It’s about time we had a spoiler thread for Prince of Persia. And since the DLC is out, now is a good time.
I’ve tried out the DLC, so I’ll probably get a few things off my chest either later tonight or tomorrow.
Anyone who hasn’t finished the main game, please steer clear of this thread.
The first time I finished the Epilogue DLC, it took me around 6-7 hours. It was really tough. But during the Epilogue I was forced to eventually learn a lot of the combo system and combat techniques that I’d completely ignored in the main game.
So when I replayed the Epilogue again this weekend, I got the “finished under 2 hours achievement”. This isn’t really fair though, because my main goal was to go for the “Born undead” achievement, which is to kill all the soldiers before they spawn. The only way to do that is to re-do platform sequences until you can do them perfectly and reach the enemy before he spawns. This means failing, and then quitting to the main menu, and then reloading a save game and doing it again, until you get it right. During the course of doing that, I got several other achievements, like being rescued by Elika less than 20 times, and finishing the Epilogue in under 2 hours, although honestly it was a lot more than 2 hours. I’d say at least 3 hours, even though I knew exactly where to go and what to do this time around.
One thing I discovered is that the game has a handful of really serious bugs related to choosing the “Quit to Main Menu” option. They really weren’t expecting players to do that apparently. There were sound-related bugs, crash bugs, and even lighting and graphics related bugs. None of which showed up except when I chose the “Quit to Main Menu” option over and over so that I could get the Born Undead achievement. It’s strange that the game has these achievements that are only really possible to get this way, and yet, that’s the way that exposes all these bugs in the game.
Oh well, it was nothing too bad. Overall the Epilogue is very satisfying to play through from a gameplay perspective, but I’d say it’s pretty bad from a narrative perspective. It’s almost as if they decided “how can we add to the end of the game without actually advancing the story in any way?”
I also noticed a lot of bugs, especially with the sound where something would go into a endless loop.
Other example is when a QTE just doesn’t recognize the button you push.
I’m also trying to get the “under 2 hours” achievements, which makes me wish they made a quick-save, quick-load option.
Awise from, etc.
I used a promo credit to get the core game from Amazon for cheap, and ended up liking it a lot more than the first couple hours led me to expect, so much so that I grabbed the Epilogue DLC when I thought I’d completed.
Keyword there is thought. I’d heard that the epilogue kicked off right where the main game ended, and thought, well, that means it picks up with the not-a-Prince contemplating choices over Elika on the slab. Then began an amusing series of glitchiness:
Got the DLC and fired it up, and it simply stayed on the loading screen. Some googling showed people complaining about similar things going on and that clearing the system cache resolved things. Thankfully it did.
It immediately got apparent that I hadn’t actually completed the game after playing a bit, so quit back out and reloaded main game confused-by-the-slab saved, and figured out the incredibly obvious in retrospect last steps.
Whereupon I got the achievements for finishing in under 12 hours (maaaaybe possible, I did keep pushing forward, stopped collecting light seeds when I had enough to unlock all four powers, etc) and fewer than 100 Elika resets (I suppose a non-zero probability, barely, as I didn’t count, but really unlikely). So possible, can’t-confirm glitch gamerscore inflation.
Then I had to clear the cache again to get back into the Epilogue save. Apparently it really doesn’t like switching back and forth between them in a variety of ways.
Overall, I liked the increased platforming challenge in the DLC (except the green power plate speedy wall running obstacle slalom runs, those particular power plates can get voted right off my island–the purples were a nice addition though), and disliked the fight challenge ramp-ups, and making them even more QTE intensive did them no favors in my eyes. The Warrior/Hunter shapeshift fights were frustratingly tedious at times, because half the time the Hunter form would immediately charge, I’d screw up the break-charge QTE, screw up a counter, and then it’d be Warrior time again. I think it would have worked better overall to replace those fully (because dammit, I killed both of them in the main game, and I’m not buying the Ahriman Xerox explanation) with escalating fights against the king as for the most part I enjoyed those much more.