Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has been popular since its release as the return of Ubisoft's "Prince of Persia" series to "Metroidvania-like". On September 18th, the first story DLC "Shadow of the Mask" was officially launched, bringing some new gameplay and new enemies. Touch took part in the beta of Shadow of the Mask, experiencing its new "jumping" levels and quicker enemies.
The protagonist, Sargon, is tricked into Lajian's palace of the mind, a place where time stands still
The prerequisites for entering the DLC are relaxed, and players only need to complete the main quest "Escape from the Depths" to pick up the side quest by talking to NPCs. The story begins when the protagonist Sargon is accidentally lured into the mental palace of "Lajian", one of the members of the undead legion, on the way to rescue the prince. Rajian is a very dangerous opponent, and she can use all kinds of illusions and traps to bring Sargon to a desperate situation.
In terms of art and overall atmosphere, Lajian's Mind Palace continues the broken style of the game's main body frozen in time, with a pleasing exotic and chaotic beauty. Rajian's eyes, like the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings series, emerge from the black sun and stare closely at Sargon's every move.
On top of that, the biggest feeling of the entire DLC is a sense of coherence and urgency that "your feet don't touch the ground". This comes from the large number of "hopping" and chase levels that dominate the process, while the percentage of combat levels is relatively low - although there are still new enemies and intense boss battles.
Rajian's MONOCULUS is often seen in chase levels
The DLC adds several new traps to the map, most of which need to be triggered by attacks. These include a blue pinball that can "bounce" Sargon through air currents, a "small wormhole" that can teleport in a straight line but must be controlled by an attack, a barrier door that needs to be chased and attacked by a point of light, a phantom platform that can only be stepped on once and disappears, and a pillar that can climb and bounce back left and right. Of course, there are also rolling phantom gears and ubiquitous spikes.
The feel of continuous bouncing is very good
When these new traps are linked together to form a level, Sargon jumps in the air almost without touching the ground or the wall with his hands, and there is no platform to rest on or stop along the way. Even if the auxiliary mode of light bead transmission is turned on, it is still inevitable that the key "jumping music" that involves the main and side quests will still be unavoidable. With these bounces and teleportations, the game has even improved in terms of feel.
However, due to the long level, the difficulty of this kind of "jumping music" is not in the operation, but in the need to use trial and error to master the route and timing, in other words, the "backboard". The length of the level also reduces the error tolerance rate in disguise, especially in chase levels where the road ahead is uncertain and needs to be played on the spot.
Another factor that reduces the margin for error is that it seems to be to prevent players who have already cleared the DLC from pushing the DLC, and once inside Rajian's Mind Palace, Sargon will be stripped of most of his special abilities, lose all of his amulet, and have no health vials - yes, the DLC makes blood vials a collection element that must be obtained through a very lengthy "Jumping Fun" level. The main means of healing along the way are to kill enemies or break rare health crystals. In addition to this, players will be able to earn 3 new amulets through side levels.
There are several collection elements in the DLC, including health bars, blood vials, and story fragments
In fact, it limits Sargon's abilities, but instead highlights the care that was put into the level design. In all of the "Hopping" levels, the player will spend most of the time using the most basic jumps and dashes (Seymog Charge), with the occasional crystallized teleport (Shadow of Seymog) in the gear level. The different experiences of each level are all due to the changes in the environmental mechanics.
In other words, even if the DLC doesn't seem to be as support-rich, resource-free, and player-friendly as the base game, it still significantly reduces the player's operating costs in terms of design. While there are mechanics with more stringent card timing that require a certain amount of reflexes, the backboard solves most of the problems, and players will only experience the fun of the varied level design.
The respawn point of the "Hopping Fun" level is often far away
In terms of combat, the enemies in "Shadow of the Mask" move more quickly. There are shield-wielding puppet soldiers with strange postures and unpredictable attacks, as well as elusive stealth assassins and whirling spikes flying all over the sky. Lajian himself is even more agile in the boss battle, jumping up and down. For this reason, the game offers players a basic solution: parrying. It could even be argued that the standard solution for many battles is to block, especially against various flying enemies and artillery traps in the map. This is consistent with the ontology's combat logic, but the pace is faster.
There are a total of 3 new bosses in "Shadow of the Mask", which are the DLC's Boot Boss, the Main Boss, and the Hidden Boss that can be unlocked when you return to the main body. They maintain the quality of the design at the ontological level, all have very different multi-stage flashy moves, and there are no designs that deliberately embarrass the player, everything revolves around the same theme - refreshing high-speed combat.
The bosses are all designed to be quite handsome
In general, if you don't get stuck in "Jumping Fun" and Boss Battles for too long, the main line of "Mask Shadow" can be completed in about three or four hours, and it may take more than 6 hours for the side quests to be cleared, fluctuating depending on the player's level and difficulty options. As the first story DLC for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Shadow of the Mask offers a lot of fresh gameplay, and also makes some additions to the original story on the collectibles, especially the motives of the villains and the past stories. Whether it is in terms of gameplay or story, it is worth trying.