It’s a testament to this game’s quality that so far, it’s occupied a great deal of my attention, to the point that I’ve replayed certain sections of the game over multiple times. Featuring the same combat system from Warrior Within, and best of all, a completely new and inventive narrative, Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones is a sequel worth playing.

The first and in my opinion the best improvement in this game is the speed kill mode, where you can sneak up behind an opponent and do them in with a series of context sensitive strikes that are wonderful. It isn’t so much that they have a context combat system, but how they handle it.

When you hit a context point, your dagger will flash. Hit square when it does, and you move onto the next part of your animation. This gameplay will extend all the way into boss fights, where it looks especially cool, and unlike other context systems, it allows you to focus on the gameplay you’re watching, letting you drink in all of the awesome graphics.

Otherwise, combat is much the same, but you’ll switch between Prince and Dark Prince occasionally with the Dark Prince equipped with a pretty awesome whip weapon. A combat system like this still has its drawbacks, however.

You can finish off an opponent in just a few strikes one moment, and then hammer away at another opponent with thirty strikes and not kill them. Finally, the puzzle and trap systems are improved with new features like dagger hang points and shutters you can use to leap diagonally off of a wall run. All good there.

These graphics look good, but unfortunately suffer from the occasional framerate issue. Still, on the PS2, Two Thrones evokes the mood of a tan, dusky Bablyon, rich with combat and warfare. Also, you can look forward to good voice acting, like the rest of the series, and a nice wealth of background scripted events.

All in all, there’re a few problems here, but this is definitely a game worth purchasing. If I could run the Xbox version on the Xbox 360, I might’ve picked it up to deal with the PS2 versions graphics, but this version still lives up.