A penny polished to a high sheen.
Despite a stunningly enchanting world and initially unique gameplay mechanics, PoP shoots itself in the foot with repetitiveness, and then shoots itself in the other foot with everything left in the chamber via an array of problems, foremost of which is simplicity. For instance, if you were to control the Prince to jump from a ledge over a chasm, slam into the wall and cling, hoist himself up to a higher grip on another ledge, and pull himself up to stand on that ledge, the control scheme would look like this: Left Stick - up, press A. Seriously. This ultimately leads you to feel like you are more or less just watching the parts of the game that you are actually playing.
The graphics for the environment are fantastic, but the artistic style here is predominantly 3D, but slaps some cell-shader black outlines around the characters and tries to pass itself off as a cartoon. I haven't seen a worse clash since Matthew Lesko's question mark suit. The voice acting is poor at best, and the American game publisher's default plan of casting American voice actors for these Persian characters leaves a stain on this game that Billy Mayes couldn't Oxiclean out of the "Carpets this thick!"
A couple of snotty lines from the late adolescent Prince can't charm this game into a higher rating. Simplified controls and inability to die rob the player of any real involvement with this title. Hopefully Princess Elika can flash in and save the next installment from these premature pitfalls.