The Lost Crown mobile review – a nostalgic Metroidvania

Ports can be a bit tricky, and we’ve come to accept that there are some games that will just never work as originally intended on mobile phones. But Ubisoft has struck gold with its Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown mobile port, because the game runs so beautifully that it genuinely feels as though it was made with mobile gaming in mind. Not only that, it reminds us of everything we already know and love about the franchise.

There’s always a delicate line between leaning too far into nostalgia that you lose your way to old time’s sake, and trying to optimize things for the current gaming climate. Sway more towards the latter, and you risk sacrificing the nuance of a much-loved, decades-old franchise. Lean into the former, and you come across pitfalls shaped like fan-service and a poor attempt to bottle years-old lightning. But Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown mobile is a truly fantastic mobile platformer game and bridges the gap flawlessly.

My favorite thing about the Prince of Persia game series has always been the fluid, intuitive combat, and The Lost Crown delivers that in spades. It works incredibly well on mobile right from the very beginning, with a prologue that acts as a tutorial as you’re introduced to brand-new protagonist, Sargon, an energetic member of a group of warriors called The Immortals. Granted, you don’t get to play as the actual Prince himself, and are instead tasked with rescuing him, but despite fans’ upset at a new main character, Sargon fills the Prince’s shoes and then some.

Introducing a new protagonist was absolutely the right move, regardless of the initial backlash. It rejuvenated a series that first kicked off all the way back in 1989 and immediately gave The Lost Crown a new lease of life. Sargon is agile, fast, and incredibly fun to control even on mobile. You play with the standard integrated joystick on the left-hand side of the screen, with jump, slide, and attack buttons under the keep of your right thumb. It’s simple, but that’s the beauty of it, because it means you get to sit back and enjoy a truly gorgeous art style and an engaging narrative to boot.

Although the game’s load screen begins with the earnest suggestion to play with a controller, you don’t actually need to. The verticality and speed of the movement mechanics in The Lost Crown are seamless on mobile, and even better when deployed in combat. The fighting is fast, and undeniably fun, and despite a near-constant frenzy of blades, it never feels like you’re battling against your own device. It just works.

That doesn’t mean that the game rests on its laurels because it equally never feels like it’s on easy mode. But instead of being frustrating, it sucks you in and demands more from you. If you accidentally find yourself losing hours to double back on yourself and scale areas with new abilities while you’re meant to be on a break, or you nearly miss your stop on the train because you’re too busy laying waste to hordes of enemies, then that’s even more proof that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a really, really solid platformer.

Another new addition to the franchise is Athra Surges, a hugely powerful moveset that can completely disintegrate enemies in a flash of blue lightning if you activate it at the right time. You charge your Athra meter with every hit you land, and mashing the button to unleash thunderous hell on your foes feels about as satisfying as you’d imagine.

After the disappointment of recent entries to the Prince of Persia franchise – we’re choosing to forget The Forgotten Sands, ironically – The Lost Crown feels pretty darn good as the newest title in a series with over 20 years under its belt. It’s made even sweeter by the fact that it was ported to mobile so effortlessly. Even going against the nostalgia trip of Sands of Time, where almost every entry since has sort of failed to live up to the love and adoration of that particular magnum opus, The Lost Crown delivers regardless. It doesn’t even attempt to recreate everyone’s favorite Prince of Persia game, and instead, it delivers a dense, explorative world, gorgeously stylized art, and introduces us to a combat system and movement mechanics that work perfectly in 2D and brilliantly on mobile.

You can try out Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown without it costing you a single penny, and if you fall in love with it like we did – and we guarantee that you will – then all it takes is a one-time purchase to unlock the rest of the game. If you’re after some more of the best mobile games, we’ve got plenty of suggestions for the best PC games on mobile, the best free mobile games, and the best mobile puzzle games. But for now, you can find us scaling Mount Qaf with Sargon, which is where we’ll be for a good long while.