Summary
This game is really bad, in the good sense
The Good
I was fond of the old 2D Prince of Persia games, so was quite happy to see the series get the full 3D treatment.
The Sands of Time is one of my favorite games and I believe holds up as one the best 2D --> 3D adaptations.
The sequel delivers largely more of the same with its elaborate jumping and platforming puzzles, which isn't a bad thing at all. There are several new kinds of traps, and best of all, the new chase sequences where you have to complete a section very quickly as a monstrous beast called The Dahaka is on your tail.
My main complaint about The Sands of Time was the combat. It was quite simplistic and the final boss fight was the easiest I've ever seen in a game. I beat it on my first try and only got hit once. In Warrior Within, the combat system has been completely revamped to have a great deal more depth. Rather than simply blocking until the enemy quits attacking, then attacking until they start blocking, you now have a wide variety of combos that grows and you progress.
Be warned though, this is only for ordinary combat. After the first couple bosses, you shouldn't be fighting bosses the regular way anymore. Don't waste time trying to figure out how to counter their attacks like I did. Bosses are fought almost entirely with sand powers. The game is insanely difficult if you don't realize this.
Everything about the presentation is masterfully done from the acting to the small graphical details that make the world come alive. I do have some issues with the creative direction though.
The Bad
The prince is now a complete stone-cold bad-ass, which frankly has been done to death. In The Sands of Time, he was a humble man forced into greatness by his circumstances. Here, his face seems to usually be stuck in a sneer and he taunts enemies with lines like "You should be honored to die by my blade," or "Death! Death, to to those who stand in my way!" Honestly, he was far more likable before. The game in general suffers from a lack of likable characters. There are, in essence, only three characters, all of whom seem only interested in saving their own hides. This doesn't work particularly well in the Prince of Persia IP.
That is a relatively minor complaint, though. My big problem with this game is glitch, glitch glitch. I beat the game once after finding about half the life upgrades. I then read online about a different ending you can get if you find all the life upgrades, so I restored from an early save and went searching. I was only two upgrades away from a whole set when I got stuck in the upper sacrificial chamber/past-southern passage (present) area by a glitch that makes it impossible to grab a certain ledge and therefore impossible to leave this section.
I restarted and played through again to get the other ending. I ran into another game ending bug toward the end of the game that stuck me in the mechanical tower with no way out. Luckily, this time I had learned to create multiple saves and only lost about an hour's time instead of the whole thing.
I also encountered several lesser bugs, such as doors I could walk through without opening them in several places and a cutscene that played when it wasn't supposed to. Reading around online makes it clear to me that my experience is far from rare. This game contains numerous bugs, several of which are fatal and will force you to scrap your saved game and start from scratch.
The Bottom Line
Prince of Persia: Warrior within is essentially an unusual combination of platformer, 3D weapon-based beat-em-up and heavy metal. This unfortunately narrows its appeal somewhat from its predecessor, but it still an excellent game if you are prepared to possibly have to use a walkthrough to avoid game-ending bugs.
