INTRO:
The first title in the rebooted Prince of Persia franchise had a fairy-tale vibe to it, in addition to surprisingly satisfactory platforming gameplay for most people. The second one had more of the latter, but throws away the fairy-tale vibe for a much grittier, darker and edgier story-telling, which did not sit well with some people.
The final entry in the saga of the officially unnamed Prince of Persia (despite the now-forgotten mention of his name in the end of Sands of Time) seeks to link the sudden and drastic change in the narrative from the first title to the second. It also adds some new gameplay elements, though they will not please players who despise quick-time events (hereby shorted to QTEs, for short).
PREMISE:
Since his angry and bitter journey as seen in the second game, the Prince has calmed down and gained a new lady friend. She happens to be none other than the person that he sought in the previous game to end his troubles with his destiny.
However, his return home would be an unpleasant surprise, as a villain that he had defeated before turned out to be still around because of the Prince's chronological shenanigans. The malicious Sands of Time are released once more, plunging his homeland into chaos. The Prince has to once again embark on an adventure to right things wrong.
Unfortunately, as the name of the game and its cover would suggest already, he has to contend with a personal issue that has manifested itself in nasty ways that threaten his sanctity of mind and self.
MOVEMENT & PLATFORMING:
The Prince remains an agile and skilled warrior as ever. Most, if not all, of his acrobatic feats that had been seen in the previous games can be repeated in The Two Thrones. These include running across short stretches of walls, swinging from pole to pole and a lot of climbing and hopping. The controls for these methods of movement are as similar and reliable as those in the previous games, which is fortunate.
There is definitely plenty of platforming to be done in The Two Thrones, though compared to the previous games, their sequences tend to seem shorter in comparison and many fights – or QTE sequences – occupy the segments between these platforming moments.
The mortal Prince's platforming challenges can be completed with enough patience, but for the Dark Prince's, his ever-dwindling health is a concern that makes his platforming quite tense.
Furthermore, the Dark Prince has to make use of his whip-like chains instead of the dagger, which make for a change from the usual stabbing of recesses in walls and other actions with the Dagger of Time. However, these would not seem refreshingly new to those who have played platforming games where the protagonist uses chains for swinging about and pulling things around.
As for the mortal Prince's platforming sequences, they are similar to those in previous games, if not better due to the better graphics that The Two Thrones has compared to its predecessors. The Prince is still a convincingly and entertainingly agile member of royalty, leaping across gaps, running across walls effortlessly and perhaps ripping pieces of tapestry and long curtains along the way, as well as pulling and hitting the occasional switches.
On the other hand, there may be some contrivances in the platforming. For example, there appears to be fixtures on walls that appear to be there just for the Prince to stab the indestructible Dagger of Time into and hang from like it is a piton. Another example is a pressure plate on the wall that has to be activated via wall-running, which is odd as pressure plates are usually more convenient to depress when on the ground.
In fact, an observant player may have the impression that the levels have been designed simply to fulfill the game's promise of platfoming sequences, yet their locations and designs go against the backstory and locale of the game. After all, the game is set in a fictional version of ancient Persia, a city that is not exactly designed for people with astounding alacrity.
Another contrivance is that the palaces in The Two Thrones are heavily laden with traps. Although there were palaces with traps in the previous games, the first game explained them away with substantial story-based excuses and the second game was set in a foreboding place. In The Two Thrones, it would be hard to believe that the Prince grew up in such a spectacularly deadly and precarious place.
Anyway, as in the previous games, traps do not always immediately kill the Prince, though some particularly painful ones do, as do fall hazards. The player can always rewind time to undo a goof-up, if there are still sand charges in the Dagger of Time.
In some locations in the levels of the game, there are prompts that appear on-screen that informs the player of the opportunity to change the view over to cameras that have been designed just for these locales. These cameras tend to be looking at objects or fixtures of interest, so they can be handy sometimes.
Not as handy are blocks that the Prince has to push around to reach things; blocks have been around in games with platforming elements for a long time, but they are still the hassle that they were. The Two Thrones attempts to disguise them as particularly large baskets, but has perhaps made them look absurd because hollow baskets would not be the first thing that people have in mind when trying create a stable, make-shift ladder to a higher platform.
COMBAT - GENERAL DETAILS:
In fights, the Prince can perform combos from a standing position; some of these are effective against individual enemies and some others are meant for when he is surrounded. Like in the previous games, he still can vault over most enemies to deliver strikes from where they do not expect. The Prince can still use the environment for an advantage in combat, such as jumping off walls and using the momentum for a strike on an opponent's head, or even hit multiple enemies if the Prince is armed with a secondary weapon.
One of the combos that are available to the Prince is particularly notable for its convenience. This combo has him giving a target a very hard kick that hurtles him/her/it across the air. This is of course very useful where there are fall hazards or other environmental dangers around.
The Prince is always armed with the Dagger of Time, but unlike the first game, he does need it to finish off enemies in order to regain sand charges. Instead, sand charges are released by enemies and automatically absorbed by the Dagger. Therefore, the Dagger of Time is now mainly used as a weapon.
COMBAT – THE MORTAL PRINCE:
However, the dagger is sometimes not enough. Therefore, the Prince in his mortal form can retrieve secondary weapons from the environment. These other weapons can be dual-wielded together with the dagger to perform longer combos that have much greater effect on enemies, but wielding a secondary weapon prevents the Prince from using combos that kick or toss enemies around.
Most of the other weapons in the game do not have the Dagger of Time's legendary durability. Almost all secondary weapons will eventually break from use. In addition, they have to be retrieved from enemies that had them or from weapon racks. In the case of the former source of secondary weapons, they may already be a bit damaged. The remaining durability of the secondary weapon is shown on-screen, conveniently.
They are damaged even faster if the player uses their 'charge-up' attacks, though these are worthwhile as they are convenient methods for slaying certain enemies. The Prince does need some time to gather the strength necessary to perform these attacks, however.
Lastly, the Prince can toss secondary weapons at enemies, which is a handy way of getting rid of secondary weapons that are about to break.
COMBAT – THE DARK PRINCE:
Some time into the story, the other Prince rears its ugly head. After this, the Prince may turn into a darker form of himself, simply called the Dark Prince.
The Dark Prince gains a wicked whip that he uses in lieu of any secondary weapon, though its ability to hit many enemies in short order more than compensates the loss of choice. The Dark Prince also has entirely different sets of combos, some of which has massive area effect and some others that are designed to punish a single target.
There are some attempts to make the Dark Prince feel somewhat refreshing, such as his ability to use conveniently placed poles to make swinging attacks that render him hard to be hit and attack in a wide radius, but the player could ultimately make do with a few conveniently powerful combos.
Players cannot opt to forgo combat when playing as the Dark Prince. His well-being is forever being eroded by the curse within him, and the player must keep his health up by killing enemies and absorbing sand, which is the main way to heal the Dark Prince.
Q.T.E.'S:
Throughout the game, there are many moments where the player must perform what the game calls "speed-kills". Technically, these involve the Prince ambushing enemies and taking advantage of their surprise to hit them repeatedly until they die.
Enemies are not always immediately aware of the Prince's presence, especially since they tend to forget to look up or down. Speed-kills can be performed either from above or just under a ledge that enemies happen to pass but fail to look over, but can only be initiated if the target is facing away from the Prince and when a certain visual cue appears on-screen (as will be described later).
However, speed-kills are not an automatic success, due to the implementation of what can be considered quick-time events (QTEs) (though this term was not pervasively used back then to describe such gameplay). As the player watches the Prince dashing towards or dropping onto his victims in cinematic ways, the player must enter inputs at correct moments in order to get the Prince to land strikes; otherwise, he fumbles and he loses his advantage of surprise.
Of course, one can argue that most of these QTEs are not the usual, frustrating "press-X-to-not-die" sorts, but still, not everyone would appreciate having to press buttons to get the Prince to do things right when the game could have handed full control of the Prince to them anyway.
One can also argue that completing a QTE sequence successfully prevents any enemy reinforcement from coming to the fray, but this benefit could have been implemented anyway if the QTEs had been replaced with competently designed stealth-sneaking gameplay.
If there is any consolation from fumbling a QTE, the player does not need to complete the entirety of a QTE sequence to defeat enemies. Any hits that the Prince has landed before the player fumbled will be damaged anyway, which helps shorten the fight that would ensue afterwards. Furthermore, if there are multiple enemies close to each other, a single sequence is enough to eliminate all of them, though the QTE sequence tends to be longer.
Also, the power to rewind time can be used during any point of these QTE sequences; the player can even choose to end the rewind a few convenient seconds before an input prompt.
HEALTH SYSTEM:
Not to break from the tradition set by its two predecessors, the mortal Prince still replenishes his health by drinking fresh water, simply enough. These sources of fresh water also serve as manual save-points and checkpoints. The player can have the Prince back-track to replenish health, provided that he can get back to them with some platforming.
The Dark Prince, however, cannot be healed by water at all; the reason for this would be explained through the progress of the story. Instead, he has to heal by absorbing sand, which is obtained either from killing enemies or releasing them from jars.
The maximum health capacity of the Dark Prince is however dependent on that for the mortal form of the Prince. Like the previous titles in the Sands of Time sub-franchise, the Prince has to find health upgrades at hidden places in the levels of the game.
Finding them does not immediately result in health upgrades, either. The player is given the challenge of traversing through particularly dangerous corridors towards a brilliant light before these are granted. These corridors are short though, and the player can always retry, though any sand charges that had been spent cannot be regained.
SAND CHARGES, REWINDING & SAND POWERS:
Like the two previous games, The Two Thrones keeps logs of processing instructions to facilitate the execution of the game's time-rewinding feature. With a tap of a button, the player can expend a sand charge and rewind time for around ten seconds, which are usually more than enough to undo any embarrassing mistake. The Dagger of Time can only hold so many charges, but the player can replenish them by killing enemies that have been warped by the Sands of Time and releasing sand that is trapped in pottery and chests.
Like the previous titles, the reservoir capacity of the Dagger of Time can be upgraded to hold more charges; up to six charges can be stored, if the player is diligent enough to pursue them. However, unlike the previous titles, these upgrades are not sought from hidden objects, secret puzzle rooms, or mere grinding. Instead, they are obtained from locating special edifices that are guarded by special and particularly troublesome enemies that can summon reinforcements from the same edifices.
These edifices are associated with the Sands of Time and are often located where the Prince needs to go, so there is no need to hunt around for hidden places so much. They may grant one reward from several types, and one of these happens to be reservoir upgrades.
They may also grant what the game calls "Sand Credits", but these are actually less valuable than one would expect when encountering them for the first time. This will be elaborated later.
These edifices may also grant powers other than rewinding time. However, followers of the Sands of Time series would not be strangers to these, many of which are recycled from previous games.
Of these, one of the most useful powers slows down time, allowing the Prince to gain the upper hand against enemies. However, it is more than likely to see use in the platforming segments than during fights.
TUTORIALS:
Like its predecessors, The Two Thrones has its tutorial segments in the first level of the game, as well as whenever a new power is introduced to the Prince any time later on in the story.
In the case of The Two Thrones, the tutorials may be better justified, story-wise, because the Prince has been away at sea for quite a while, though there is unfortunately no witty remark from him or anyone else about this.
The tutorial segments typically have on-screen text and icons that appear on-screen to tell the player what to do, in addition to sudden loss of control over the Prince and the panning of the camera over to objects/locations of interest.
ENEMIES & THEIR AWARENESS:
To veterans of the rebooted series of Prince of Persia, the enemies in The Two Thrones may seem similar to those in the second title than the first one, in that they are certainly sentient.
The first few enemies are barbaric grunts that are not much of a challenge to a careful player. However, eventually the player will face enemies that are tougher as well as more skilled; they do more damage, take more damage and are much better at blocking attacks. These more challenging enemies tend to resemble variants of earlier enemies, though the visual differences are not too few that they would appear to be palette swaps.
Like the previous games, enemies that are affected by the maliciously magical Sands of Time are capable of undoing the damage that has been inflicted on them through battle, if given enough time to recuperate.
It is worth noting here that The Two Thrones may have borrowed some elements from stealth-sneaking titles, with those from the Splinter Cell franchise being particular suspects. These elements went into the designs of the sense of awareness of enemies.
Enemies are not immediately aware of the Prince's presence, as had been mentioned earlier, and which is certainly different from what was in the previous games. They need direct line of sight to the prince, so hiding behind pillars and other high-enough obstacles would prevent enemies from noticing the Prince.
However, this system of line-of-sight only highlights the halfway-there, almost seemingly reluctant implementation of sneaking. The camera is always positioned above and behind the prince, so the player cannot see beyond whatever the prince is hiding behind, especially if it is a wall.
Although there is a button for slower movement if the player wants to have some control over the Prince's sneaking, this is not of much use because there is little incentive to move more slowly. The Prince's lowered posture is also of little more use than for cosmetic effect as there are few waist-high obstacles in the game that can hide him.
He may be able to move around in a quieter manner using this slower movement option, but then enemies do not have much of anything in the way of hearing anyway. They can hear the Prince if he makes overt noises like hitting walls with weapons or crashing into vases, but otherwise would not even hear him running about several feet away as long as he doesn't bump into anything.
Speaking of smashing vases, some of the Sands of Time have settled in vases, jars and other pottery, as mentioned earlier. The player may want to hold back on his/her eagerness to regain sand charges from breaking them, lest he/she tip off enemies to the presence of the Prince.
In some scenarios, there are enemies that are particularly sensitive or averse to certain objects in the environment. For example, there are enemies that are used to living in the dark, and are therefore averse to beams of direct sunlight. However, these aversions only manifest when the player has managed to lure enemies into them – they do not even seem to avoid them in the first place, which does not give a good impression of their A.I. scripting.
Sometime into the game, there will be enemies that are conveniently marked with red tints and veins; these denote that they are capable of summoning reinforcements, given the chance. It is in the player's interest to prioritize them for elimination, but this would have been more convenient if the player could have used more convincingly stealth-oriented techniques to remove them than resorting to the "speed-kill" QTEs.
ABOUT A LESS-THAN-SPLENDID HOMAGE TO BEN-HUR:
A certain scenario in the game has to be mentioned here, but to avoid mentioning too many spoilers while projecting a good guess at what this scenario is about, a reference to a certain classic movie has been included.
In this scenario, the Prince has to control a certain horse-drawn vehicle to make a get-away. This would have made for a refreshing change from the usual platforming and fighting, except that this scenario often requires a lot of trial and error as the player would not be able to see what is ahead easily and the vehicle is moving absurdly fast for a horse-drawn vehicle.
These scenarios are a lot easier if the player went into them with a fully loaded Dagger of Time, but if he/she did not, he/she would discover that a small mistake can lead to a fatal crash that immediately forces a rewind. Furthermore, he/she would have to fend off enemies on foot that can somehow start on an absurdly fast sprint to jump onto the vehicle and maul away at the Prince. There are also other absurdly fast horse-drawn vehicles that will attempt to force the Prince's vehicle into an obstacle.
These scenarios can seem too much for players who are used to the rest of the gameplay in The Two Thrones.
BOSSES:
There are a few different bosses to fight, and each one happens to provide a different experience. However, each experience is not necessarily a good one.
The first one would not endear to people who despise QTEs, because it has to be completed via performing more than a few "speed-kills". Attempting to do anything other than that is terrifically difficult due to the near-solid defensive measures that this boss has.
In another, the player has to do a lot of platforming to reach a boss that is dawdling for time, which can be annoying. That it ends with a button-mashing QTE makes it even less palatable.
In some fights, the player will have to get the Prince to advantageous locations to start a QTE sequence, and quickly too, as the bosses tend to have attacks that punish players who dawdle or fumble.
Moreover, in the launch version of the game, there was a design oversight in one of the QTE sequences of a particular boss fight that resulted in mismatching visual prompts and period of reception of input.
Worst of all, fumbling a QTE sequence in any boss fight causes said boss to heal some of its health, which is a punishment that can seem very punitive and frustrating.
For better or worse, these boss fights have no goons or mooks running around to be killed to regain sand; in fact, there is no way to regain health either. The player enters them with whatever sand charges that he/she has accrued and whatever level of health that he/she has conserved. There may be pottery that can be smashed for some sand, but more often than not, there is little aid that can be found in the boss fight areas.
Some players may appreciate the lack of any convenient replenishment, but others would find this disadvantage of attrition to be too punishing.
Still, if challenge is what the player is looking for in the bosses, then most of them would satisfy, with one particular boss fight being memorable for its difficulty and the fact that there are two enemies to deal with instead of just one.
The final one is also quite memorable, as it has to be played a bit differently from how the previous segments are played and its difficulty steeply contrasts with those of other boss fights.
DIFFICULTY SETTINGS:
Changing the difficulty settings for a new playthrough does not do much beyond the usual changes to the ratio of damage that enemies inflict on the player character to the damage that they can take before they die. There is little other reward for putting up with the greater (but typical) challenge, other than some bragging rights.
CHARACTER DESIGNS:
The Prince in The Two Thrones could have been described as somewhere in between the naïve but earnest Prince seen in Sands of Time and the bitterly angry one in Warrior Within, but the earnest Prince is very much gone – at least for most of the game, though to elaborate more is to mention spoilers.
Instead, the Prince in The Two Thrones is quite remorseful and afraid, which is perhaps appropriate considering how much trouble he has caused and the new trouble that comes after he has undone the previous disaster with the power of the Sands of Time. His uncertainty and insecurity is preyed upon by his darker and more cynical self, often with snide comments and sometimes amusing remarks.
It is this relationship between the two halves of the Prince that is the core of the story in The Two Thrones. Unfortunately, it overshadows everything else, which seems insignificant in comparison.
For one, certain important characters that had appeared in previous games return only to be removed quickly; certain others return only to be turned into something else entirely. These two cases occur early in the story and become the basis for the Prince's quest to right things wrong yet again.
Perhaps the most disappointing character is that of a certain character that returns from the first entry in the Sands of Time trilogy. Considering the chemistry that she had with the Prince in the first entry, her infrequent presence by the Prince's side in the third game would be a displeasing contrast to those who remember the first game fondly.
CONCEPT ARTWORK:
Throughout the game, the player can find what the game clumsily refers to as "Sand Credits". To the unknowing player, he/she may think that it can be used to purchase more powers and improvements to the powers of the Dagger of Time or something similar. Instead, the amount of the credits is little more than a counter of progress to unlocking galleries of concept artwork.
It could be just an issue of naming, but this caused confusion in some players, as well as quite a bit of disappointment later when they realized said "Sand Credits" are far from what they expected to be.
VOICE-OVERS:
The enemies in the game are composed of both inhuman and humanoid enemies. The inhuman ones typically growl and snarl, which is not much of a surprise, but each type of humanoid enemies has its own sets of insults and challenges to throw the Prince's way. These would not have been much of a surprise, if not for the occasional retort from the Prince, which helps to make confrontations with these enemies much more convincing.
The Prince, especially his Dark Prince alter-ego, also has some remarks about particularly challenging platforming sequences. There is also a remark about how many trap-filled rooms that he has to go through, though this would underscore the aforementioned contrivances of the game at platforming.
Although the Prince may have become a jaded and worry-filled person, his sometimes humorous wit, which was generally absent in Warrior of Within, has returned. Much of it will be spent on making retorts against his dark self, which is a lot more cynical.
As for the alter-ego that is the Dark Prince, his snide remarks are not too frequent as to be grating and he is more helpful than not. He also has some amusingly cynical remarks, especially for when he finds the mortal Prince in his moments of emotional weakness. The Dark Prince is definitely callous, but perhaps appropriately so for such a character.
A certain member of another line of royalty returns from the first game. Although she still sounds like the sprightly girl that she was, that she is not always at her Prince's side to make witty remarks only makes the bitterness at having her life being ruined stand out more. This would not be an issue to some people, but it will be to those who remember her conversations with the Prince and their progression.
The other important characters have so little screen-time that their voice-overs are almost forgettable.
CHARACTER MODELS:
Perhaps harking back to an amusingly silly trope in the first game in the Sands of Time trilogy, The Two Thrones has multiple models for the Prince, to simulate the rigours of his dangerous travails. The Prince starts out otherwise well-clothed, eventually becoming half-naked and showing off his highly athletic build, as well as more than a few scars and minor injuries.
Although some characters may be returning characters from previous games, including the Prince, their models in the game are so different that they can seem barely recognizable. The most immediately recognizable of them is fortunately the Prince, thanks to his lanky short hair and beard, but everyone else is only recognizable because the Prince happens to either think aloud or speak their names when he saw them for the first time in the game, or refers to them by name when he is narrating the story.
For example, a certain princess from the first game returns in The Two Thrones, but is barely recognizable as she is garbed in entirely different clothing; her facial features are also different in this game. If not for the Prince's monologue which identifies her by name, it would not have been possible for even followers of the franchise to immediately recognize her (unless they have watched the various promotional videos and followed the development of the game).
The other characters, however, at least have very unique-looking models to make them almost immediately distinguishable whenever they appear on-screen.
Perhaps due to unwillingness to let go of the violent undertones of Warrior Within, the designers of Two Thrones have implemented animations of decapitations for some of the humanoid models in the game, though the Prince does not have any. The decapitations are not too gory though; instead of gore, there is a mixture of some blood and a lot of sparkly sand spilling out of the wounds.
PARTICLE EFFECTS:
Speaking of sparkly sands, there are a lot of particle effects in this game and most of them are associated with the Sands of Time, which always appear as magical gusts of sparkling beige-colored dust.
The best particle effects in the game are reserved for the Dark Prince's emergences. Plenty of smoke, ash and swirling tendrils of ominous black accompany the Prince's transformation, which is further accentuated with cinematic camera angles.
ANIMATIONS:
Although the QTEs can be annoying to some, they are accompanied by entertaining animations. For example, the speed-kills performed with the mortal form of the Prince are deadly athletic feats; it can be a joy to watch the Prince stab and slash enemies repeatedly with the Dagger of Time. Speed-kills that are performed with the Dark Prince often involve a lot of strangulation with his chain-whip, as well as the occasional decapitation.
The best animations in the game of course belong to the athletic Prince. He is still as entertaining to look at as he was in the previous games when he negotiated the various obstacles in his way. His animations for regular combat are just as flashy, such as the animations that are used for when he vaults over enemies and staggers them.
Most of the animations that the player would be looking at are those for the contraptions and traps that riddle the levels though. Most of them move in convincingly foreboding and worrisome ways, with the wicked-looking saws being of particularly noteworthy mention.
LIGHTING:
Like the previous games, The Two Thrones has a lot of textures that also happen to be light sources. These are often associated with creatures and people that have been affected by the Sands of Time.
The Two Thrones, however, has the advantage of having access to bloom technology, which it uses copiously for said textures. Unfortunately, this also means that the skeins on mutated creatures and infected people can be too brilliant to look at comfortably, which is a shame, as the skeins are artfully stylized, especially those on the Dark Prince.
Another considerable lighting to be seen in the game is rays of sunlight shining into indoor areas, but although these look pretty, their contribution to the shadowing and blooming effects in the game are minimal.
OTHER GRAPHICAL DESIGNS:
The prompts for the aforementioned speed-kill QTEs are fortunately not mere icons and texts appearing on-screen to tell the player which button to press. Instead, the edges of the screen are subjected to motion-blur whenever a speed-kill sequence can be performed. Pressing any attack button initiates the QTEs. The motion-blur effect is also used for the input prompts during QTE sequences, in addition to dramatic camera pans and zooms.
SOUND EFFECTS:
Most of the sound effects have been recycled from previous games, though this should not be an issue to fans as they were already satisfactorily appropriate. Of course, this would mean that they would be listening to noises that are already familiar to them already, such as the clashing of metal, tapping of feet on walls and, perhaps most familiarly of all, the otherworldly noise that accompanies the rewinding of time.
Any new sound effects to be heard in this game that has not been heard before earlier in the Sands of Time trilogy would be associated with the Dark Prince. The clinking of chains in particular is pervasive in his moments within the game.
MUSIC:
The musical tracks in the game typically have stereotypical Middle Eastern vibes, though this does not necessarily mean that they are any less pleasant to listen to for that. They are, however, a lot less refreshing to listen now that the Sands of Time series has progressed to its third entry with Stuart Chatwood still involved in the designs of the music.
Anyway, most of them would elicit a sense of ominous suspense and wonderment, themes of which had been quite prevalent in the series for a long while but which are nonetheless very appropriate.
If there is any significant difference that the tracks in The Two Thrones have when compared to their predecessors, it is that they have more vocals in their composition. This is likely due to the involvement of Inon Zur, who has been known for such decisions in musical composition in many other games.
CONCLUSION:
The Two Thrones can be argued as being essentially more of the same that has been seen in earlier games in the Sands of Time trilogy, though it does attempt to include more variety in the gameplay experience. Unfortunately, not all of said variety is as worthwhile as the primary gameplay of platforming and combat.
Aesthetics-wise, The Two Thrones may not seem artistically more sophisticated than its predecessors. However, the camera-work in The Two Thrones is the best to be seen in the Sands of Time trilogy, though this came at the price of possibly-annoying QTE sequences.
The story designs attempt to return to mix the best elements of the stories in the first and second titles, but they are nowhere near as interesting as the testy relationship between the Prince and his darker self, which is fortunately the best executed element of the game.