Prince of Persia and Fable II in Review

[samuraimarmoset]

So while at my brother's righteous bachelor pad this week, chillaxing for my Reading Week (that's basically our Spring Break, yo), I managed to beat two of the games that I got for Christmas. As the title indicates, they were the new Prince of Persia, and Fable II. I shall now sum up my feelings regarding each and their endings!

Comments

[recession]

Fable II was an interesting game, but it's also easily broken if you know the secrets to the way the economy in the game works. By the time I decided I was bored enough to beat the game, I owned every property I could at that point and was rolling in so much money that the "bad" ending had absolutely no appeal to me because it only gives you 1,000,000 gold... and at that point I had some 20,000,000 gold. At that point? I'm melting down the gold into toilet paper and wiping my ass with it

[samuraimarmoset]

Yeah, exactly. If you've been smart about buying up property (though the game does tend to favour Good or Neutral characters in that regard over Evil; increasing rent only works short term, and generally, if you're evil, there's a lot less property to buy in Bowerstone Old Town, Oakfield gets destroyed, and you probably don't help Barnum develop Westcliff), there's absolutely no benefit to the Needs of the One. Though if you've been dedicated Evil, and thus you've lost out on the properties Good characters can get in Bowerstone Old Town, Oakfield, and Westcliff, it's not such a bad idea. You probably won't get the Ruler of Albion, but you can still buy Fairfax Castle and become Mayor

[kotukawi]

I will agree with your sentiments. Prince of Persia is an amazing game "except." Literally, it really felt like Dragon's Lair (the old old version) crossed with Shadow of the Colossus crossed with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (with the whole "rewinding time thing so you don't die" conveniently done automatically for you). The scenery was absolutely amazing, just like Colossus. And while navigation, for the most part, was really just being able to master a set of (dreaded) quick-time events from Platform A to Platform B, I never once felt like I was totally out of control because each button had a clear "purpose" that eventually made intuitive sense once you got the hang of it. As a result, being able to dash through areas of the icky stuff and making death-defying leaps was incredibly fun. Plus, it just looked heckuva beautiful

[samuraimarmoset]

Yeah, PoP is an amazing game, and it looks fantastic. I remember finding one of the special lookout points that you get an Achievement for finding, and I was just looking out over the whole of the Alchemist's area, and thinking...god, it was beautiful. The whole storybook fantasy look of the game was a neat touch, too, and I enjoyed the look of both the Prince and Elika (Elika especially

[kotukawi]

I never had the bosses gain so much life that it felt like the beginning of the fight, really. And the combos weren't atrocious either because, as with going through the levels, the acrobatics felt natural in that "each button has a theme." It was merely the QTEs to avoid "not death" were painful, especially given that the 360 controllers buttons are "backwards" that of my most familiar SNES button layout (thus lending itself to lots of confusion...). The more advanced combos weren't really all that necessary either considering that the later bosses block you about 4-5 hits into your combo.

I did believe at first that the non-ending was due to them setting up a sequel, something that they apparently did either in the first or second Sands of Time game. However, the moment I heard they had the Epilogue DLC, I honestly had to question that original judgment. I'm expecting this Epilogue to at least wrap up the current plot thread of Ahriman and then set up a sequel in a completely different direction. If I'm correct (we'll know in