After finishing the first PoP, Sands of Time, I knew I wanted to get the sequel too. The first one was a bright coloured game where the prince looked like a sweet young boy. In Warrior Within, the Prince had apparently found the warrior within and become a harsh looking guy. The game is also gloomier with hard rock type of music and dark colours. I don’t complain about that at all — the music is very good. The ladies in the game show even more skin than in the 1st part, which I didn’t think was possible…
The camera annoyance I complained about in the first game has mostly been corrected. There are times when you can’t see properly because the camera gets stuck in something. Knowing which way to jump, especially from poles and especially when you don’t have much time to think, is still a puzzle and eats a lot of rewinds.
The fighting is more sophisticated in this sequel. I used to handle most of the enemies in the 1st part by vault-over-and-slice (some you didn’t vault over though without getting thrown on the ground). Now there are more moves and there’s a possibility to use double weapon attacks which are very nifty. Then again, grabbing a poor soul and slicing it in two is a lot of fun — that you can’t do with both hands taken.
Most of the enemies are nice to fight against, but I can’t stand the ninjas that hop over you in silly splits and slit your throat. Uh. They are ok one-on-one but whenever there are several against me, they drive me nuts!
The areas aren’t as straightforward as in Sands of Time. I spent a lot of time wandering around — until I realized the map can help somewhat. It’s also a bit annoying that once you think you’ve got rid of an enemy in one place, if you go back, they’re revived.
There is a nice twist towards the end and it’s enjoyable to see (well, play) the story unfold.
The font used in subtitles is a copperplate type of font (all letters look like capital letters). It’s a poor choice, because not only is it ugly (and huge), it’s also harder to read than a regular font.
The game has a big replay value because at least I didn’t get all the life upgrades or artwork chests on the first try — and it’s always nice to play the game from the beginning because you know all the neat tricks that you learned as you went on the 1st round. This time I’m following a walkthrough to ensure I don’t miss anything. It pays to get the life upgrades because they open an alternative ending AND you get illustrations in the Extras. In Sands of Time there were “secrets” where you got longer health bar but in my opinion they were more obvious than in Warrior Within. Although, I may have played in a too light-up room to miss some suspicious cracked walls or whatever.
I don’t know if that’s all I was going to write about, I tried to make mental notes while playing. I’ll have to add to this if I remember something while playing it through again.
Trivia: Monica Bellucci does the voice of Kaileena. She played Persephone in Matrix movies. (Not my favourite character in Matrix, didn’t like the accent.)
Game’s website
