Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands arrived in May 2010 as four games wearing one name, and that is the first thing worth knowing about it. Ubisoft published all of them. Different internal teams built each one. The main version, for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, is the one that matters most, and it is the one this review covers.
It is also the one that works.
A Prince Riding Toward Rekem
The setup is simple and it is stated plainly. The Prince is the son of the Persian king Sharaman. His father sends him to the ancient city of Rekem to learn leadership from his brother, Malik. He arrives to find the city under siege.
The invaders want Solomon’s Army, a supernatural force imprisoned beneath the palace. Malik is losing the fight. He proposes a last resort. The Prince objects. Malik releases the army anyway, using a magical seal, and the sand creatures turn on everyone.
The brothers each end up holding half of the seal that kept the army contained. That is what protects them from becoming sand statues, which is what happens to the rest of the kingdom. Separated from Malik, the Prince is drawn into a spiritual haven by Razia, queen of the Marid djinn.
Razia explains the shape of the threat. The army is led by Ratash, an Ifrit djinni who despised the alliance between humans and Djinn that Solomon and Razia organized to create Rekem. The two halves of the seal have to be reunited before Ratash and the army can be stopped.
Malik, Razia, and a Sword That Costs Everything
The story keeps the two brothers apart. They try to reunite and circumstance separates them again. Malik starts falling under the army’s influence as he absorbs the power of defeated enemies through his half of the seal. The Prince is shielded from the sands’ corruption by Razia’s powers.
That asymmetry is the best idea in the game. One brother is protected. The other is being eaten from the inside by the thing he thought he could use.
When they finally face Ratash, Malik seemingly kills him, then is possessed by him. The possession destroys Malik’s half of the seal. The Prince wants to save his brother. Razia tells him Malik can only be freed by killing him and Ratash together.
Razia then transfers herself into a magical sword capable of killing Ratash. Destroying one djinn costs her her own existence. The game does not flinch from that, and it should not. It is the rare blockbuster story beat that charges the player something real.
Rewind, Water, Earth, and the Palace
The main version plays like the earlier entries in the Sands of Time continuity. The Prince moves through 3D environments using standard acrobatics plus magical abilities. The move set includes climbing, a wall run to cross gaps, wall jumping, balancing on beams, swinging from horizontal poles and climbing vertical ones.
The palace complex is the spine of the game. A magical safe zone appears at points through the story.
After a certain point the Prince gains elemental powers. The most basic is a limited-use rewind that resets time when the player makes a mistake or the Prince takes damage. Water powers freeze flowing water into walls and poles you can navigate. Earth powers restore destroyed pieces of the environment. Wind and Fire are offensive spells used in combat.
Combat is arena-style. The Prince fights groups of enemies, dodging and rolling to avoid hits. Kills grant experience points. Those points upgrade existing abilities and statistics such as health, and unlock new powers.
What the Powers Actually Change
Here is the case for The Forgotten Sands: the elemental powers are not decoration. Freezing a water flow to build your own path is a genuine design idea, and it turns traversal into a small act of authorship. Earth powers that restore broken architecture do the same thing from the other direction. You are not just crossing the room. You are deciding what the room is.
The rewind function is the safety net that makes the rest tolerable. It is limited-use, which is the right call. Unlimited rewind would flatten every jump into a formality.
The combat is the weakest part. Arena encounters are functional, and the upgrade economy gives them a reason to exist, but dodging and rolling through groups of sand creatures is not where the game’s intelligence lives. It is the toll you pay between the good rooms.
Four Games, One Title
The Forgotten Sands is not one game. It is four separate titles with different storylines. The main version went to PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows. The other three were exclusives for the PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Wii. The Nintendo-based and PSP versions have unique stories and gameplay.
All versions share a chronological slot: between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. The intent was to fill the seven-year gap between those two games and show how the Prince’s outlook on the world changed. All of them follow the Prince dealing with magical threats with the aid of different djinn.
Development began alongside the 2008 series reboot, timed to the movie adaptation of The Sands of Time. When the film was delayed, the concept was reworked so the games sat in the same series rather than serving as a direct tie-in. The team’s stated main goal was a return to the series’ traditional roots after the reboot’s period of experimentation.
That goal is the whole story of this release. The 2008 reboot was a departure. The Forgotten Sands is the correction.
Where It Sits in the Series
The return to roots is real, and it is mostly a success. The Prince moves the way he moved in The Sands of Time. The palace is a puzzle box. The time powers are back, and the elemental additions give them somewhere new to go.
What the game does not do is surprise you the way the 2003 game did. It is a competent restoration, not a reinvention. That is a fair trade for a series that had spent a cycle experimenting, but it caps how high this can go.
The Malik thread is the part that lifts it. A brother who takes the wrong shortcut, pays for it, and cannot be saved except by being killed is a stronger spine than the genre usually bothers with. Razia’s sacrifice lands because the game sets up the cost in advance and then charges it.
The four-version structure is the part that holds it back. A player in 2010 had to know which one they were buying. The Wii, DS and PSP versions are not the same game. That is a marketing decision, not a creative one, and it muddies a title that deserved a cleaner identity.
The Verdict on The Forgotten Sands
Ranked against the series, here is where this lands:
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003) — the standard the rest are measured against.
- Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010) — a confident return to that standard, with better elemental tools and a darker brother story.
- The 2008 reboot — the experiment this game was built to answer.
That ordering is about what each game did for the series, not which one is most fun on a given night. The Forgotten Sands is the one you play when you want the Sands of Time formula with sharper traversal and a story willing to end badly.
It is not a classic. It is a well-built correction, and corrections are worth having. The water-freezing and earth-restoring powers are the best new ideas the series had produced in years, and the rewind mechanic still does the job it was invented to do. The combat drags. The multi-version release was a mess. The Malik and Razia material is better than the genre usually attempts.
Play it for the palace. Play it for the brother. Skip the arena fights when you can.
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