I don’t think I’d venture a bold guess that Ubisoft’s best game this year won’t be Star Wars Outlaws or the yet-to-be-released Assassin’s Creed Shadows , it’ll be Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown . The side-scrolling metroidvania is a rich, expansive, and surprisingly compelling take on a genre often dominated by indies, and it’s exactly the kind of game I wish mega-publishers would make more of.
There's also a story expansion called Mask Of Darkness that came out yesterday.
Mars Of Darkness adds a new chapter accessible late in The Lost Crown, which traps main character Sargon in the mind palace of Radjen, one of the Immortals you spent time with in the original's runtime. He was the only one of the group who couldn't come to a clear solution, which was a big flashing light bulb signalling an inevitable expansion.
As this is end-game DLC, players are expected to have unlocked all of Prince of Persia's powers before taking over, and have some proficiency in tricky jumps, runs, and blocks. Ubisoft recommends brushing up on your skills by playing Divine Trials, the 22 expert-level challenges added in a free patch in June.
Honestly, those Divine Trials are a pain in the neck, and I would have expected the story DLC to be a notch lower overall, at least with the exception of the of course inevitable boss fight. Either way, The Lost Crown is one of those rare games where I wanted more, which puts me in the unusual position of being the hypothetical target audience for an expansion. So break my thumbs.
Mask Of Darkness is available for £4.29/€5/$5 via Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store, which doesn't seem too bad to me. It's also been available to buy on Steam since the game hit Valve's store in August.