Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown review

Price When Reviewed

$39.99

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It’s been a long time since any of the Prince Of Persia games was available on the Mac, and The Lost Crown episode was itself first released for Windows PCs at the start of 2024. However, it’s just appeared on the Mac App Store – with very little fanfare – and is rapidly working its way up Apple’s games chart.

For more Mac games recommended by us read: Best Games for Mac.

The Lost Crown turns out to be a real blast from the past too, as it’s a side-scrolling ‘metroidvania’ – a game that combines combat and platform-jumping elements from the Metroid and Castlevania arcade games (which were never officially available on the Mac). You don’t need any knowledge of the previous games, though, as The Lost Crown has its own story, in which you play a young warrior called Sargon, who is a member of a group that modestly call themselves The Immortals.

The game starts simply enough, with the kingdom of Persia under attack from an enemy army, and Prince Ghassan taken captive and imprisoned on the magical Mount Qaf. Sargon and chums head off to rescue the Prince, but soon discover that Mount Qaf is full of mystical enemies, puzzles and obstacles that have to be overcome.

The game uses detailed and colourful graphics that seem to be in 3D – at least for the main characters – but is presented like an old-school 2D platform game where you mostly run left or right across the screen and use the Space bar to jump over obstacles. The game looks great, though, with detailed backgrounds that create a real sense of atmosphere, whether you’re charging along corridors in the royal palace or hacking and slashing your way through a forest.

The only bad news is that the game doesn’t run on Intel Macs, and requires an M1 processor or later, and macOS 12.0 (Monterey) or later. However, the 2D presentation means that it doesn’t need a powerful Mac, and we had no trouble running it with high graphics settings at 4K resolution on a MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro chip.

Combat is fairly straightforward during the early stages of the game, with basic and heavy attacks assigned to your mouse buttons, as well as the ability to dodge and parry incoming attacks. The opening section acts as a tutorial that introduces the main moves, but the game also provides five difficulty levels so that newcomers can ease themselves into the action, along with more challenging perma-death and speed-run modes for more experienced players. Combat is fast and fluid, but will probably be easier with a game controller, as I found that parrying attacks using keyboard and mouse controls required very precise timing, and it took me quite a few attempts to slice and dice my way past the first Boss battle at the start of the game.

There aren’t many games on the Mac that also focus on parkour movement like Prince Of Persia, where you have to run, jump and climb with great precision in order to get past various obstacles. This can be tricky too, as you need to hit the Space bar for a quick jump, or press-and-hold to jump higher, and many obstacles require you to rapidly jump left and right in quick succession in order to reach areas that are otherwise out of reach. That’s a bit tricky on a keyboard, so again it might be easier playing with a controller (there is an assist option that can help you out with some of these obstacles, but much of the fun lies in learning to master your combat and movement abilities).

As you progress further into the game, you’ll learn to master a magical energy called Athra that gives you more powerful attacks, and you can also find or buy magical amulets that provide additional powers too. And, of course, the traditional calling card of the Prince Of Persia games is the use of ‘time powers’ that allow you to manipulate time in order to escape death or outwit your enemies.

Should you buy Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown

The need for really precise timing during combat and movement may be frustrating for newcomers, but if you’re a fan of arcade games then The Lost Crown is a great way to re-live your misspent youth. It’s a little annoying, though, that the Mac version currently seems to be exclusive to the Mac App Store, which means that people who already own the PC version on Steam or Epic don’t get access to the Mac version as well (and Steam and Epic also seem to have additional DLC packs that aren’t currently available on the App Store too).