Story-wise Battles of Prince of Persia fits in between Sands of Time and Warrior Within and fills in many of the blanks of the console trilogy, like how the Dahaka began pursuing the Prince. There are a few points where you can play as other characters to get another perspective on the story, but it's mostly just ol' Princey. There's no voice (If you played Warrior Within you'll know that this can actually be a blessing), so all story elements are presented via on screen text, with some 'ancient' looking art stills for the visual element. While not up to the narrative quality of the console games, it's not as pretentious either, and gets the job done of explaining in an interesting way why exactly you're fighting any particular battle.
After booting the game up, you are unceremoniously dumped in a plain looking menu, and while there are three gameplay options available, there's no training mode, so campaign is the only real option to begin with - luckily, the first two missions function as tutorials on the basics. The game plays mostly on the bottom screen, where the battles play out in a simple Advance Wars style grid, and the top screen is reserved for a series of stats displays, which can be scrolled through with left and right on the d-pad.. Holding up on the d-pad changes the top screen to an overall terrain map, and allows free scrolling of the battle screen using the stylus. As you'd expect, the battle grid is made up of varying terrain, and by holding the L button and tapping a square or you can view the offensive or defensive properties of that area, as well as those of any unit that may be there. The units consist of the standard soldier and archer types, as well as cavalry and a few specials. There is also a general unit for each side (in our case usually the Prince) who is much more powerful – often equivalent to 50% of the army's power. If your general falls, you'll have a hard time coming back, and generals actually even make other units next to them more powerful!
When you select your unit and prepare an attack on the enemy, the top stat screen gives you a prediction of the outcome (eg 'fair', walkover') which is a handy alternative to checking all the stats every time. When attacking, the battle is played out on the top screen with some nicely rendered cell shaded 3D models. It looks really cool to begin with, especially watching the Prince himself single handedly wipe out a platoon, but it gets old quite fast. You can turn the battle animations off in the options, but without them the game's not much to look at, so you might as well leave them on, repetitive or not.
The battle animations can actually get quite violent - but we're spared the blood and guts
A few other elements add some interest to Battles of Prince of Persia, many lifted from Tactics RPG games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The way your unit is facing affects your defence, for example, so you always want to be facing your attacker, but if you are trapped against a wall when attacked, you'll receive extra damage. However, many long range attacks damage surrounding units (including friendly fire), so like Tactics Advance, a balance between the tactics of 'safety in numbers' and 'spreading out for range' must be achieved. There is also a 'unit morale' meter, and very heavy attacks can affects your unit's stats, and even make your them want to run away.
But on top of all this is an original take on how turns work, featuring a card system that's almost a game in itself. Each battle is separated into hours, and at the beginning of each hour you are dealt cards from your deck of 30 that have all your attack options. The basic card is the 'give orders' card, which allows you to move or attack the number of times the card says in that turn. But there also more specialised types of command cards, which function somewhat like 'magic' commands do in RPGs - for example, some cards can boost a unit's defence, and there are cards that allow you to disable a number of enemy units for the rest of the hour. A nice feature is that you can preview a card's effect before trying it out, which adds an experimentation flavour to proceedings, not unlike the 'rewind' feature of the Prince's action games. Units can only be activated once each hour, and the hour ends when both players run out of either things they can do or cards they can use. The deck is then re-shuffled (although you an keep any cards you want in the next turn) and the next hour begins. At the end of every battle you win new cards to add to your deck, but you can only keep 30, so keeping a well balanced deck is the key to success. While it seems complicated, and there is a steep-ish learning curve, both the battle and card elements have been woven together quite seamlessly, so on a gameplay front, someone at Ubisoft knew what they were doing here. You can also play a multi player game using you collected deck – if, of course, you can find someone else that's got the game and built up a deck they want to test out in battle.
Even in text the Prince sounds like a ponce - still better then the Warrior Within Prince though.
Graphically, Battles of Prince of Persia is pleasant but a bit basic. While it's stylish and consistent, it's pretty bare in terms of presentation – the game boards consist of squares with icons on them, and there's not much detail. Apart from the battle animations, it's almost like the whole game is made up of sub screens. This is about par for a strategy title, but it would have worked well with a ¾ isometric perspective like Final Fantasy Tactics, so it's a little disappointing that a franchise known for it's character and charm has been reduced to such a bare game world for this spin off. And while the battle animations are nice, they lack the charm and humour of those in the Advance Wars games. The story is decently put together, and actually fits in with what you're doing in the battles, but it also suffers from the bare presentation, since it's really just text. The only high point on the presentation front is the music, with many great tunes which fit the setting beautifully, and really gives a middle eastern flavour to the whole thing.
Overall, Battles of Prince of Persia is a good strategy title with some original ideas, and it holds together as a complete package quite well. Even though it can get quite easy if you play your cards right (literally), it will last quite a while in single player, and there's a skirmish mode for some quick battles if you'd like. But the simple presentation and complicated nature of the game system mean it's not exactly the game to convert someone to the strategy genre. Strategy fans should get a kick out of it though.
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