Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

aka: Bosi Wangzi: Wuzhe zhi Xin, PoP: Warrior Within, Prince of Persia 2, Prince of Persia 5, Prince of Persia: Dusza Wojownika, Prince of Persia: El Alma del Guerrero, Prince of Persia: Kenshi no Kokoro, Prince of Persia: L'âme du Guerrier, Prince of Persia: Spirito Guerriero, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within HD
Moby ID: 16156
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Description official descriptions

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the direct sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Seven years later, the Prince is hunted by a monster known as Dahaka. He finds out that anyone who manipulates the Sands of Time is destined to die shortly afterwards; but the Prince has escaped his fate, and that's the reason for Dahaka's rage. Now the Prince must travel to the mysterious Island of Time, where he hopes to find the Empress of Time and, through time manipulation, somehow prevent her from creating the Sands in the first place...

The game comes with a new, darker look for the Prince and his surroundings. The fights are more brutal and take a larger part in the game, as the Prince now has enhanced fighting moves including new attack moves via walls and poles.

Even though the fights make up a large part of the game, the puzzle sections are still present and more complicated than before. A new move in the puzzle sections of the game is the curtain slide, which allows you to slide down to the ground slowly. There are still plenty of options for time manipulation and the storyline also lets you travel back and forth in time, visiting the same locations in an alternate time period.

Spellings

  • Принц Персии: Схватка с судьбой - Russian spelling
  • 波斯王子:武者之心 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

457 People (435 developers, 22 thanks) · View all

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Producer
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Lead PC Programmer
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Modeling Technical Director & Special Effects
Animation Technical Directors & Character Special Effects
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 63 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 108 ratings with 5 reviews)

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.

Xbox · by Ace of Sevens (4479) · 2006

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (PoP:WW) Stunning, all-around triumph

The Good
I'm not sure to what extent the original game's design team had a hand in this game, but it is a solid entry. As much as I enjoyed playing "Sands of Time," there seemed to be something painfully repetitive about the combat, excellent graphics and sound notwithstanding. "Warrior Within" overcomes those problems by making combat into a decision tree -- the sequence of buttons pressed, up to six-in-a-row, determines the finesse (or lack thereof) in the prince's fighting style. The excellent sound and graphics from Sands of Time are back, along with the riveting cut scenes, so if you like a game that truly feels like an interactive movie, this is it.

The Bad
Decision tree-based combat is better, but combat is still largely about button mashing. The only question that remains now is, "Which buttons should I push?" The cut scenes may be astonishing, but there can be long puzzle-solving interludes between them.

The Bottom Line
If you didn't like "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time", this one may be worth a look. If you did like PoP:SoT, then "Warrior Within" is a notch above in almost every respect.

PlayStation 2 · by Ryan Kelly (9) · 2005

Such beautiful big green eyes.

The Good
Bob the Imaginary Gaming Friend: "You know, I never would have expected you to play a game like Prince of Persia, considering the fact that you only like RPG-s and Adventures, and mainly because you consider every other game not written by Chris Avellone pure crap."

Well you know, even I get into the mood when I just want to play a game with loads of scantily-clad women, and then I saw that nice juicy screenshot of that metal bikini ass (dear reader, go to the screenshots section now and admire that ass too). Seemed to be an honest enough game made for sex-starving nerds like myself.

Bob: "I see. So games need not to be delving into the darkness of human soul after all.

Yeah, sometimes a great shot at big breasts will do the job.

Bob: "But still, since I being the normal half of your schizophrenic personality and me, Im honest enough in what I like and dont like and even I admit Warrior Within is not quite the etalon of great writing...and you being "story this and writing that" kinda of a guy... what surprises me is that you ended up liking the game.

Well there is some great writing...

Bob: "Oh come on... be honest."

Voice acting is pretty good.

Bob: (laughs)

Okay, so I liked Kaileena.

Bob: "Big breasts make you care, eh?"

Yup.

And there is still some psychological darkness to the characters.

Bob: "Yeah, sure. If you are 15 year old emo and like to cut yourself."

Okay, so the game is not a masterpiece. But it was fun.

Bob: "Not love from the first sight though. I remember a year ago you were still screaming that this game is pure crap. What happened?"

Well, at first you know...

Bob: "You discovered that instead of the loads of half-naked voluptuous female forms, there were only two... and one died to soon... that?"

Well, that too. But what I actually meant was...

Bob: "Oh yes, I remember now. RPG guy with strategical thinking trying to adjust himself to arcadish reflexive gameplay. That was the most fun I ever had just laughing at you. Mockery: "So let me get this straight. I need to ran from the wall, jump, grab the ledge, drop, slide myself down from the tapestry, jump, grab the pole and then make an aerial decapitator attack on that dead sadistic female sand monster who stares at me so evilly (would I sleep with her? I guess I would) on that balcony. Okay, here we go (presses a wrong button and instead of wall running he jumps down from the ledge and finds instant death on spikes)...whoops, what did I do wrong...when did I last save?". Brilliant, just bloody brilliant. Although at that time you claimed that the story was not good enough."

Well, I needed an excuse.

Bob: "But I will admit, that the game is slow in making you care. Unlike the first game which makes the goals and other stuff quite clear, this game shows you just some weird intro and then drops you into some gothic castle and you spend the first half of the game just jumping, climbing and fighting weird sadomaso females without knowing the whys and whats. On some level it could work as a spiritual experience... like catharsis or something... but mostly it just ends up alienating the player, especially when considering what a masterpiece the first game was."

I agree. Sands of Time as a whole was a better experience. It was like everything was just right and perfect for the game. It was a perfect swashbuckling tale - romantic, funny, warm and yet bittersweet. But it left me craving for more and so I came back to this game.

Bob: "You liked the gameplay, the excitement, the feeling when you didn`t need to look which buttons to press because that came instinctively, just right on time, like you were one with the game... inside the action, everything depending on your reflexes, when you had to move faster that you think, when you felt the adrenaline rushing trough your blood..."

Yes. And I wanted more.

Bob: "Did you get more?"

In a way. A lot more adrenaline and that cool feeling when your reacting faster than your thinking. That primal instinct for survival.

Bob: " Well survival is the main theme in Warrior Within. That means you must have liked the Dahaka Chases."

Yes. They gave me everything what I liked gameplay wise in the first game in the course of few minutes. You had no time think, no time to look that the way your going is the right way, everything just depended your instincts, your intuition. If you didn`t react correctly, you would die.

Bob: "For the reader: Dahaka is a poorly contrived plot point. It seems that the Prince is not really left alone for the deeds in the last game, and now some Time Guardian wants to punish him for messing with time. And in dome parts of the game this Dahaka fellow will start chasing the Prince, these moments made especially adrenaline heavy thanks to Godsmacks "I Stand Alone" backing it up. Its a poor addition to the story of the last game, but it works."

But what I really liked about this game is the combat.

Bob: (raises an eyebrow) "Really? (side-note: "You know, I really hate it when you make me ask stupid obvious questions.")"

Yeah, in the last game you could do some cool looking moves, but in the end you spent most of your time just blocking and waiting for your chance to strike. In Warrior Within the combat is just so perfect, so smooth, so incredible. (side-note to Bob: You are after all a voice in my head.)

Bob: "If you get used to pressing different buttons really quickly and at the right moment. But true enough, in Warrior Within it really feels like almost every three different buttons make cool combos. And there are loads of these battle combinations. As the name Warrior Within implies this game is combat oriented, fortunately it`s pretty smooth if there is nothing wrong with your reflexes."

Yeah. There is something in the feeling when you fight with 10 opponents and kill them all in different cool acrobatical strikes without getting a single scratch. Once I developed my Warrior Within, when I just reacted and did it.... I can`t really describe it... it was perfect... it was divine.

Bob: "What Winterwolf means is that when he found out his favorite combos, or more precisely the ones that were most easier for him to do, he started to have fun in the game."

But this combat... it was so exciting, so primal, so depending on your instincts of survival...

Bob: "Such primal manly instincts."

Yeah.

Bob: "Sex and violence."

Yeah!

Bob: "Voluptuous females in your embrace and mutilated corpses of your enemies cast down at your feet!"

Yeah!!

Bob: "You do realize I`m making fun of you?"

It`s my favorite kind of combat... every other forms of combat just suck for me now. I want more.

Bob: "It does give you a overdose in adrenaline, and it`s fun and exciting.... instead of being annoying like combats usually are in games... especially in RPG-s."

Yeah, if there is combat then it should serve it`s purpose - which is to be exciting and tense... and look cool... the animations are just brilliant in this game... creating a whole new level of intense action. This game does that. It does it really well.

Bob: "At the expense of the writing."

Well yeah. Although it does have its moments. The writing starts to have some sort of depth in the last half of the game. When its made clear why Prince is so different from the last game, when the game finally shows what a broken shell of a man he really his, that his only motive is to survive, even if it means to destroy other lives.

Bob: "Yeah, that scene when the Prince finally gives up was a light of brilliance in writing and also in voice acting in the game. Unfortunately it introduced another poorly contrived plot point."

Yeah, voice acting in cutscenes really shined in the last half of the game. In the first half it was pretty awful, although that might have been because of the writing. Although I personally liked the new voice of the Prince. Such a nice "I smoke three packs of cigarettes for breakfast" breaking voice. And Kaileena was also pretty good.

Bob: "I doubt that the writing or voice acting made you care about Kaileena."

It was the eyes. I like her eyes.

Bob: "Wtf?!?!"

It`s true. She has such nice big green eyes. And such an intelligent face also.

Bob: "And it has nothing to do with the fact that she has a big ass and a DD cup?"

Well... big green eyes, you can just drown in them... okay... so the first thing I noticed about her was her big bust. And Ill admit that I noticed her eyes when I found her to be interesting character enough... which was almost a year later. A women with such beauty should not suffer so, especially when shes so half-naked.

Bob: "Yeah. Such sadness, such pain. She also wants to survive at the expense of others... just like the Prince."

Such sad big green eyes.

The Bad
What is mainly bad about the game is mostly to do with the plot and the story.

The story itself does not really add anything new to the world Prince of Persia. And it really feels like an extra fan fiction chapter for the last game than a really new story.

And the plot has you doing stuff without giving you reason to make you care.

Prince: "Hello, Im Prince of Persia. Ive come to kill the Empress of Time."

Kaileena: "Oh, sure. Do you have an appointment?"

Prince: "Well, no."

Kaileena: "Then come back later... like in the next millennia or so."

Prince: "You don`t understand! I must kill her!"

Kaileena: "Okay. Well. We have like this two towers. Go kill some monsters and solve some puzzles. Okay?"

Prince: "Okay."

That pretty sums up what goes on in the first half of the game. And you don`t get enough inside look into the mind of the Prince like you got in the first and the third game. You have no idea who is this guy who gruffs and runts and yells stupid things at his enemies. "You should be honored to die by my sword." "Next!"

Of course it does get better in the second half, but unfortunately it starts to use way too much deus ex machina.

And the setting is not really impressive either. The entire game takes place in a gothic castle. It really gets pretty boring soon. No change of scenery, like in the first game.

Bob: "Well it did have gardens."

And there are two endings. Unfortunately the way to get these endings does not really depend on your choice, it depends on the fact how many life upgrades you get during the course of the game. If you get all then you get the good ending, if not then bad. It`s not really that obvious and is rather stupid way to have endings in my opinion.

Bob: "You say that because you got the bad ending and then only found out about the other ending in the internet."

But I was not the only one.

Also the soundtrack is pretty awful. It uses too much uninspired trashy metal music. There are only few traces of the last game`s beautiful persian style rock music with female vocals. Although "I Stand Alone" works for me in action scenes.

Bob: "I still curious of what Monica Belucci had to do with this game. The game was advertised with that Monica Belucci as Kaileena but Kaileena`s voice is not hers at all."

Beats me. I did saw that interview with her where she talks that Kaileena is such an interesting character, and that Prince of Persia is such a deeply mythological story. Now that you mention it, its not Monica Beluccis voice at all. I wonder what happened?

Bob: "But still, did you care about the story at all when you were playing the game?"

Yes and no. The first half, when I was not into the combat, was pretty boring. And in the end the game did not leave me with such a feeling of satisfaction than the first game did.

But the game was pretty fun.

Bob: "And Kaileena does make you care with her big green eyes."

Yeah, such beautiful big green eyes.



The Bottom Line
Bob: "So what is the judgement then? Good or bad?"

You know I came to the trilogy of Prince of Persia as a sex-starving nerd, but in the end I got lot more than I wished for. And Warrior Within, although not as brilliant as the other two, it`s good enough a game. And it introduced me to a great trilogy.

And besides, those beautiful big green eyes should be a reason enough to play the game.

Windows · by The Fabulous King (1332) · 2007

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

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An Enigmatic Photo Behind the Credits Rifatul Islam Mar 1, 2019

Trivia

Two endings

If the players is able to collect all live upgrades, he can retrieve the final sword upgrade (Water sword) from the hourglass chamber and unlock the canonical ending (The Two Thrones) by fighting the Dahaka. Whiteout the upgrades the sword cannot be retrieved and the player is forced to fight Kaileena the Empress of Time. This also happens if one chooses to not take up the Water sword.

Jordan Mechner

In the December 2005 issue of Wired Magazine, Jordan Mechner(the developer of the original Prince of Persia who was not involved of the development of this game) was not happy with the direction of Warrior Within. He said "I'm not a fan of the artistic direction, or the violence that earned it an M rating. The story, character, dialog, voice acting, and visual style were not to my taste." However, he was quite happy when the direction taken by The Two Thrones.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2004 – Best PC Action-Adventure Game of the Year
  • GamePro (Germany)
    • 2004 - Best Console Action-Adventure in 2004 (Readers' Vote)

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Game added by Erwie84.

PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. iPad added by POMAH. iPhone added by Ben K.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Zovni, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, John Chaser, karttu, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker, Sciere, Xoleras, formercontrib, COBRA-COBRETTI, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger, Flapco.

Game added January 4, 2005. Last modified March 7, 2024.