I love a good metroidvania game. It is my favorite kind of game in existence. I have played loads of them and tend to enjoy them the most. Two that stick out in my mind recently that truly captivated me were Hollow Knight and Ender Lilies. While that is not the point of this post if you haven't played those two games, you definitely should. I would gladly start both of those from zero and go all the way through them again.
With Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, I was on the fence about whether or not I was going to get involved in it at all because of the comments that an executive made at Ubisoft where he suggested that "players need to get used to not owning their games." At first that comment enraged me, but then I realized that this is basically what all of us that have digital downloads are doing. If you are on Steam or the PS-Plus subscription (or whatever X-box's is called) you are already doing this. So I let it slide.
I am only playing PoP on a friend's console because I never pay full price for a game but since I spend so much time at this person's place anyway, he doesn't mind if I have a separate save file.
As you would expect from Ubi or anyone else, they have a cinematic that explains what the game is all about and then shove you into a tutorial. I don't mind this at all and think it is very well done. They quickly introduce you to all the basic commands and you have a couple of guys running along side you to assist you with battle that is intentionally very easy.
For those that play these sorts of games this is nothing new. They MUST do this in order to show you how to play the game and while their tutorial wasn't exactly unique I did enjoy that it was all relatively fast-paced so that you don't feel like I normally do with me "get on with it already" attitude when it comes to gaming.
Now one of the things that I enjoyed about this tutorial is that not only do they introduce you to what I consider to be an annoying aspect of a lot of modern games, parrying, but they also slowly introduce you to it to the point where you become aware that outside of some boss fights, you don't really have to parry in order to complete this game to one of the endings. I mean at this point I am presuming this, I am only at 19% completion at the time of writing this.
another thing I liked was that early on in the game they really try to make sure that they don't accidentally spoil anything because for skills you are yet to unlock, it simply says "unknown ability."
I can't recall exactly what games I have played in the past where the options screen kind of spoiled the fun of upcoming abilities, but I am happy that they decided to do it this way because one of the main things I really enjoy about metroidvania games is that you don't actually have any idea what sort of abilities you are going to have down the road.
The first boss fight of the game is a bit of a pushover but this is a good thing. After all, we are still in the tutorial. They make this so easy that I guess you could possibly die but even then you would respawn right before him. I am yet to see very many respawns that take you back ages and make you want to rage quit.
Cutscenes, which is something that some people love, is something in gaming that really annoys me. Thankfully, the scenes that I have seen up to now are kept at a minimum and they are also skippable at least in part for individual lines of dialogue.
Now it is far too early for me to tell someone whether or not this game is worth buying but from what I have seen far the game is extremely easy to get into and this is because of great design on the part of Ubisoft. Other games that I have played that are similar have a "what the hell am I supposed to do now?" feel to them and they avoided that in this game. I've been told that some of the platforming gets really tedious later in the game but I'll wait until I encounter that before I comment about it. I do know that this sort of thing is exactly what scared me off of Ori and the Blind Forest but hey! All of us are built different... maybe you love that sort of thing.
Well I will say that I can't really agree with the $50 price tag on this title because it is after all a side scrolling platformer metroidvania. If I were you and this sort of game appeals to you, I would wait until the hype dies down and with it, the price.