Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7442 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Released on: 2005-12-09
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Xbox

Amazon.co.uk Preview
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones has a lot to live up to, in order to satisfy fans of both The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. Although the latter was more commercially successful many have argued that The Sands of Time was the better game, with more involving puzzles and a more engaging main character.

This second sequel aims to combine elements of both with the Prince returning to the besieged city of Babylon. In escaping from capture he inadvertently gives life to the Dark Prince – an evil alter ego with quite different powers.

As the game progress you can switch between the two characters by stepping into fire, with each using their different weapons in even more gruesome ways than before. The Dark Prince’s Daggertail is particularly deadly, being a sort of long spiky chain with a blade on the end that works rather like the whips from Castlevania.

As the latest in a long line of games to take inspiration from Grand Theft Auto the whole game is set within the city of Babylon, which is yours to explore as you wish. Although there are no vehicles to carjack you can take part in some particularly brutal chariot races, if you get tired of walking and jumping around.

Whether this ends up being the best Prince of Persia yet rather depends on how much you like The Sands of Time, but it certainly is the most attractive with some superb graphics and enough new features to make Warrior Within seem even more lacking than ever. -- Harrison Dent

This preview is based on an incomplete version of the game; features or problems mentioned above may not appear in the finished game.

Manufacturer's Description
The Prince of Persia makes his way home to Babylon, bearing with him Kaileena, the enigmatic Empress of Time, and unspeakable scars from the Island of Time. But instead of the peace he longs for, he finds his kingdom ravaged by war and Kaileena the target of a brutal plot.

Cast to the streets, hunted as a fugitive, the Prince soon discovers that the Sands have tainted him, too. They have given rise to a deadly Dark Prince, whose spirit gradually possesses him&.

Customer Reviews

How to ruin a good game!
Having not played the previous two installments I came into the series not expecting much ( I did own the original on my spectrum, so an improvement on that would do!! ;-) ) To start off, all seemed superb. The cut-scene animation is really excellent, drawing you into the story at the start, the same can be said for the in game graphics- simply gorgeous, detailed levels, and the main character animation is really something, full of lots of little quirks and details.
So, why only the 2 stars? I had read about the fact there weren't enough save points, but at the start this really didn't seem to be an issue, it never taking more than 2 or 3 attempts to pass a section....however...once things get a bit trickier this proves to be the game's (rather large) achilles heel. You can spend 10 mins leaping over poles, jumping from ledge to ledge, killing a couple of guards along the way perhaps losing a bit of health (which you can't replenish BTW until the next save-point!), and you're perched above a square with three guards in it, you leap and try to perform a 'speed kill' (more on this in a bit) but you don't have the super-human reaction times required to make it work so you have to fight them one-on-one, which is virtually impossible...by the time you've bashed in a 7 button combo you've been hacked into dog food, so you go all the way back to the start (the last save point)!!! It wouldn't be so bad if you perhaps save just before the big battle because you know you'll beat them in the end, but the fact you have to go all the way through the 10 minutes of fighting and acrobatics again, is INCREDIBLY frustrating. You can rewind time, but only 8 seconds worth, good for correcting mis-steps, no use at all if things go against you in a fight lasting a couple of minutes, usually by the time you realises it's all gone Pete-Tong it's too late! I've spent the best part of 4 hours repeatedly playing the same section (I did finally beat the guards (just)...walked around a corner only to be savaged by some demon hound things which came from nowehere and , you guessed it, I'm all the way back to the start!! As this is still quite early on on the game I can only assume things get harder.
Next problem is the 'speed kills' a novel way of dispatching enemies if you manage to sneak up on them, killing them in one stroke so you don't have to go into hand-to-hand combat with them. In a nut-shell you have to hit specific buttons when the screen 'distorts' a certain way, this all seemed quite simple but as the game progresses the margin for error becomes so minute it becomes practically impossible to complete one. I'm often sitting there, finger on the 'X' button waiting for the 'distortion' and I still manage to miss the 1/1000th of a second window you're given. When you take on 3 or 4 opponents you'll need to manage this 3 or 4 times, in a row, without error, pretty much impossible.
If it wasn't for these two problems this would be a truly excellent game, as it is I'm so frustrated having to continually replay the same levels over and over again I'm returning my copy before I throw my controller through my TV in pure rage!(BTW, there a numerous walkthroughs on the web, but no useful cheats which will help if you just can't beat someone ) You feel sorry for the people who have clearly spent a lot of time in the design of this game for it two be ruined two such blatant flaws. Only recommended to people with God-like patience.

Has it's moments - but then all games do
This game has great gameplay, the new speed kill is so much fun and looks terrific when pulled off correctly. The Dark-prince sequences are clever as well as fast paced!

However there is one problem I really do have about this game...why could they not keep the cast from the second game. In Warrior Within, the Prince had a voice that says "watch out bad guys I'm gonna wipe the floor with you" but in this game he sounds like a fairy! His mean-ness has gone....

Back to the good-points though.

The boss fights are good - even these use the speed kills and again the visuals look amazing enough to make you think "wow i wanna be able to did that!"
The dark prince is really cool, the dialogue between the Prince and his darker self is well thought and the story will only make sense if you played the first game.

***Fantastic***
Once again another excellent game!
The third in the story so far and just as good as the previous two.
In this one, the prince frequently mutates into the dark prince. With this character the basic movements are the same but you have to collect sand to top up your health which is continually dropping. A good twist and often adrenalin pumping when your pot of sand or the next kill is one second out of reach. The dark Prince has a chain as his second weapon allowing you to swing from things as well as the wall runs etc. Good fun!
We found this quite challenging in places but not sooo hard that you can't get through it eventually after a bit (and occasionally a lot) of trial and error (and a bit of shouting at the TV). It has a good mix of puzzle based challenges, easy, moderate and hard fighting and other things, ie chariot racing and the extra life challenges.
Sometimes the fighting can be a little annoying when you want the Prince to fight a character and he disappears off in a roll around the screen and not doing what you think you're telling him to do - but that's mainly down to mashing the buttons in a blind panic. I found myself often shouting "What are you doing, you're meant to be hitting him not bouncing off the wall"

Overall a thoroughly excellent game and an absolute must have!
Bring on POP 4!!!