types, powerful jewels, and other combat aides — but not specific persistent weapons — is done back at the Oasis. There is also an RPG-lite system for upgrading the Prince’s basic stats. Overall, the rogue-lite mechanics work as expected and don’t include a lot of new ideas or systems. Its mechanics are deep enough to sustain it and keep it interesting.

Each level of each chapter carries over some basic enemy types and introduces new ones. Because enemy placement is also randomized, runs don’t always ramp up from easy to more challenging enemies in the expected way. The flow of each chapter is a couple of levels, followed by a boss. While there’s always a healing fountain right before the boss, failure also means an end to the run. Overall, boss design is good, though some are bolstered by seemingly endless reserves of health. These fights can feel less about learning patterns than battles of attrition and survival.

The Roguelite Way

Though I haven’t been playing the game since it entered Early Access, I’m aware that it has undergone a few significant changes along the way. In addition to adding lots of new content, the art style has morphed into its present form. Visually, The Rogue Prince of Persia is a mixture of colorful characters and enemies and a pretty wide range of environments and biomes. Animations are fluid, and there are some nice combat effects. It has the look of a vibrant Saturday morning cartoon.

The repeated run mechanic of a rogue-lite can really showcase a game’s art. In The Rogue Prince of Persia, it also highlights the world’s lack of textural detail and the relatively small number of structural elements that make up each level. Running through each chapter multiple times was a balance between fluid action that grew increasingly more assured and visual design that became repetitive. It isn’t helped by audio that’s pretty understated, despite some appealing musical cues.

The one thing that all roguelikes and rogue-lites need to get right is convincing the player that the next run is going to be rewarding in some new way. In The Rogue Prince of Persia, this most often comes from increasing mastery of the game’s traversal, which is both accessible and challenging. Procedurally generated levels sometimes inhibit the flow and create frustration. At this point, The Prince of Persia is more a vague character concept than a game franchise, but it keeps inspiring developers in new directions, and that’s a win for gamers.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***