The Rogue Prince of Persia
Last updated: 2025-08-22
- Enjoyable roguelite with fluid parkour movement
- Dynamic and satisfying combat system
- Stunning art style and excellent soundtrack
- Insufficient content for the price
- Significant bugs and performance issues
- Too similar to Dead Cells
Emotions
Players are highly satisfied with the game's polished and fluid movement, combat, and platforming mechanics. The beautiful art style, engaging music, and overall high quality, especially in comparison to other titles and after significant improvements from early access, contribute to a rewarding experience. The game's successful blend of roguelike elements with the Prince of Persia IP, along with developer responsiveness to feedback, further enhances player enjoyment.
Excitement stems from the game's high-quality, fast-paced, and addictive gameplay, particularly its innovative parkour and fluid combat systems. Players are thrilled by the continuous improvements, new content, and the game's potential for long-term engagement and future updates. The unique blend of roguelike and Prince of Persia elements, coupled with excellent art direction and music, generates strong anticipation for the full release and ongoing development.
Disappointment is primarily driven by a perceived lack of content, limited replayability, and shallow progression systems, especially for a roguelike. Players also express frustration with performance issues, numerous bugs, and a lack of challenge for veterans of the genre. Some are let down by changes in updates, the game's short length, and a feeling that the parkour mechanics are underutilized or that the game fails to deliver on its roguelike promise.
Frustration arises from persistent and numerous bugs, including game-breaking issues, UI problems, and optimization challenges, particularly on handheld devices. Players also struggle with difficulty spikes, unresponsive or clunky controls (especially wall-climbing interfering with combat), and a lack of clear progression or effective auxiliary skills. The need to restart runs after death, coupled with unbalanced mechanics and unclear enemy indicators, contributes to a challenging and sometimes infuriating experience.
Players express hope for future content, bug fixes, and overall improvements to the game, particularly anticipating the full release and ongoing updates. There is a strong desire for specific features like language support, more build variety, and better game balance. This hope is often fueled by visible developer efforts and the game's underlying potential to become a top-tier roguelike or a masterpiece within the Prince of Persia series.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 81% · Negative 19%. Score: 19 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game's overall quality, finding it fun, engaging, and addictive. Many highlight its polished state, fluid gameplay, and strong core mechanics, even in Early Access, with frequent updates further enhancing the experience.
- The parkour and movement system is a standout feature, described as fluid, smooth, and incredibly satisfying. Players enjoy the high mobility, wall-running, and acrobatic abilities, which are seamlessly integrated into both traversal and combat, making the game feel unique and dynamic.
- The game is highly lauded as an excellent roguelite, often compared favorably to genre benchmarks like Dead Cells and Hades. Players appreciate its unique blend of roguelite mechanics with Prince of Persia elements, offering strong replayability and a fresh take on the genre.
- The development team is highly praised for their continuous efforts in updating and improving the game, especially during Early Access. Players appreciate their responsiveness to community feedback, leading to significant enhancements in content, visuals, and overall balance, which bodes well for the game's future.
- Combat is consistently praised for being fluid, fast-paced, and highly satisfying. Players appreciate the diverse weapon types, unique abilities, and the strong sense of impact, which combine with the movement system to create dynamic and engaging encounters.
Negatives:
- Players consistently report that the game lacks sufficient content, including weapons, enemies, and levels, making it feel short and repetitive. This issue is frequently tied to the game's price, with many feeling it's overpriced for the amount of content offered.
- The game is plagued by numerous bugs, including game-breaking issues, visual glitches, and performance problems like frame drops and freezes. These technical issues significantly detract from the gameplay experience, even on high-end PCs.
- Many players feel the game is too similar to Dead Cells, often being described as a 'reskin' or a 'lesser' version. It struggles to establish its own identity and fails to match the depth, variety, and overall quality of Dead Cells.
- The game's difficulty is a point of contention, with some finding it excessively hard, especially early on or after updates, leading to a grindy and frustrating experience. Others find it too easy once mechanics are understood.
- The progression system is criticized for being too slow, grindy, and not providing a meaningful sense of impact or reward. Experience gain is low, and unlocking skills or weapons feels tedious.
Gameplay:
- The game is a 2D roguelite platformer that heavily integrates parkour mechanics into both traversal and combat. Players explore procedurally generated levels, utilizing wall running, climbing, and jumping to navigate complex environments and engage diverse enemies. The roguelite structure ensures varied runs with in-run power-ups and out-of-run progression.
- The game is frequently compared to Dead Cells due to its roguelite structure, progression, and visual style, with many noting it feels like a spiritual successor or a 'Dead Cells with parkour.' It also draws heavily from the Prince of Persia IP, incorporating classic parkour elements and a new narrative within that universe, creating a unique blend of both influences.
- The game offers a wide variety of main and sub-weapons, each with unique mechanics, special attacks, and upgrade paths. Players can unlock new weapons and medallions (passive buffs) through in-run exploration and out-of-run progression, allowing for diverse build crafting and playstyles. Weapons acquired in a run are lost upon death, reinforcing the roguelite loop.
- The medallion system is a core roguelite element, offering passive buffs that significantly alter gameplay and build potential. Players can equip multiple medallions, with strategic placement affecting adjacent ones. While initial slots are limited, more can be unlocked, allowing for diverse character customization and synergy with weapons.
- Players control an agile Prince of Persia, who, after each death, is sent back in time to an oasis by a mysterious pendant. This time-loop narrative is central to the roguelite progression, as the Prince repeatedly embarks on adventures, utilizing his parkour abilities and accumulating 'Wind God's Breath' for speed boosts to save his kingdom.
Performance:
- While many players report good overall performance and improvements since launch, there are still frequent mentions of stuttering and frame drops, especially during loading screens or intense combat. Some users also note that optimization is still needed in specific areas.
- The game generally runs well on Steam Deck, with many users reporting a flawless experience. However, some players experience frame drops during loading or specific animations, and there's mixed feedback on achieving a consistent 60 FPS, with some suggesting a 30 FPS cap for smoother gameplay.
- The game supports various controllers, with one user specifically confirming full functionality, including vibration, with an IINE Retro Pocket Wireless Game Controller in Xbox mode.
- Based on limited feedback, the game appears to have medium system requirements, running fine on most systems without needing a powerful PC.
- One player reported no technical issues, bugs, or crashes during their gameplay experience, indicating a stable experience for some users.
Recommendations:
- Many players highly recommend this game, especially to fans of roguelites, 2D platformers, and the Prince of Persia series. It's frequently compared to Dead Cells, suggesting a similar fast-paced, challenging action experience.
- While many recommend the game, a significant portion advises caution or waiting for a sale, citing concerns about the current price, content limitations, or the game's suitability for all players. Some find it hard to recommend over established genre titles like Hades.
- Players are eagerly anticipating future updates, more content (biomes, enemies, story), and the full 1.0 release. There's a strong belief in the game's potential to become a top-tier roguelite with continued development and polish.
- A few players specifically requested more granular control options, such as combining jump and wall climb to one key, disabling auto-grab ledges, and rebinding backflip actions for wall runs.
Miscellaneous:
- Players appreciate the game's connection to the Prince of Persia legacy, seeing it as a revival for the series. They note the inclusion of classic elements like time-sand abilities and express hope for its continued success, especially given the recent release of another Prince of Persia title.
- Many players recognize the game's strong ties to Dead Cells, noting that it's developed by Evil Empire, the studio behind much of Dead Cells' post-launch support. This connection sets high expectations for the game's quality and future development, though some clarify it's not merely a Dead Cells clone.
- A significant positive for players is that the game, despite being published by Ubisoft, does not require Ubisoft Connect (or Uplay) to launch on Steam. This is seen as a welcome departure from typical Ubisoft practices, improving loading times and allowing for Steam achievements.
- Players feel the game is underrated and has not received sufficient marketing, leading to low sales and awareness. They express a wish for more people to discover and support the game, hoping it will not be abandoned.
- Based on limited feedback, some players express a desire for a full Metroidvania experience with the game's style and hope for robust accessibility options, drawing comparisons to classic platformers.
