When this game was released I received it as a gift, it was one of those titles I played on PC a very long time ago when I was a child. The really old PC and Atari style that often reminded you of Pitfall and I considered it one of the hardest games I played growing up. I was familiar enough to have some excitement, but I sorta expected it to be like how Ninja Gaiden translated on newer consoles.
I will say that it is a very pretty game, they worked hard to make the graphics look great but within the first 5 minutes of playing it felt like a child's game. The first time I played it was way too easy and I got bored of it after staying up late night, it felt like the game designers wanted you to win. There was no satisfaction playing it, so I basically forgot about it.
Last weekend I had some friends over and they noticed that the disk still looked brand new, and I mentioned that I only tried playing it once and got bored of it. So my friends decided to give it a try, eventually we would play for a little bit until we got bored, then made a habit of switching to other games for a couple hours then try to finish Prince of Persia over the weekend.
If you want a quick review, there are plenty of buttons sequences to press, the game is trying to be The Matrix at times. You can beat the game easy by knowing how to time your block and attack with the same buttons, it's collecting the same items to unlock other ways to collect more items. It's nothing special and I'm amazed this game was rated higher than a 6 since it wasn't catering to the audience of children under the age of 8 (trust me, this game is that easy to beat).
I'm not sure how many people have heard of the term "cheese" where you basically find ways to exploit little mishaps in the game design to skip through tougher areas. It's very common in this title, instead of having to unlock all the different color items, there's ways to bypass areas. I'm not sure if they worked very hard or tested this game enough because you can beat this game in a single sitting if you really got bored enough.
My problem is mashing the same buttons, along with not having to worry if you fall because the game is too easy and I didn't die a single time. I also didn't like how the buttons work, at times it's great but then if you press a button twice it's already going to perform that move, or when you mash for your partner to give you that extra distance and it doesn't work. This might only be an issue with the 360 but it's extremely annoying.
One benefit is pressing the LT to get more out of the story, but it can get very dull. This game could have been a classic, there are some signs that the game was intended to be taken serious but perhaps they were informed that they didn't want to make it too challenging. Some of the scenes look great, but it's all flash and zero challenge to the point I lost interest in the story and characters.
There are puzzle elements, which only make you annoyed after you figure out you're just collecting stupid items to unlock your ability to warp through colored junk just to collect more. Even the fights are the same sequence of button and it ruins the fun.
The game still doesn't hold up well, eventually we beat the game for the simple sake of getting it over with but none of us really enjoyed it. It was something to do, just not a game any of us intend on trying to play again. It was too easy, this was something you let kids fool around with when you have to babysit and you let them use that one controller that doesn't work all that great.
It's a bad thing when a game is only worth playing once and you get rid of it, so it's far from a masterpiece but overall it's not terrible. If you find it used or somewhere under $10 it's likely worth it if you're a fan of the franchise or if you want a silly game to beat when you've got nothing else to do, this is more fan service than anything.