Prince of Persia: Rival Swords

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords is an action platformer from 2008 that Ubisoft prepared specifically for Wii as a modified version of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, enriched with gameplay elements from the previous title, Warrior Within. In it, the Prince once again races through intricate palaces and the ruins of an ancient city, alternating acrobatic wall-running, pole-swinging, and jumping across collapsing platforms with a combat system in which he combines his sword, the Dagger of Time, and the ability to slow down or rewind time to correct a misstep or avoid a deadly trap.

The Wii version brought its own control scheme using Wii Remote gestures for sword slashes and thrusting motions for quick finishers, which made combat feel more immediate than on other consoles, although the precision of gesture control didn't match a classic gamepad, and some combos were harder to repeat consistently. The graphics were modified and simplified compared to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, but the atmosphere was still carried by the darkly stylized architecture of an oriental fortress and the tense music accompanying races against time as well as duels with the Prince's dark version, his own shadow counterpart awakened to life by the Dagger of Time.

On Wii, Rival Swords was praised above all for being one of the few genuinely action-packed three-dimensional titles with sophisticated motion controls in the console's first year of existence, even though comparisons with the original versions on other platforms turned out slightly worse for Wii due to graphical compromises. Today it is interesting mainly as an example of how the acrobatic action of the Prince of Persia series could be adapted to motion controllers, and for series fans it's a full-fledged, if different, alternative to the main Two Thrones versions, worth trying precisely for its different take on combat and the different way of moving the gesture-controlled Prince along palace walls.