is known for many things. Rewinding time, death-defying leaps, hack-and-slash combat, unnamed protagonists with smarm and sass - no matter what iteration of the Prince you’re controlling, it’s a distinct serᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚies with a clear identity all its own.

One thing Prince of Persia isn’t known for is its difficulty. Whether it’s the Sands of Time trilogy, the incredibly simplified reboot, or even the forgotten Forgotten Sands, you’re not going to have a tough time getting through the Prince’s time-bending🤪 t🎀ales, which makes sense considering you can usually reverse any mistake you make.

The only game in the series that’s going to give you any trouble is the 1989 classic that started it all, which quickly became known for its brutal and unforgiving platformi🎀ng. Fitting then that is so difficult considering it goes back to the original’s 2D perspective for the first time in 🐈decades.

The 2010 Prince of Persia movie might be the toughest entry in the series since it’s near-impossible t🌃o sitꦅ through.

When I first t๊ried The Lost Crown at a demo booth during Gamescom, I was surprised to struggle against basic enemies, having to think through some of the platforming puzzles. Things really came to a head when I took on the demo’s boss, a Manticore that acts as the first skill check of the final game. I got absolutely obliterated, as did my coll🧜eague Eric Switzer ไat Summer Game Fest.

As challenging as that battle was, I assumed it had been beefed up a bit for the demo to act as a natural stopping point. I was wrong. Prince꧒ of Persia: The Lost Crown is consistওently challenging throughout its whole runtime.

Although things start easy enough with basic enemies and platforming sections that don’t require much thought, by the time you’ve got your firs𒅌t Time Power, things ramp up considerably. Platforming sees the biggest increase in challenge, as you go from jumping across chasms with ease to swinging off poles to just barely avoid spikes, while also having to use your time teleport move to place a version of yourself in front of an obstacle as you leap, before returning back to it mid-jump.

The Lost Crown is deviously tricky at times, but it’s a natural evolution of Prince of Persia’s core tenants. In the Sands of Time trilogy, your Time Powers only came into ꦜplay if you mucked up a🎀 jump, but here you have to use them in tandem with your standard movement abilities to get around the levels. They slowly turn into puzzles in and of themselves, rather than just platforming segments that move you from A to B.

I shouldn’t be too surpr🌄ised that The Lost Crown has tricky platforming considering the hell Ubisoft Montpellier put fans through with The Land of the Livid Dead.

Unlike most triple-A games nowadays, there isn’t an easy mode to help you get past these points, exploits you can make use of, or even alternate path to take - getting good at moving Sargon around is a requirement, and one that makes the nail-biting, pixel-perfect platforming a joy to triumph🧔 over.

Although the platforming section🤡s made my hands sweat and my mouth spew curses I didn’t even know I knew, the hardest parts of The Lost Crown are its boss battles. There aren’t that many in the game, but each of them tests everythi🥃ng you’ve learned up to that point and requires you to pretty much have mastered counters.

Not to sound like a games journalist fr🉐om the early 2010s, but these boss battles felt like they were ripped out of a FromSoftware game, with each one having multiple phases that introduce new moves, patterns that need ✱to be learned down to the second, and attacks that are near impossible to dodge unless you’ve mastered the tools at your disposal.

The Lost Crown isn’t unbeatable as there are some ways to make things easier like equipping the right Amulets and Athra Surges or levelling up your weapons, but it is going to kick your butt a lot if you’re not prepared for the challenge. As much as some of the bosses frustrated me with how🍸 many attempts they took (just wait for the mid-game fight against a lion), The 🅠Lost Crown’s difficulty curve ended up being one of my favourite things about it.

The newest Prince of Persia could have gone the way of the Sands of Time trilogy or, god forbid, the 2008 reboot, and made things easy on the player with little to no challenge, but instead, Ubisoft Montpellier forces the player to master its core mechanics and experiment with its Time Powers. Prince of Persia fans are going to be surprised at how much more difficult the game is than the marketing made it out to be, but having to truly learn the game inside and out to conquer🐼 it makes it all the more memorable.