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By Keith B (14th May 2007)

For those among you already familiar with the Prince of Persia series, I have but one sentence: Rival Swords is, unfortunately, nothing but an overhauled port of The Two Thrones with modified controls… For everybody out there who is new to the game, and who wants to have some fun slashing evil guys and demons in an oriental setting, read on, there’s much to be said about this newest installment of the deservedly famous game series!

Like most older games in the Prince of Persia series, Rival Swords boasts an excellent story, and is narrated very well. After the prince’s return from the last adventure, it turns out that his hometown Babylon is under siege by a strange dark army. Instead of being able to kick back a little, the prince is called upon to fight the monsters roaming the streets of the city, and now must face tougher and mightier adversaries than ever before. To make things worse (and what could be worse for a sovereign than seeing his people slaughtered all over the place), the prince’s comrade Kaileena is captured by the enemy. Trying to free her, our protagonist contracts the infamous and dangerous “Sands of Time,” an infection that slowly but surely allows the dark side of the otherwise good-natured prince to take over. Regardless, he heads towards the tower of Babylon to make a stand for his people and to free the captured lady…

You, of course, take the role of the prince, and swing the mighty Wiimote and Nunchuk in an epic struggle to evade deadly traps, scale high walls, overcome hordes of beastly enemies, and survive boss fights. Like all other installments we’ve seen since the mid-nineties, Rival Swords requires a great balance between reckless fighting and acrobatic physical skills. Countless traps are strewn over the besieged city of Babylon, and equal numbers of bloodthirsty opponents lurk in every dark corner. To make all this even more engaging, the game now for the first time features a control system that seeks to immerse you in the game world entirely. Proper timing and masterful wielding of the Wiimote-Nunchuk combo are of utmost importance, unless you want to be shredded to pieces by traps and enemies alike. Since Babylon is so wasted, you have to traverse the hardest-to-reach spots on your journey towards the tower.

In this task, you rely entirely on the new control system: Using the Nunchuk’s analog stick, you move around, lift yourself off from the ground by pressing the Wiimote’s A button to jump, or the B button to perform the prince’s characteristic run-jumps along walls. Swinging the controls initiates various attacks. Early on in the game, this is as easy as it sounds. It will get a little confusing, though, once you have a whole bunch of opponents coming at you. The Wiimote represents the main weapon, which you always carry on you. The Nunchuk controls the secondary weapons (pick-ups or weapons taken off enemies). A variety of combo-attacks are possible, but unfortunately, none of them is very satisfying or intuitive to trigger. Another reason to take it easy with those combos is that the secondary weapons have a tendency to break easily, at which point you’re back to your primary weapon, the Dagger of Time. This does exactly what its name suggests: It slashes, cuts, and stabs, and effects the workings of time too boot. This special power allows you to turn back time for a few seconds (helpful if you fall into a trap or failed to notice a nasty enemy around the corner) or to slow it down (useful for safely traversing traps, for example).

Like the handful of super-attacks enabled by the dagger, all these actions use up your valuable supply of ‘sand of time,’ which can be replenished in many places throughout each level. Unfortunately, various control commands tend to overlap or interfere with each other, and you may frequently find yourself doing stuff you hadn’t at all planned to do. Furthermore, the game doesn’t seem to respond very precisely to all of your input. Overall, this makes Rival Sword’s controls only a little better than the controls of earlier Prince of Persia versions. Unfortunately, the same that can be said for so many other Wii releases is true also for this game: The controls are certainly different, but not much better than what we’ve seen before. One definite improvement are the so-called ‘speed kills,’ during which you sneak up to an enemy and the follow on-screen direction to quickly finish him off. While this works well enough, some may find that waggling around the Nunchuk is not a very intuitive way to visualize a sneak attack.

The level design throughout Rival Swords is very ambitious. This can sometimes make for tedious climbing passages, which may strike you as exciting the first few times around, but which turn out to be quite bothersome later on in the game. In comparison to the acrobatic interludes made necessary by traps and vertical obstacles, the number of fights is relatively low throughout the game. Apart from the occasional boss fight, violent encounters also don’t tend to be too tough. This prince is a sneaker rather than a fighter.

One aspect that makes the game’s story particularly interesting is the prince’s infection with the ‘sand of time,’ as already mentioned. Eventually, this ailment will allow the dark side within him to grow so strong that it will temporarily turn him into a monster. In this ‘dark’ manifestation, further attack-combos are available, thanks to the iron-clad whip the dark prince will always have handy. It will help you not only during fights, but also when you must get across large, otherwise insurmountable gaps, or over impossibly high walls. As the dark prince, your character will be a much stronger fighter, but at the same time the infliction drains his energy. Better get in touch with some water soon! �" it’s the only way to reverse the transformation.

Graphic-wise, Rival Swords leaves nothing to be desired… if you’re looking for a LastGen game. All sarcasm aside, here’s yet another Wii release that looks a little like a mid-range PS2 game. What saves Rival Sword’s graphics from utter mediocrity are the nicely designed special effects and the beautiful and highly atmospheric game environments (and oh how beautiful they’d be if Ubisoft’s developers had tapped into the Wii’s resources more properly!). The same can be said about the game’s soundscape and musical score. Both are very atmospheric, and orchestrated in a fittingly epic fashion.

One last letdown before I end: Rival Swords offers neither online or offline multiplayer modes. That’s really all that can be said about that sad fact.

After finishing Rival Swords, the lasting impression is that of a game series that has stayed with us for over a decade for very good reasons. Prince of Persia is engaging, challenging, epic, and fun. In this regard, nothing has changed in the newest Wii release. And these are all good reason to purchase a copy and set out yo free Kaileena. Don’t forget, however, that Rival Swords already exists as The Two Thrones �" which means that the main reason to get the Wii version would be the new control scheme, which is implemented well, but which pales, in my opinion, in relation to the control system of earlier Wii releases such as Far Cry: Vengeance.