Gabiluzbad
The 2003 Prince of Persia Reboot was some good shit
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Sands of Time
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Warrior Within
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The Two Thrones
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All solid games
Saturn Is A Tea
Sands of Time especially has a special place in my heart
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Two Thrones was the best one, if you ask me
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But mainly I'm just thinking of the pomegranate scene
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Which I will recount for you because I can't find a clip of it
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So in the Two Thrones, the Prince has returned to his home kingdom after leaving for years to go on adventures
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And found that a treacherous grand vizier, who was the antagonist of Sands of Time right up until you use time fuckery to stop the entire game from even happening
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Has used a magic artifact to ascend to godhood
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And is turning everyone into magic sand monsters
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Over the course of the game The Prince meets Princess Farah, who was The Girl in the first game, but because the first game is in a timeline that got undone, she's never met him
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So he knows her but she doesn't know him and it's awkward
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The Prince also got partially corrupted by the Vizier's power early on and is dealing with a second personality in his head, the Dark Prince, that is urging him to be more ruthless and more violent and more powerful
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So there's a bit where Farah and the Prince are on a lift that is taking them somewhere and they actually have a moment of peace
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Farah: "What's your favorite color?"
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Prince: "Uh, blue?"
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Dark Prince: "Blue? That's not MY favorite color!"
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Prince: "What does this have to do with anything?"
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Farah: "You're always so focused and serious and I know literally nothing about you. Would it hurt to actually talk about something other than saving the world?"
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Prince: "I guess. Then, uh...what's your favorite food?"
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Farah: "Pomegranate!"
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Prince: "I don't like pomegranates. They're messy and impossible to eat with dignity."
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Farah: "But doesn't the added effort make them all the sweeter?"
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Dark Prince: "I think I'm going to be sick"
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And just
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That whole bit adds more characterization to the three of them than the entire trilogy up to that point
Saturn Is A Tea
There's something extremely endearing about "forced casual conversation also involving your Dark Mirror Personality"
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To be clear, Farah can't hear the Dark Prince
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He's just a voice in the Prince's head
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But like just about all we've seen of the Prince up to this point has been him dealing with immediate threats and practical problems
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Or being weird about girls
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And then he says he doesn't like pomegranates because he doesn't like messy food and SUDDENLY WE KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT HIM
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And it was a good moment
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the Vizier is also one of my favorite boss fights ever
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In my mind, a final boss should be a test to see how well you've absorbed the skills the game has forced you to learn
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Two Thrones was all about cool sword moves, cool parkour, and elaborate acrobatic QTEs
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And the Vizier has three stages
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One where he's a giant monster that you have to deal with via elaborate QTEs
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One where he's hiding at the top of a whirlwind of architecture you have to parkour up while he's shooting energy blasts at you
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and one where he's like a guy that you ahve to swordfight
Saturn Is A Tea
Oh I love that
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The entire game is training you for that fight and it makes you feel SO cool
Saturn Is A Tea
That feels like a throwback to the SNES Prince of Persia, actually, where Jaffar was the only boss in the game to have two forms
Saturn Is A Tea
The first where he's teleporting around and throwing magic at you, but has weirdly low health for a boss
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Then when you get him down to his last point of health he suddenly stops, grabs his cloak,
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Twirls it around himself- and is suddenly in full armor
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At which point he gains a maxed out health bar, draws a sword, and charges you.
Gabiluzbad
nice
Saturn Is A Tea
And it's a very well animated flourish for an SNES sprite too
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The main draw of the original PoP was that the animations for hte prince were done by rotoscoping an actual guy jumping and stuff
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So the animations looked very fluid compared to a lot of other games at the time
Saturn Is A Tea
Yeah, and they managed to keep a lot of that in the SNES remake too
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It's got some of the most fluid animations of any SNES game
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(even the new animations that weren't in the original)
Friendpatine
my extra spicy PoP take is this: the 2008 game is an unappreciated gem that should have gotten a sequel to tie it off instead of being quietly killed off to do Yet Another Sands Of Time Game.
Gabiluzbad
I
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did NOT like the 2008 reboot
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it didn't do it for me
Friendpatine
I am the lone voice in the wilderness crying out for sanity
Friendpatine
but no, it was Good, Actually.
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I wasn't dying for more of the Sands timeline
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Like that story really firmly ended
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But...I dunno
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The 2008 PoP had this philosophy of "Game Over screens are an archaic concept that we have evolved past as gamers."
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And they were wrong
Friendpatine
how do you figure?
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The fact of the matter was that if I wanted to, I could put the controller down in the middle of a fight in that game and walk away for half an hour
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without pausing
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And the way the game worked I could sit back down and just pick it up and keep playing after the Prince had been killed 80 times while my back was turned
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It killed the sense of stakes
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I guess it wasn't a BAD game
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I just didn't like that aspect of it
Friendpatine
be the same thing if there had been 80 accompanying game over screens playing alongside each of those deaths before returning you to an autosave before the fight, though. I don't really see the distinction.
Gabiluzbad
I do
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If it didn't bother you then that's fine and probably why you liked the game more than me
Friendpatine
fair enough!
Lightning Bolt
that conversation gives me the same vibes as that "what do you want to eat" "the souls of the innocent" "a bagel" vine
Gabiluzbad
not innaccurate!