Overall a worthy sequel to Sands of Time, Warrior Within loses a lot of admiration trying to "roll with the bunches
Commercialism aside, the sequel packs some serious punch as it fixes the biggest complaint from the last game, the combat engine. Sands of Time was a great game and all but it's blatantly weak combat-engine was the only flaw that marred the game from reaching absolution. Warrior Within's combat is far more fleshed out. You can now chain a number of moves into a combo and snuff your foe off. There are about a dozen new ways to kill enemies, you can strangle them, impale them, steal their weapon and kill them with it, or you can just combine all three. Seriously!
Personally I was a bit disappointed with the sound. The FX sound just like the ones in Sands of Time, the slashes, hits, sand-dissipation, everything. The same can be said about the music, some sort of wannabe-edgy metal music music plagues the game's aural experience. Where are the ambient mid-eastern music that whispered in our ears? Godsmack, a band that I vehemently despise contributed their songs as the soundtrack for the game. Their constant "nagging" make my ears bleed. On the Dahaka-chase sequences the same old tune runs OVER AND OVER AGAIN. The idea quickly wears off. Sands of Time thrived in its excellent voice-acting and dialogue, unfortunately this is not the case is Warrior Within, while some of the characters come out relatively clean, the central character, the Prince, does not sound as great; maybe it's due to the fact that a new voice-actor took the reigns.
Visuals are mostly kept intact, meaning that they are gorgeous, with some slight upgrades such as the character models, now appearing a bit more detailed and less exaggerated than the previous game. Bloom lighting, a wonderful effect makes a welcome appearance and the exotic well-lit mid-eastern areas are now replaced with some dark and murky pseudo-Gothic environments, which gives you the impression of a Legacy of Kain game, which isn't necessarily bad.
There's a lot to be said about Warrior Within, the game is certainly an overall improvement from the last one except that I miss the foggy Arabic environments and the buddy AI, like Farah, from Sands of Time and that the game is maybe trying just a little too hard to look edgy and tries to showcase the new combat system a bit too much (you can never get a minute of silence to stop and smell the roses), but all in all Warrior Within is a well-implemented and well-written game that anyone following the story or just wants some action (with style) will want to maul at.