Warrior Within

Lore & Background

Set seven years after its predecessor, the game's story follows the Prince as he searches for a way to stop an entity called the Dahaka that is relentlessly pursuing him as punishment for his meddling with the Sands of Time. He travels to the mysterious Island of Time, where he attempts to prevent the Empress of Time from creating the Sands in the first place, hoping this act will appease the Dahaka. The game's atmosphere has a distinctive darker and grittier theme, in contrast to the colorful palette of the previous game.

Reader's Guide

Much as its predecessor, Warrior Within is a 3D platformer centered on exploration and melee combat. The level design revolves around navigating treacherous environments with parkour and freerunning-styled moves. Unlike The Sands of Time, the game world is highly nonlinear; the player would often return to already visited locations several times from various directions, often traversing time portals to visit the same places in the present and the past in order to find ways around obstacles which would be impassable in either time alone.

Secret areas can be found and explored to gain additional health points and unique weapons, which culminates in discovering a weapon capable of inflicting damage on the Dahaka, unlocking the game's canonical ending. In addition to normal platforming, the game also features episodes where the Prince is chased by the Dahaka and must quickly navigate trap-ridden hallways to reach safety. The game's combat system preserves aspects of the prior game's dual wield melee combat, while introducing new ones.

While The Sands of Time designates a sword as the Prince's primary weapon and the Dagger of Time as his secondary weapon, Warrior Within makes the sword his mandatory primary weapon, while requiring him to obtain and find a secondary weapon from fallen enemies or weapon racks in order to use one. With this added feature, this new combat system emphasizes a free-flow fighting style. The idea is to use the environment, fifty eight secondary weapons and the Prince's own acrobatic abilities to dispatch enemies with ease and aggression, complete with graphic violence effects that can be toggled in the in-game options menu.

Two-hand fighting introduces numerous additional acrobatic combos to dispatch enemies with greater efficiency and brutality. Off-hand weapons have varying bonuses and penalties applied to the player's damage and hit points; they can be thrown at enemies to allow a limited form of ranged combat. Most also have limited durability and break after a number of hits, or after they are thrown as projectiles. Aside from bosses, the enemies are sand creatures of varying sizes.

Unlike The Sands of Time, where rounds of heavy combat are interspersed with rounds of exploration, enemies can be encountered anywhere along the way, alone and in packs; some common enemies would respawn as the player revisits locations.

Did You Know?

• The game's canonical ending requires acquiring a special mythical weapon called the Water Sword, which allows the Prince to kill the Dahaka.
• The Xbox version supported downloadable extra maps via Xbox Live until support ended on April 15, 2010.