Improved combat and a longer story isn't enough to top Sands of Time.
The game begins with our protaganist running from an unstoppable beast that will chase him until he has died. As it turns out, the reason that the beast is chasing him is because he opened the Sands of Time. Before he could turn back time and stop the Sands from ever being opened, he was supposed to die, so the beast has come to seal his fate and make sure he dies. He travels to the island of time to go into the past and stop the sands from ever being created, but the beast later known as the Dahaka pursues him, but can only find him in the present. Prince spends the majority of the game activating two towers to open the throne room of the Empress of time, which he must kill to stop the sands from being created. The story becomes even more convoluted when the Dahaka learns how to find the Prince in the past, but still chases him in the present as well.
One thing Ubisoft attempted to fix was the combat, as I have already mentioned. Warrior Within sports a much deeper combat system, and a noticeably gory one. With the ability to pick up secondary weapons, the Prince now has more combos to pull off. Though, sometimes I felt like there was too much combat, because nearly every room in the game has a minimum of four monsters to kill. But I was able to get through a rough 80% of the game with just a few reliable combos and mashing the attack button. Although, there is almost no difference between that sword you just threw and that battle axe you picked up 5 minutes ago.
Although the game's environments are grimy and gritty to go along with the theme of the game, Ubisoft knows how to make things look good. The Garden Tower belongs in a museum and the texture work is top-notch. Although, after a while you get tired of looking at scantily-clad women in almost every cutscene. Although, when you look up close at the character models, they seem unpolished and the lip-syncing isn't very good.
One major problem that I have with the game is the sound. They no longer use the Arabian theme of the first game, but swap it with heavy metal performed by the band, Godsmack. There are a few good tracks in there, but after a while the heavy metal grates on your ears. Especially when the fight music is still playing about 3 minutes after the fight is done. There are also incredibly frequent audio bugs during cutscenes. You might watch cutscenes without any audio because of these audio glitches. You also have to listen to the horrible shreeks of Prince's enemies who now look less threatening than the prince himself.
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is by no stretch of the word "bad." It's just not as good as Sands of Time.
Graphics: 9.5
Story: 7
Controls: 9
Difficulty: 8
Entertainment: 9
Final Score: 8.5