Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

aka: Bosi Wangzi: Shi zhi Sha, Princ Persii: Peski Vremeni, Prince of Persia 4, Prince of Persia: Jikan no Suna, Prince of Persia: Las Arenas del Tiempo, Prince of Persia: Le Sabbie del Tempo, Prince of Persia: Les Sables du Temps, Prince of Persia: Piaski Czasu, Prince of Persia: Písky času
Moby ID: 11185
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

The King and the Prince of Persia are besieging the Maharajah's castle to plunder the treasures hidden inside. In order to impress his father, the Prince sneaks inside to recover the magical Dagger of Time. He quickly learns that this dagger has the ability to control time. The malevolent Vizier has other plans for the dagger, however, and tricks the Prince into unlocking a mysterious secret of the Dagger that causes the King and many of his subjects to be turned into sand zombies. Now, the Prince must figure out what has happened and try to set things right again.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an action game with platforming and puzzle-solving elements. It updates many of the gameplay concepts from the previous games, and brings them into a fully three-dimensional world. The Prince will engage in sword fighting, wall climbing, spike dodging, puzzle solving, and more in his quest. The Prince also carries the Dagger of Time, which allows him to unleash several magical powers. The most important of these powers is the ability to reverse time. This ability allows the player to reverse their actions when they lead the Prince to his death.

Spellings

  • Принц Персии: Пески Времени - Russian spelling
  • 波斯王子:时之砂 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 波斯王子:遺忘之砂 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

250 People (223 developers, 27 thanks) · View all

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Average score: 91% (based on 115 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 246 ratings with 10 reviews)

Such a great game crippled by such a simple flaw

The Good
Once again you take on the role of the Prince of Persia, but instead of forging though foreboding dungeons as then the original classics, he begins the story as a young warrior that's ready to prove himself in battle with a single goal in mind, to win glory by raiding the treasure vault. Risking death traversing the decaying ruins he only finds an odd dagger, but blinded by pride he claims his prize. However, the purpose of the dagger remains unknown to the naive Prince till the Vizier tricks him into unlocking the hourglass vessel that entraps the Sands of Time, turning all within the palace into zombies under its control save three souls, the Prince, the fallen Maharajah's daughter Farah, and the Vizier. Now the Prince must find a way to undo what has been done and somehow the dagger is the key.

The passages through the palace are blocked with fallen walls, puzzling diabolical traps and hoards of sand creatures. While this task may seem daunting to ordinary men, the Prince's blazing speed and agility allow him to not only leap and swing among the ruins, but run across the walls along deep chasms, climb up walls to unreachable ledges and levers, or even leap back and forth between them up to death defying heights. (As a word of warning, he can't climb walls very well when his feet are wet. Once he's out of the water give his feet a moment to dry.) His range of acrobatic skills are crucial to beating the puzzling paths created fallen ruins and clockwork traps set to kill all who pass. Many of the locked doors will begin to close as soon as they open, so he has to be quick and cunning to dodge the spinning and swinging spikes and blades in time. All of this may seem to be to much for one man, but by mastering a few simple actions the Prince can apply the needed move given the situation and direction he's traveling.

Luckily Farah, the one of the few real characters he meets, decides to aid him in his journey to the recover the hourglass, but only after saving her life. Soon the Prince realizes that her intelligence and petite figure are invaluable to beating many of the puzzles. However, the secrets she hides leads to distrust as well.

Traps are not the only thing that test the Prince. The former inhabitants of the palace have be transformed by the sands into creatures of the undead, forced to do its biding. Luckily the Prince can quickly block and attack in any direction and even leap over to into his attackers. Some of the sand creature may seem single minded, but the undead warriors are also swift and can block many of he moves. Even tough their attacks are usually predictable they can rematerialize anywhere at any time, so he must be cautious or they can easily entrap him. Luckily, Farah will ad you in many of the battles with her lightning fast bow, and mysteriously endless supply of arrows. However, since she doesn't carry a sword and her arrows are too weak to take down some the larger brutes, she can easily be overwhelmed in the later battles, so be careful since he cannot complete the journey to the tower alone.

Even with all of their their might and cunning, they cannot defeat the undead without releasing the sands from their deformed bodies. Soon the Prince learns that the dagger can also be used to weld the Sands of Time to his command, by reversing the flow of time to undo a recent mistake, to slow time to slip though a tough situation, or to release the sands from his foes. Most importantly the dagger can be used to retrieve the sand that is released, which is required for it to preform its time bending magic.

Unfortunately, the sand creatures often guard the sand vortex, the place where the Prince can return if he were to fail at any point, so if he cannot complete the journey to the next vortex he must return to the previous one. Fortunately, if he doesn't gave up, he can often return to a closer point. Since the other points are not typically marked, it can be hard to know where they will be.

Behind the magic of the story and the gameplay, the graphics overall are stunning. The level of detail of the characters and world isn't the greatest, but they strike a fare balance and are well done. While most action games that allow jumping and climbing ledges require a simplified world geometry, and Sands of Time (SoT) still maintains a fairly complex and nearly continuous world. While there are a good number of moving objects in the world, most of it however is static, many of the objects are simple doors and traps.

Atop all of this are detailed textures and soft lighting, which mostly make up for the simple underlying geometry. In fact the texturing of the models doesn't fall far behind those used in to scarce prerendered cutscenes. The world textures are also fairly detailed, but tend to be in monochromatic browns. However, when the world is mostly made of sand and sandstone, there really isn't much one can do. However the lighting does make up for some of the lack of color of the textures, especially in the indoor scenes such as the well. Also the shading and lighting used give it a nice soft somewhat cartoonish feel. After, this is no ultra realistic gore-fest like Doom 3. It's also in the little details where the game really shines. No, I mean literally. The Sands of Time really glow as they float like a soft fog over the floors of the rooms and halls and the dagger even glows in response whenever the Prince wonders near.

One of the elements that would have really ruined the game is animation, but SoT doesn't disappoint. The animation of the Prince is extremely fluid throughout all of the many moves he can preform. He smoothly follows through from one to another with out pausing and it seams that most actions can be interrupted if appropriate to do so. The animation of the other models doesn't fall far behind. One thing that seamed to be missing was facial animation during the game. The Prince's face doesn't seem to move at all when he speaks. At least the in game rendered cutscenes are better. Last, but not least the cloth animation was great. The wall banners fold, shift, and waft as the Prince touches against them or as he pushes them out of the way as runs along the wall behind them. Too bad that's about the only time you really get to see it in action.

The sound and voice overs in the game are great. The sounds are of good quality and the acting is simply top notch. The music in general was great, but I think that it would have been better with they didn't stray so much away from arabic motif with the electric guitar. I know they were going for a harder modern sound, but I would prefer that they didn't.

The Bad
First and for most, the one thing that completely ruined the game for me was the character control scheme. I've played a good number of PC adventure and action games and of the two kinds of control schemes commonly used, character and camera relative, the use of camera relative movement in SoT was by far one of the worst decisions I've seen in a long time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for an action game, but SoT had to take it one step farther with dynamic camera movement. While sometimes being cinematographically eye catching, in others it becomes painfully clear why every other 3D 3rd person action game I've ever played almost always used character relative controls. I tried in vain to find any way to fix this simple mistake, but alas the option was nowhere to be found.

Most of the time you can at least control the camera to do whatever you wish, but often times it decides to reposition itself on it's own accord and occasionally refuses to move regardless of how bad the angle is. Typical case in point, the prince is on a ledge with the camera pointing let's say north and to the east you can see a pole and a hole in the facing wall the he has to swing to. Now the camera at this point might own its own either decide to swing around to the west so that you can't see the obstacles ahead or swing slightly to the west just enough at last moment so that instead of dashing across the wall toward the pole, continuing to push the right control button will send him climbing up the wall matrix style. Again when as soon as you make it up to the hole, camera swings around behind you to point east, showing you what lays beyond, but the shortly after you push the up button to run inside the camera will suddenly position itself on the other side pointing west. If you're not fast enough to stop or push down instead to account for the abrupt change in camera angle, the prince will spin around to match the new camera angle and run back out the hole again. Having to constantly readjust your prospective of how the controls move the prince through a hall when dodging traps is annoying, but having to do it constantly during battles is just ridiculous. A number of times when I tried to vault over a lesser sand creature to get out a sticky situation the camera would swing around enough that at the last moment that the up button when send the price vaulting over a staff man instead, which would in turn readily fling the prince to the ground with an overhead swing. Also in a few occasions the camera would get stuck with a section of wall or curtain between it and the prince such the view of the prince and his assailants was complete obscured.

My only other real complaint is about the save game points. I know that its a common, and antiquated, crutch commonly used in console games, yet it's a point that's often overlooked when porting games to the PC. At least they manged to integrate the logic of the save game point into the game better than most games I've played recently and even give you a bonus by showing you the path ahead.

The Bottom Line
I really wanted to like the game and often found this unique pole and sword swinging action/adventure to be a real blast, until I found myself caught between a battle with hoards of sand creatures and the constant disorientation induced by a runaway camera with a mind of it own. It's really sad to see a such a great game humbled by such a simple mistake.

Windows · by semicharm (7) · 2005

Absolutely brilliant.

The Good
There are a lot of complimentary words in the English language. Of course, I'm not going to claim to know all of them. But I am going to claim that there isn't a doubt in my mind that every single one of them applies to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Unfortunately, the best I could come up with to describe this masterpiece was "absolutely brilliant," but believe me, I feel terribly guilty for my incompetence in finding a better suited description. So, due to my overwhelming feeling of guilt, I guess my only option is to tell you just why this game is "absolutely brilliant."

By far, the finest aspect of Sands of Time is the gameplay itself. There are two main parts to the gameplay: fighting battles and maneuvering obstacles. The true core of the game though lies in maneuvering obstacles. The main character, who we'll just refer to as "the Prince," as his true name is never actually revealed, has amazing acrobatic talents. He can run up and along walls, climb up and down polls, swing on bars, jump long distances, rebound between walls, and do whatever else the situation might require. The best thing about all of this is how realistically the Prince controls. His movements are the exact opposite of the usual jerky movements found in most other games. I could probably spend a good five or ten minutes just running around in a circle or zigzagging because of how fluidly the Prince moves.

But fluidity and grace aside, the real fun comes from applying the previously mentioned acrobatic abilities to the physical puzzles constantly encountered throughout the game. Let me give you an example. Say you come into a room high above the floor, and you want to get down to the bottom. So first, you have to drop down onto a ledge and scale across the wall. From the wall, you jump onto a broken column that is no longer connected to the floor, and from there jump onto a platform sticking out of the wall. From the platform, you run sideways across the wall, trigger a pressure plate, jump off the wall to a flagpole, and swing onto another platform summoned out by the pressure plate. And so on until you reach the bottom. The thing is, the situation I just explained (even if it was tough to follow...sorry) is an extremely simple one. Many of these puzzles can get quite complicated, especially when you start taking into account the varied traps that are placed throughout the palace you will be traversing.

Now, don't think that these physical puzzles are going to be the only brain-scratching situations you will encounter. Doing all those things are really quite exhilarating, and just plain fun to do. The real tough stuff comes in the few actual puzzles in the game. Those of you who have played "Ico" should have some idea of what these are like, although The Sands of Time's puzzles are exceptionally simple when compared to Ico's. The thought of these scared me at first, because puzzle solving isn't exactly my strong suit when it comes to video games. But these too are actually quite fun, and pretty rewarding when you finish them. For a quick example, there is one part in the game where you have to rearrange mirrors on the first and second floor of a library in order to hit a symbol on the wall with a thin stream of light and open a gate. For me, these puzzles certainly took a little while to figure out, but it also wasn't anything where I got bored because I didn't know what to do next (as it often happened in Ico.)

Well, enough with the adventure part of the game. Let's move on to the action. Like in the puzzles, the Prince's acrobatic abilities play an imperative role in successfully concluding a battle. The most helpful action in the game, for me anyway, was being able to vault over enemies. Yes, that's right...you jump onto an enemy, then jump over him. While in the air, you have the option of swinging your sword and knocking the enemy down. But not all enemies will let you vault over them. That is why you can jump off the wall and over the enemy, providing the same effect as the regular vault. You can also jump off the wall, but instead of jumping over the enemy, you'll dive directly in its direction, sword pointing straight out, again knocking him down. The option of blocking and counter-attacking are also present. In order to survive, all of these actions must be utilized to take advantage of each enemy's weakness.

Notice how I never said anything about actually killing an enemy in the last paragraph. That's because after the first five minutes of the game, it will be impossible. Due to the Prince's unintentional actions, every human being was turned into a sand creature. And, as we all know, you can't actually kill a sand creature, that's just foolish. But you can destroy it utterly by taking out its sand. Of course, that requires some sort of sand extracting weapon, something like the Dagger of Time maybe.

In order to truly get rid of an enemy, you must knock it down and stab it with the Dagger of Time, thus taking its sand. And when the Dagger fills up with enough sand, the fun really starts happening. With the dagger, and with enough sand, you can temporarily stop time for one enemy, temporarily slow down all time, rewind time, and even temporarily stop time for everything except you, allowing you to destroy a number of enemies in the blink of an eye. The most helpful of all these time control abilities is the power to rewind, because not only can you rewind time if you get hit by an enemy or misjudge a landing, you can rewind time after you have died, thus reviving yourself.

Assisting the wonderful gameplay are absolutely superb graphics. The Sands of Time has some of the most beautiful surroundings I've ever seen in a video game. Even during nighttime segments, this game just looks stunning.

Alright, so the gameplay is great and the graphics are gorgeous, but what about the story? Well, at first I thought it was going to be another horribly average story with a boring presentation. The basics of the story are that the Prince is tricked into unleashing a horrible evil upon the world, and it is up to the Prince, with the help of the spunky Farah, to contain this evil before it spreads, and stop the one responsible for the trickery.

After having completed the game, I'm still obliged to say it was fairly average, but in a good way. One neat thing about how the story is presented is that most of it happens during gameplay. Conversations between the Prince and Farah happen in real time, as well as when the Prince is expressing his thoughts to the player. At key parts of the story though, the game will convert to an FMV, each of which couldn't have possibly been better. But the best part about the story is the little twist at the end, something that when you see it will make you say, "Ohhh...now I get it," even though you thought you understood in the first place. Even though I feel a little cheated because I feel like I should have picked up on this little surprise beforehand, I was extremely pleased with how everything unfolded. All in all, I got much more from the story than I had originally expected.

One more noteworthy part of The Sands of Time is the theme song. The music that plays during gameplay is fine, it suits the game well, but it really isn't a huge part of the experience. But the theme song itself is something worth mentioning. Hearing it for the first time during the ending credits, the song is a modern take on traditional mid-eastern melodies. The music is fairly simple, but accompanied with smooth vocals, the song itself holds a charming quality I don't often hear in most songs.

The Bad
I have said time and time again that no masterpiece is perfect. And staying true to this statement, there is a huge problem I had with The Sands of Time. I beat this game in a little over a day, approximately thirty hours from the time I first started it up until I was watching the ending credits. My total gameplay time was a little more than eight hours. Today, I started the game again for fun, and I got through fifty percent of the game in about two and a half hours. I mean, I realize that a lot of work went into this game, I really do, but it is still unbelievably short. This game was, for lack of a better word, absolutely brilliant, but I only got to experience that brilliance for a day. It just saddens me that the experience was over so quickly.

The Bottom Line
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the few games about which everything feels right. It's beautiful, it's challenging, it's humorous, and it's just plain fun. I beg of you, for your own sake, don't pass this game up, because you'd have to try real hard to dislike it.

PlayStation 2 · by DarkDove (63) · 2003

I feel as if I've live this moment before....

The Good
This was one of the first PS2 games I remember buying other than ICO.

I'll jump right on the graphics as usual. AMAZING! I new the PS2 was capable of these sort of graphics, but it's so much better when you actually get to see them in motion. I love the way the prince moves effortlessly across walls, it's so smooth and natural looking that no other games acrobatics can match it. The environments were dreamlike and absolutely surreal at times. The glowing ,sparkly fog in some of those levels could only work in this game. The character models could have been better as far as the hands were concerned, but that is such a small gripe compared to how wonderful they look. The monsters are all very imaginative and very challenging. Fara and the prince look exquisite and are some of the best I've ever seen on the PS2.

Now on to the sound. Half and half. Sometimes it's at the right volume, and sometimes it's far too low. I know some of it was for dramatic effect, but it can be to quiet for it's own good. The voice acting sometimes sounded rush but rarely stilted or stiff. But overall it was very well done and incredibly convincing. I also like the music, even if doesn't fit the age it's in.

The con-trolls were very intuitive and easy to learn after a few tries. There isn't much other than that to discuss in the con-troll department.

Now on to the gameplay. THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST ROCK SOLID GAMES I HAVE EVER PLAYED!!!! Seriously! Jumping from walls, running on walls, jumping off platforms precariously perched over bottomless pits, swinging from poles, and the revolutionary realtime rewind all come together for a amazing experience ! And something else I didn't experience in any other game before was how the story was told with minimal cutscenes. You'll be pulling a lever and the prince will start his tale from that particular point. The distance between save points was annoying, but not aggravating. Overall no major complaints here! Oh, and the load times are always short! No long waits! And one last note, the original Prince of Persia is a unlockable ! I never got past level two, but it's the original! Come on !

The Bad
Some of the sequences where you have to jump between walls was kind of hard. And some of the fights early on in the game could drain your patience if you didn't have a lot of it. And in the original game that you can unlock, I can't make that last jump in level two.

The Bottom Line
Get it ! you'll love it ! The best Prince of Persia game since the original is the best one since! No other sequel will ever match what this one did.

PlayStation 2 · by GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) · 2007

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Random slowdowns... chirinea (47504) Aug 13, 2008
Which control is best for this? chirinea (47504) Feb 23, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Advertising

The Internet marketing for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was Ubisoft's most successful campaign so far. Ad agency Digital Outlook targeted 15-24-year-old males with ads featuring characters from the game and its "acrobatic action gameplay". A DHTML overlay showing the Prince slicing through the computer screen with his sword had a click-through rate of 26.1%. A streaming video ad, showing the gameplay, had a click-through rate of 23.43%. These rates were 4x higher than the host site's average.

Armitt, Claire. Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time. (Case Study)" New Media Age. May 6, 2004 p30.

Cover

The PlayStation 2 Greatest Hits budget release of the game confusingly uses the cover art of the 2010 game Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.

Farah

Curious about how Farah feels about the Prince? Use the free-look button to look at her during the game to see how their relationship grows.

Murals

On the opening level, just after the room in which you first see the sands of time / giant hourglass, you find a water-filled passage that has 6 murals on the walls. The contents of the murals seem to describe the legendary history of the sands of time :

1) A blue god and winged goddess cradle the earth

2) A red demon kills the blue god as he sleeps

3) The red demon stalks the earth, eating humans

4) The blue god returns from the dead and strikes down the red demon with lightning

5) The blue god collects the sand from the red demon and pours it into an hourglass

6) The blue demon grow four arms - 2 sport the hourglass - 2 carry a sword and the severed head of the red demon. Humans worship at his feet.

Hidden games

The Playstation 2 and Gamecube versions feature a hidden version of the original Prince of Persia , which once unlocked can be played at will.

The X-Box version of the game features the first Prince of Persia, but also features a hidden Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow & The Flame, which will also show up as unlocked content.

The Windows version of the game does not feature either game hidden anywhere.

Rustam

Several times the main characters mention the "legendary" Rustam in comparison to what the Prince is able to do. Rustam was a Persian hero noted for his great strength. Born with prematurely gray hair, Rustam slew a rampaging white elephant with a single blow at the age of ten.

More at "Rustam." Encyclopedia Mythica. 2004. Encyclopedia Mythica Online.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2003 – Best Console Graphics of the Year (PlayStation 2)
  • Computer Games Magazine
    • March 2004 - #7 Game of the Year 2003
  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2004 (Issue #236) – Action Game of the Year
    • March 2004 (Issue #236) – Weapon of the Year (for the Dagger of Time)
  • EGM
    • February 2006 - #166 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time"
  • GameSpy
    • 2003 – #10 Game of the Year (together with SoulCalibur II)
    • 2003 – #4 Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2003 – #9 GameCube Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Big John WV, PCGamer77, Rupert Breheny, Sciere and WildKard

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by quizzley7.

PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. PlayStation 2 added by Corn Popper. Xbox One, Xbox 360 added by Plok. Windows added by Cyberzed. Xbox added by JPaterson.

Additional contributors: MAT, Terrence Bosky, Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, JRK, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker, Sciere, Simone Curti, Zeppin, Eltahriel, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, 一旁冷笑.

Game added November 30, 2003. Last modified March 7, 2024.