[Let's Play] Prince of Persia - The Warrior Within (S12 - Aug 14th)

Bethryn

Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within is the second game released in Ubisoft's reboot of the Prince of Persia series. Although the recently released Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands actually occurs between The Sands of Time and The Warrior Within, I'm going to play these in the order they were released, and indeed the order most people would have played them.

The biggest change between the previous game and Warrior Within was a significant revamp of the combat system, allowing the prince more interaction with the environment, as well as a deeper combo system and a second weapon, gained by picking up the weapons of defeated enemies. The game holds a score of 83 on Metacritic, surprisingly below that of Sands of Time despite seeing many technical improvements. This is attributed to the fact that many reviewers were not appreciative of the 'grimier' setting, the introduction of blood (as all enemies in Sands of Time were sand monsters and didn't bleed), and the apparent change of the Prince's character from upbeat (???) to emo.

Well, we'll see...

Set 1 - LOST

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfFmp6ivids

Set 2 - Very Defensive Monsters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MwzlfE894s

Set 3 - Kinky Ladies Abound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw52Zoa2HhI

Set 4 - Dahakas don't bathe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBYjiADFe-0

Set 5 - Girls & Gardens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEVMwiudlrs

Set 6 - Fun With Waterworks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8hoC2wlbPU

Set 7 - Further Gardening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8wI_IhyCRE

Set 8 - Renewable Energy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTFrTOffA1E

Set 9 - New Sword, New Tower

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNbWvigu3Qw

Set 10 - Bad Dogs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU94rjjemRw

Set 11 - Still Very Dingy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ljrqTvLjgs

Set 12 - Dogbombing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNeRq1sfBX0

---x---

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is the first game in Ubisoft's reboot of the Prince of Persia series, after the rather disastrous Prince of Persia 3d. There are currently 4 in the series (The Sands of Time, The Warrior Within, The Two Thrones & The Forgotten Sands), and one black sheep simply called Prince of Persia which is not part of the same series.

Ubisoft introduced the 'Dagger of Time' for this series, which allowed you to rewind time to a limited extent to correct mistakes, thus getting rid of many of the pratfalls of the Action Adventure genre, when your character would throw themselves to their death due to a bad key press or some such, and you'd lose half an hour of play.

Sands of Time itself has an 89 rating on Metacritic, and is considered extremely successful, as it has kept the Prince of Persia franchise firmly in Ubisoft's hands.

Set 1 - Welcome to India

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEdVapRlRpw

Set 2 - Into the Bedchambers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_rzcbh_GI

Set 3 - Daddy Issues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgR51qWgfW8

Set 4 - Co-Op Adventure

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93YfMrWE9bM

Set 5 - Menacing Menagerie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKjsilnpD88

Set 6 - Drinking The Bathwater

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogWSdcD-F_c

Set 7 - Melee Archery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhYKYUgyp7A

Set 8 - Bathfinding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyLFPg4QcFg

Set 9 - Batprince of Persia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnLtPEuwO70

Set 10 - Bad Fanfiction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7T_8arR0DM

Set 11 - Interactive Planetarium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXJlGU4q-To

Set 12 - Magical Elevator Ride

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_cGeesvy_k

Set 13 - Don't Use Up All My Sand!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CuCb40NC6Q

Set 14 - Rewind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyhqNx7nHbo

valgomir

AWESOME. I've been waiting for someone to LP it, especially now that I've started playing it again.
I shall watch it, and feedback shall follow.

Edit:
It's all looking nice so far. The combat won't get any deeper than that, sadly, it's just "jump over X to kill X, jump into Y to kill Y, stun-kill Z to kill Z, press block to not die" over and over again with more powerful and more plentiful enemies as the game goes on.
Keep an eye out for less obvious paths near traps, they tend to lead to life upgrades. Also, if you hear a shimmering sound, that means a sand cloud is near (those glowing white ones on the ground). Use your dagger on them, they refill your sand tanks and if you collect 8 you get an additional one.
The dagger can be used in combat to stun enemies (basically freeze them) as soon as one of the sickle-shaped things next to the sand tanks to the left on your HUD are completed (you have to kill ~ 10 enemies for one of those things to be complete). You use up one of them each time you stun someone, and you regain a half one for soaking up enemies with your dagger.
Also, later on, look for breakable walls. (You'll know when they start to show up)
Just a little gameplay tip: Roll through water and if you're going upstairs, it's faster.
Oh, and could you up the volume a bit next time (both your mic and the game sound)? It's pretty quiet as far as I can tell...

Eh, that was a bit much info, wasn't it? Oh well.
I'll be following this for sure.

Bethryn

Yeah, I was going to say I assumed it works the same way as the later ones with extra health down sidepaths.

Cool, that's all useful stuff.

Bethryn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_rzcbh_GI

Better luck with the volume this time?

valgomir

Excellent, thank you
Oooh boy, next time is gonna be puzzle time. Yeah!

Bethryn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgR51qWgfW8

I am amazed I got through that fight with so little health.

klemming

Good LP (are you planning on doing the others as well?), a few combat hints.
You can kill the weaker enemies in one move with a vault-sword-dagger move (which kills them while they're still standing). I think this works on all the non-blue enemies beside the women and some big guys you meet later on (both of whom are still weak against the normal vault-sword-sword move you've been using).
The key to the blue guys is to use wall attacks. The move where you launch straight into them off the wall will knock down every enemy you meet (I think), but you can also jump off the wall by pressing jump instead of attack. If there's anyone nearby, you'll auto-jump over them. This works just like vaulting over them (you can use either attack with it, sword-sword or sword-dagger), but since you don't touch them, it works against blue guys as well (It even lets you kill the women while they're still standing).

Bethryn

Cool, I'll test out the vault-sword-dagger move next set then. I accidentally discovered the wall-jump instead of the wall-lunge in today's set, which is fairly useful, although it's a bit wonky when the enemies aren't directly in front of him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93YfMrWE9bM

Bethryn

A romantic visit to the zoo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKjsilnpD88

Tested out the vault-sword-dagger; wow that's good.

klemming

You can roll under the spinning blades (I'm actually pretty impressed you managed to get through that without it).
Oh, and you can just hold the button to drink water until you're full, rather than pressing it repeatedly.

Bethryn

See, I thought you could roll under them, but I'm sure when I first tried it the Prince just rolled straight into them and I assumed it was something they added for the later games. Should make those sections much easier.

valgomir

So I am catching up with the last few parts right now, and when you mentioned that one of the downsides of collecting that much sand was that the prince would drop sand every time he climbed or shimmied, I immediately got the rather disturbing mental image of some lunatic in present day running around playgrounds dressed like a Persian prince, shoving handfuls of sand into his pockets and stabbing little children to death.

In other news, this LP really isn't bad for my mental health.

Bethryn

valgomir wrote:

I immediately got the rather disturbing mental image of some lunatic in present day running around playgrounds dressed like a Persian prince, shoving handfuls of sand into his pockets and stabbing little children to death.

In other news, this LP really isn't bad for my mental health.

He keeps drinking from the duck pond too.

Seriously Prince, have you considered how clean most natural sources of water are? Fish **** in it!

Bethryn

Talking of drinking from things you really shouldn't...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogWSdcD-F_c

valgomir

On my first playthrough of this game I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get up to that sand cloud at the beginning of this set...
Also, I think it was mentioned earlier that you could just hold down the drink button until your health is filled up again. Saves some time and prevents headaches from the constant *swoosh* *swoosh* camera changes.

Bethryn

Holding down right click helped a lot, especially when drinking in fights.

Now I need tips on how to stop Farah trying to use her bow like a sword, and how she can NOT SHOOT ME.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhYKYUgyp7A

valgomir

Try not being between her and an enemy. That's it. She'll just shoot whereever the hell she pleases, so yeah... you can get some revenge by giving her a taste of your scimitar but in a fight that'd be quite counter-intuitive.
So yeah, just hope, I guess.

Also, at 16:40 he got the door on his head. I especially liked that bit

klemming

A few more combat hints.
I think you missed the hint telling you how to use the mega-freeze. If you've got full sandtanks and power tanks, block and tap rewind. (I think that's it. Block and something, anyway)
Time freezes, and all the enemies go to their 'frozen' state. Like this, you can just hold towards an enemy and keep pressing attack, and you'll teleport right up to them and hit them. Two hits is a kill, and you can get through five or six in one go.
You lose all your power tanks for this, but it's probably worth it.
Since you need full tanks for it, it's a good one to open a fight with, as you can start regaining power tanks with the leftover enemies.
(This only works when you have full sand and power tanks, so if you create a new sand tank, you won't be able to use this until you've got a power tank to go with it.)

If you freeze enemies using the dagger, you can vault over them to kill them in one hit, which is easier than standing there and hitting them twice when other guys are trying to hit you. Failing that, the wall-lunge move will kill frozen enemies in one go as well.

agoaj

That's why I don't pick up sand tank upgrades when I replay, you can whoosh around all you want.

valgomir

Oh, about how Farah opened that door that lead to some sand and the lever that dropped the bridge:
There were some stones right under that door which prevented it from closing all the way. Farah crawled under it.

Bethryn

Old mic broke (that's like, the third headset that hasn't lasted much more than 3 months of use), new mic is good but might be a bit quiet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyLFPg4QcFg

Skull2185

I'm going to have to watch this!

The Sands of Time trilogy has always been a favorite series of mine, but having just purchased the HD collection on PS3, I'm finding them to be not as enjoyable as I remember.

Bethryn

And back to the blind stuff!

I guess we're past the halfway mark now according to the save game information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnLtPEuwO70

valgomir

Ooh, I did not know there was a life upgrade behind the barrels in set 8...
For the record, your idea to wallrun to the ledges (in the area with the descending gate) was correct; you just had to let go of the wallrun button a little earlier. I think it's not MEANT to work (the ladder is supposed to prevent you from reaching the wall), but it's possible nevertheless.

As for set 9:
The icicles drop if you hang on to them for too long, though IIRC they give you quite more time than you need.
Accuracy of sand-LSD induced visions: The things you predict ARE going to happen; just not quite yet. Generally, gameplay visions will be important between the save point where they occured and the one after that, whereas visions of cutscenes to come often happen WAY before the actual event takes place.
The big underground cave thing with wooden platforms... it confuses me too. Like you said, having a pointless area doesn't make sense when it's the first of its kind and comes up halfway through the game.
And that glitch during the fight after climbing out of the well... The prince was all like "screw you suckers, I'm outta here -- OH SHIT I'm out of jet fuel". Awesome

Bethryn

valgomir wrote:

The icicles drop if you hang on to them for too long, though IIRC they give you quite more time than you need.

Yeah, that's what I expected. It just also makes them drop immediately after you jump to give a sense of close timing, which is quite nice.

The same seems to be true of platforms; they last slightly longer if you're standing still on them than once you've run off them.

klemming

For the rope swinging, you were making it way harder than it hard to be by trying to turn around for each swing.
The swinging forward and back is automatic, so as long as you're facing the way you want to jump off, you don't need to hold a direction.

Bethryn

The only time I felt I had real trouble with the swinging was when the cameraman decided to jump on my back for the ride. Dunno how that happened.

Bethryn

This ended being a superlong set because of Farah dying at a point I couldn't rewind from, and then I underestimated how long navigating the light puzzle would take.

Been ages since I've played a game with a light puzzle, was very nostalgic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7T_8arR0DM

Bethryn

Planetarium and annoyingly tightly spaced combat complete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXJlGU4q-To

For some reason this one recorded more quietly than usual, and even with the maximum increase in dB for my speaking, I couldn't do much about it. I think I know what the problem is though.

Bethryn

So annoying when Farah just can't defend herself, but otherwise a good fun set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_cGeesvy_k

valgomir

About the symbol that shows up everywhere: it's the same shape as Farah's little amulet thing around her neck. As far as I remember, it's one of three magical objects that prevent you from becoming a horrible abomination upon contact with the Sands; the other two being the Dagger of Time and the Vizier's staff (who is also the Big Bad in T2T).
The prince actually gets the amulet from Farah after this game (though I am not sure how) and uses it in Warrior Within in lieu of the Dagger to rewind time and all that good stuff.

The button combination for stunning all enemies at once should be (hold [block] + tap [time power]) IIRC.

Nice sets, as always.
"'No?!' Come check this place out, it's sweet!"
It's almost like you're playing The Fresh Prince of Persia...

agoaj

How he gets the amulet:

Farah give you the amulet when she steals the dagger.

Kadoken

I loved this series. I always thought it was annoying in Sands of Time how you had to stab them with the dagger, which I liked about Two Thrones and Warrior Within how they did away with that.

valgomir wrote:

About the symbol that shows up everywhere: it's the same shape as Farah's little amulet thing around her neck. As far as I remember, it's one of three magical objects that prevent you from becoming a horrible abomination upon contact with the Sands; the other two being the Dagger of Time and the Vizier's staff (who is also the Big Bad in T2T).
The prince actually gets the amulet from Farah after this game (though I am not sure how) and uses it in Warrior Within in lieu of the Dagger to rewind time and all that good stuff.

The button combination for stunning all enemies at once should be (hold [block] + tap [time power]) IIRC.

Nice sets, as always.
"'No?!' Come check this place out, it's sweet!"
It's almost like you're playing The Fresh Prince of Persia...

I'd play it.
Why the hell is he fighting Khan?

Bethryn

And the game gets even more awkwaaaaaaaaaard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CuCb40NC6Q

I like my new sword. I wonder, in retrospect, what the point of the previous sword was.

klemming

It didn't really have one, aside from being slightly stronger. (Only one hit to smash walls)
I think it was originally going to do something special, but that got cut during development.

valgomir

While this section can be one of the most frustrating (with the elevator from the last set, the stupid trial-and-error puzzle and absence of sand powers) it is also my favourite in the game... just because of all the mind-screws that happen. And the climbing. And the infinity-plus-one sword. I love it.

BTW you missed a life upgrade after the second (pretty pointless) save point. You'd have had to climb downwards from that weird little platform thing.

Bethryn

Kissing someone and then rewinding time so they don't remember you kissing them is... very questionable Prince.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyhqNx7nHbo

So Warrior Within next, which should also be blind; might be a few bits I remember seeing a friend play through, but I'm pretty sure I remember very little of it.

Also, was having 3 Vizier clones in the final battle because I did manage to get all the health upgrades? Wasn't sure quite what was meant by the boss battle being different if I got them all. I went back and got the one you mentioned, valgomir, despite the game getting the Prince stuck in the second world on the bridges like 5 times.

Alistair Hutton

Bethryn wrote:

And the game gets even more awkwaaaaaaaaaard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CuCb40NC6Q

I like my new sword. I wonder, in retrospect, what the point of the previous sword was.

You are going to kick yourself when you realise there was a much easier way of working out which door to go through rather than trying every one exhaustively.

There is a sound of trickling water when you stand infront of the correct door.

Every time you ran past a water sound generating door I winced as you failed to go in, then it got funny, then it got unfunny.

Then it got funny again.

Then it didn't.

That section should be a wonderfully ethereal chasing down of the elusive goal with the obtuse plaintive dialogue adding a bitter sweet component. And should take about a minute twenty seconds tops.

But at 13:19 in the video I started loling again.

Alistair Hutton

Bethryn wrote:

Kissing someone and then rewinding time so they don't remember you kissing them is... very questionable Prince.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyhqNx7nHbo

You can see Farah hiding behind a vase in the video when you go looking for her.

Bethryn

Haha, shows how much I pay attention to sound cues. >_<

I was looking for something visual to hint at which one it was, really was not paying attention to sound effects.

Edit: Oh yeah, there she is. Maybe she was looking for her bow so she could be all heroic again? I was a little surprised at how timid she was after being fairly brave for the rest of the game.

valgomir

Alistair Hutton wrote:

You are going to kick yourself when you realise there was a much easier way of working out which door to go through rather than trying every one exhaustively.

There is a sound of trickling water when you stand infront of the correct door.

Every time you ran past a water sound generating door I winced as you failed to go in, then it got funny, then it got unfunny.

Then it got funny again.

Then it didn't.

That section should be a wonderfully ethereal chasing down of the elusive goal with the obtuse plaintive dialogue adding a bitter sweet component. And should take about a minute twenty seconds tops.

But at 13:19 in the video I started loling again.

DAMN, I always suspected there had to be some sort of clue as to which door to take, and it DID cross my mind there were sound clues. Problem was, I tried the obvious and attempted to follow Farah's voice, which didn't work out. I noticed the water sound but always assumed it was there because of the fountain >.<

Bethryn wrote:

So Warrior Within next

NICE, I'll watch that for sure.