Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book Club. We are here to chat about the Mask of Darkness DLC for Prince of the Lost Crown in its entirety, as well as a more informed exploration of some of the lore and Persian mythology in the game with special gust parse from our Discord server. And we’ll wrap up with our final thoughts on the game. As a whole reminder, we do go into spoilers in this episode for the full game, so if you want to avoid that, start at one of our previous episodes and come back to this one once you’re caught up.

Now, it is kind of interesting that Rajen, despite being hyper loyal to Varam, doesn’t seem to want to slow down our progress in the main game at all.

She is supposedly hunting us down in the lower city and in the depths, and yet sits on the sidelines while we go and knock out Menelaus, Orad Bahram and complete our quest.

I had mentioned in a previous episode as well that I stumbled upon the start of this DLC meeting Neith, which I think is now Neith at the Haven, and then backed away when I realized what it was.

But now that we finished the main story right, we’re onto the expansion. Yes, and sneaky Rajen.

So she can either shape shift or mind control or something of the sort, because that’s not our neath. And the Simurgh feather is not a feather at all, but the disguise Mask of Darkness.

[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:01:31] Speaker A: Which may or may not be the mask that Rajen wears the entire time, but we get sucked into an alter dimension and stripped of almost everything we just so painstakingly acquired throughout the full game. And wow, is it wild to go back to only three bars of health.

[00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that was.

Yeah, that was crazy.

[00:01:52] Speaker A: And a bit deflating.

Um, especially once you realize that you also have lost most of your movement and all of your amulets and just. Just because they’re so nice, they decide to let you keep all of your author surges.

The movement abilities. I figured I couldn’t do without because we did it once. Right. We didn’t have any of that stuff. But this platforming is tough to have so little health to work with.

[00:02:20] Speaker B: Yes.

Yes, it was.

[00:02:24] Speaker A: As well as no potions.

[00:02:26] Speaker B: Right.

[00:02:26] Speaker A: So there’s. Recovering from many, many, many attempts means doing a full bit of backtracking just to the starting point of any platforming section. So a little annoying, if not a lot.

But anyway, you know, right off the bat, you get pulled into this and you get chased by a giant eyeball that appears in the sky, which automatically resets your progress to whatever the last time you were standing on solid ground was. So not only is the platforming fairly precise, but you’re also on the clock too, so there isn’t much room for error.

[00:03:01] Speaker B: Not at all.

[00:03:03] Speaker A: And losing the double jump immediately affected my play here.

Same deal with the no Potions, but the I. I just so instinctively double jump, even if I only need a single jump by the end of the game, that it just completely threw me off and took so long to get through these simple. Fairly simple sections.

[00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah, same that. That. That completely threw me off. Just. Yeah, just double tapping and be like, okay, jump, jump. And then there were multiple times I was just short.

[00:03:33] Speaker A: Right, Exactly. Or. Or yeah. You know, you think that you can jump off a wall and then jump again and you just can’t.

At least you get to keep your air dash, you know, Some of the other movement abilities were fairly niche in the main game. Like especially like the claw and the.

And the. Oh, shoot. What was the other one? I don’t even remember anymore. I’ve just been through the master.

[00:03:59] Speaker B: Oh, the ribbons.

[00:04:00] Speaker A: Like the rib. The ribbon was cool. We only got that a little bit of time.

I’m not super concerned about that.

And you still have your teleport here, which can be useful, of course, and definitely comes in handy for some sections here and as a requirement for some sections here. But I didn’t always use it the way I always use the dash and double jump.

But yes, at least those are still available. The very first tutorial boss from the beginning of the main game has a new set of moves and definitely took me a few tries to get through him here too.

[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it did. Same with me.

[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yes, he seemed to be more powerful. I got through, like, I think my first try got through, like 75% of his health. And then the expanded phases just destroyed me.

You know, you still get through the fight eventually, but it’s. It was interesting to see this kind of weird, darker version of the. That initial battlefield before the palace.

[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.

[00:05:00] Speaker A: And then you make it to the main section. So Rajen’s mind palace is not a pleasant place. You know, who wants to be trapped in the brain of a sadistic weirdo anyway?

I guess I paid $5 for it, so me and you.

[00:05:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:05:16] Speaker A: I mean, mileage may vary, but at least, you know, the story bits at first are just memories of Rajen in certain key parts of the main story that she either said something or overheard something, like a conversation between Anahita and Queen Dameras for example, where you hear that the queen wanted Prince Cassand to have the Sumerg land on his shoulder to become the king.

That’s something you don’t know beforehand. So it’s just kind of like painting a deeper picture of what we saw as we went through the story.

Yes, you do at some point find out that Queen Tamirs isn’t even actually Persian.

That caught me off guard a little bit. Not surprising considering all the efforts she went through to kill King Darius in the first place. But she’s even shady than before.

And you also start as you find these small. When you find some of these crystallized currency in certain corners of the map, you get other shards of Rajen’s memories. And of course, Rajen came from a tough childhood.

Now, the platforming here is tough.

[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yes, it is.

[00:06:34] Speaker A: There are long stretches where you have to make every move in a very specific way and specific order, or else you reset to the start.

Uh, and it is definitely a bummer when you have to redo the same early section of a platforming stretch a million times. I mean, come on, I’ve proven that I can do this part so many times already. Why don’t you believe me and give me a checkpoint?

[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.

[00:06:59] Speaker A: It, you know, especially hurts because of that aforementioned lack of health or potions until you acquire some Soma flowers and potions after tricky platforming gauntlets.

You mentioned to me that at some point you started to feel the grading nature of this here. So about when did you decide to kind of call it off?

[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, so. Yeah, so to be completely transparent, I DNF’d. Yeah, I DNF’d this DLC I couldn’t finish. I mean, I had some other stuff going on.

[00:07:40] Speaker A: I’m sure you have the skill set for it, but the. The required amount of time and effort.

[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn’t have all the time and effort before, so. Yeah, so I didn’t. I didn’t finish it. But I tried a lot of the platforming and it was. It’s funny. So I. I went to both. Like, I started off.

You’re at the mask in the middle. Yeah. And I went left and I started going through that.

[00:08:00] Speaker A: I also started.

[00:08:01] Speaker B: Thought I would. Huh. You started left as well?

[00:08:03] Speaker A: I also started left. Yeah. I don’t know. Particular reason.

[00:08:06] Speaker B: Pretty far, I thought. At least I thought I was far.

I will say that to talk about this, I did watch a playthrough, a full blown playthrough of this, and I thought I was kind of far through it, but I was not compared to what I was. And I got kind of stuck at a part where it’s one of those mazes where obviously with the blue warp tunnels where you gotta freeze yourself, then jump, shoot, go back. Jump, shoot, go back. Just like trying to. I tried over and over and over.

I couldn’t get it. So I was like, okay, let’s go to the right side. I went to the.

[00:08:46] Speaker A: Sorry, on the left side. Do you happen to recall which, which it’s, you know, just, I guess describing which part of the map it was approximately.

[00:08:55] Speaker B: Uh, I’m trying to think. It would have been, it would have been higher because I went, I went low left to try and get a potion. I tried many times and I couldn’t get the potion, so I just gave.

[00:09:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, so that’s what we talked about. So. So I went low left first too.

And I got through what turned out to be about 5 to 10% of the way through that section. And I couldn’t quite place, like, I kept forgetting that I had the teleport for starters, and I couldn’t quite place how to get beyond a specific portion of that maze.

And so I decided, like, yeah, I, I’m okay with using a guide. Like, I don’t have time to just repeat this a million times if I’m not actually breaking past my own barrier.

So I, I, you know, I learned I have the skill set to do the moves. It’s just finding out and trial and erroring for hours just to get through it. It was not worth my time. Yeah, so I, in that specific bottom left potion, that one’s a really intense one with all of those things. And once I finally got past the part I was blocked on, it’s still very tricky. But following a guide on that just helped me move on, get the potion and kind of start climbing up.

Honestly, that was one of the harder puzzles, if you ask me. Platforming puzzles.

[00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it definitely was.

Yeah. So I, I started to climb up. I got to a part where I was then facing a creature that had two faces, like two masks, red and

[00:10:34] Speaker A: blue on each side. We’ll talk about those in a sec.

[00:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I kind of like ran past them. I didn’t fight them as much.

I saw how to fight them when I watched the video, but I was just trying to like, get to where I next had to go. And yeah, I don’t remember exactly the section, but there was a section there on the left. I just like, there was one. Oh, it was one where I then ended up basically going in A square. And I was trying to figure out how to make myself that I could go the right way, like jump out. I also hated those portals because when you came out of the portal, it jumped you up an extra bit.

[00:11:11] Speaker A: Yup.

[00:11:12] Speaker B: Because I was. Yeah.

[00:11:13] Speaker A: Which I would jump out of the

[00:11:15] Speaker B: portal and then hit a dash right away, but I’m too high.

[00:11:18] Speaker A: You have to adjust for those.

That’s kind of, you know, that’s just a thing you got to learn to kind of muscle remove your muscle memory to instant dash. But it definitely took me a number of tries to get past that kind of kind of mindset, basically. Or like keep my finger off the trigger, you know.

[00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:11:38] Speaker A: Especially this is the R2 trigger on the controller and like give it an extra second to dash through. Those were annoying.

But yeah, the extra pop up. There are some really tight spaces that you have to do that into.

[00:11:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So I got to around there and then I decided, nah, let’s just go try the right side.

And then I went and tried that. But I did see in the video watching the left side of somebody who got past the point of where it was, they kept going. And then the eye comes back and I was like watching this thinking like, yeah, there is no way right now that I have one slightly the patience and the time to do this. Like this is crazy. Like, I’m sorry. Like it was nuts. I was like, this is difficult.

And yes, I can turn the. Yeah, you can turn the, the difficulty down, but it’s the difficulty for combat. I mean, combat wasn’t that big of a deal actually.

[00:12:32] Speaker A: Now, now that you mentioned that at one point, I think it’s on the right side of the main mask door.

You.

You have to go through this section with disappearing platforms while the eye is chasing you. And then you end up in this sort of semi walled in space. The eye is still hovering in the background. There are two walls that kind of block its sight. So it doesn’t necessarily chase you, but when you’re not behind the walls, it does and can still reset you to the start. And there’s two waves of enemies to fight in there and they’re the kind that can launch you all the way across. So I had to redo that like 20 times before I could move on.

And but.

But it at some point, because it considered that even though I was fighting and dying in the fighting, that’s like halfway through this long marathon of. Of platforming, it said we can change your platforming setting. So I think there is some degree of platforming. I Don’t know if it’s like platforming autopilot or how it works. I didn’t do it.

But I am curious to see what that actually would do to make the platforming easier. Because, I mean, of course you’re getting this dlc. It’s endgame DLC with, you know, the idea that you have all this experience in the game, like the. I don’t know if the point is necessarily to be.

Have your hand walk. What’s it called, like, walk you through on a guided path through all the digital platform, which is kind of the point at the same time, if you’re just here for the boss fights.

Sure, by all means, yeah.

But okay, so, yeah, you had like. Yeah, there’s the weird eyeball sections.

So. So were you kind of in that right hand path before calling it quits?

[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah, so I got to the right hand path and I got a little bit through that.

Making it way through like some of the tunnels of like there’s the statues of the statue things, but the long things that shoot.

Shoot balls out at you that you have to. You knock back, you parry back to knock them back and then open up paths. I got to there and then I got to a section with like the. The.

The enemies. The enemies on the right side. The, like, the darker, darker, stealthy, like ones were not easy.

[00:14:54] Speaker A: I’ll bring those back up in a sec too. Yeah.

[00:14:57] Speaker B: Um, and I just got the parts where then like, I was trying to do the platforming and getting through it, and then I get to online on a platform and then I kept getting hit or killed and then right back to the start of it and then. Yeah, and I just, I tried it many, many times. And then I just sounded like, okay, now I’m just. I’ll just watch a.

And I was like.

I was like, I. I did all the platforming the. In like the main game and I didn’t have like this much trouble. I was like, this is just crazy.

[00:15:24] Speaker A: And then they’re very stingy with their checkpoints and it is an exercise in frustration for sure.

[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:15:32] Speaker A: Okay. So you just decided. Yeah, yeah, I. Totally valid.

[00:15:35] Speaker B: And by that time I had been trying. I’ve been playing this for about three hours or maybe a little bit more. And like people were saying like, oh, it’s like two to three, maybe four hours max to get through the whole thing. And I was like, I don’t even feel like I’m close.

[00:15:50] Speaker A: And at the end of the day, playing video games is about having fun and de. Stressing in Some cases, unless you like the stress of certain genres.

[00:15:59] Speaker C: But

[00:16:01] Speaker A: if you’re not having fun, why keep doing it? So, and you know you’ve got majority of this, the main intended experience from the main game.

Totally great.

And so you’ve watched a playthrough. So I don’t need to like explain to you necessarily all this stuff, but I guess like kind of to summarize in case you didn’t actually try out some of these later sections, but like the types of new platforming that are here that were not in the main game include those pillars that hang from the ceilings. And some of them kind of move up and down like a screw when you. Because you hit X across the pillar and it rotates. Some of them they have the purple arrows, other ones don’t.

But so that kind of gets. It’s simple, but it gives you a tiny bit of thing to have to deal with in some of the chase sequences.

Because sometimes you’re trying to just jump the other way and it makes you go to the other side, blah, blah, blah.

There’s the orbs that you can shoot with arrows that move you to the other side of the rail. Those are those purple ones we were just talking about that basically just like suck you up and spit you out the other end.

Those are primarily on the left side.

On the right side there’s those bell type orb things that when you attack them, they fling you in the direction they’re pointing.

Those were okay, except if you whiff and then you’re up, the up slash is so finicky that you know if you whiff then you end up going to fall into the pit as well. So those kind of annoyed me.

There’s more of the disappearing platforms that we saw in the main game, but instead of disappearing when you land on them, they disappear when you jump off them, which I liked better definitely a lot because you can just stand on it and wait for the next thing to come at you before you move on. Before you move on. I appreciated that that was definitely a better experience than that original format. There’s also those laser beams in various configurations. Those were used somewhat sparingly.

There’s the golden floating orbs that you had to shoot to move them to their next spot and then find the next spot and shoot a couple more times while midair, jumping, dashing, teleporting, et cetera, until it finds its final position and then breaks open a golden light gate of some sort.

Yeah, and then you mentioned the giant entire hallway filling statues that remind me a lot of the Mexican mythology, Quetzalcoatl statues that shoot parryable balls at you and when you knock each one back, they retract a little bit more, eventually unlocking a path to continue on or a shortcut back to somewhere you’ve already been.

Those weren’t tough, Right. Because that’s just a simple kind of parry thing. Except for one platforming section where you had the disappearing platforms and those at the same time. Those were. That was. That was. And it was, it was. Most of those statues were a three parry finish and that one had required you to go and parry many, many times.

Yeah. Fun stuff.

[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:19:11] Speaker A: There are also lots and lots more buzz saws on tracks that materialize out of thin air with those disappearing platforms too.

And some of these sections also include the damn giant eyeball chasing you around throughout whoever sets you to the beginning.

I think while visually the coolest, the eyeball sections are my least favorite and my most retried.

[00:19:37] Speaker B: Oh, I bet.

[00:19:40] Speaker A: But overall it is cool that they invented brand new mechanics and brand new things, you know. So from a outside of my frustration looking back on is very cool that they built in new mechanics into the game instead of just recycling a bunch of old stuff that you’ve already done.

[00:19:56] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. Yeah, I get that.

[00:19:58] Speaker A: So hats off there. Right. Because so many DLCs can just be rinse and repeat and just give you more game to take your money.

[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:20:07] Speaker A: And the same goes for enemies. Right. I appreciate that aspect of it as well. Now as far as enemies go, there are some of the run of the mill regular shielded sword guys from the base game, but those are really the only repeats. Otherwise there are a number of new enemies. There’s two different types of marionettes. The there’s the one that has a shield and a type of sword on a chain hook shot type attack unblockable, which you can jump over fairly if you time it right fairly well. But otherwise they’ll just catch you in the middle of the air or on the ground.

So that was kind of fun to to learn their moveset. There’s also a type of marionette that can fly and shoots variable golden pointy things at you. I wouldn’t quite call them arrows, more like giant arrow heads.

But at the end of the day they’re probably just light. Those were same deal with all the flying enemies in this. Like if you don’t have the arrows to shoot them down.

I don’t love the jump attack. Like especially if they’re really high above you and then they shift last minute.

[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yep, they should Last minute, you only have 10 arrows.

[00:21:12] Speaker A: And if you only have 10 arrows here, if you have a platform to get up and dash to them, then you can kind of juggle them in the air, which is great, but they have higher health pool than. And we don’t have our upgraded swords, so take some time.

There’s also these other flying enemies that kind of look like birds that are perched on a surface when you first see them in an area, but then once they spot you, they turn into whirling circular blades that fly out you.

Very odd design, but very cool and unique. At least they’re parryable as well. And they can.

[00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah, they’re parable.

[00:21:47] Speaker A: If the two of them show up, you can parry one into the other. And that’s always funny.

[00:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I did that. That was fun.

[00:21:54] Speaker A: There’s the shadowy thing that you mentioned that can disappear. Teleport behind you. Has its own parryable chakram and some sort of rage mode that lights it up all red.

Cool.

Cool character design, but very annoying to fight.

[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:22:14] Speaker A: Especially that place that I told you that the eye was hovering around. There were two of these guys in the first round.

And another.

[00:22:24] Speaker B: What?

[00:22:24] Speaker A: You know, the mask thing you mentioned? I think that’s called a sentinel.

There was one room a little bit later where you have to fight two of those and the sentinel at the same time.

That was not fun, especially once I died the first time. And without my Athra surge buildup amulets, I couldn’t get my author to take them all out quickly, so no fun.

Those sentinels were those mini bosses, essentially, which are kind of like giant spiders, like the Guardians from Zelda Breath of the Wild, just much creepier, with different colored masks on each side, giant bladed claws that pinch down at you and can climb on the ceiling and shoot parryable purple beams at you.

They have a lot of moves.

[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:23:16] Speaker A: And they like to mix it up, and I, you know, commend them for that. But I’m glad I’m past those.

There was also one unique mini boss that had its own health bar called the Undead Black Belt. I think it was in a corner who wasn’t terribly tough. I was able to use the hold square, you know, distance attack, and then hit L1 right before launching it. So launch one and then teleport back to myself, even if I was already there, and launch the second one.

So it was like two attacks in a row that would interrupt its unblockable.

So that was cool. I’m glad I found a strategy there.

[00:23:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[00:23:58] Speaker A: All. All to say, you know both these new pair enemy elements as well as the new platforming elements. I. I will give them credit that a. They made a lot of additions to the game instead of just the refresh. Which is great.

[00:24:12] Speaker B: Yes.

Yeah.

[00:24:15] Speaker A: Now, for all the lack of checkpoints in long platforming sections, I will also give them credit that if you’re. If you advance past a certain section of platforming and that section required some kind of setup that you had to unlock.

And I. It’s hard to actually describe what I mean by that, but I think the best way is let’s say you have to not just land on a floor, but like shoot a bunch of those glowing orbs to break open the golden steel doorway. If you finish that, you. And then you die after that. In another like second segment of this whole platforming section, you don’t have to do it again.

Which is great.

That happened. I think the. That Sentinel that I fought with the two shadow enemies in it. I killed the two shadow enemies and then died to the Sentinel. And then I came back to the Sentinel because you have to. To continue to continue advancing. And I. They weren’t there the second time or the next time.

[00:25:18] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:25:19] Speaker A: So like some of those kind of invisible checkpoints were very much appreciated, especially with all the other banging the head against the wall type of stuff in here.

So just unlocking something for future attempts if you die is so helpful.

When you finally reach Rajen, the final boss, she gives you a hell of a fight.

You also learn right before the fight that she was forced to fight her own brother and he refused to fight her, but she just ruthlessly cut him down.

And the Kushar soldiers that she’s with and being forced to fight by rename her as Rajen but don’t explain why and give her the mask.

So that’s how we end up with this dark, sadistic character.

Sargon gives her the option of pity and mercy and says we can leave.

But nope. She wants your Sumeri powers and to tear you apart.

I’m also not sure at this point why she has a blue face.

Because you see her for the first time without a mask on in this game. Yeah, I didn’t see any explanation for it. I can’t think of any explanation for it.

But that’s just the way it is.

Take it or leave it.

In the fight, most of her attacks she has this long ranging double bladed whips. Whips of sorts. And some peculiar timing to deal with.

There are also. There’s a segment kind of like in the Forest Queen fight where she’ll, like, use the eye to put you in another dimension and look. Get you as a giant person and kind of just slap you. Basically, like swipes the arms all the way across the screen, but then goes back to the whipping. Yeah, I saw that.

[00:27:22] Speaker B: It reminded me of Master Hand from Super Smash Bros. Oh, that, that.

[00:27:26] Speaker A: Okay, that’s what I was.

That’s actually what came to mind.

Just, you know, Master Hand is like some Mickey Mouse gloves and.

Yeah, these are like giant clawed fingernails and so. But no, yeah, that’s definitely. And it also reminds me a bit of. I don’t know if it was. I think it was Ocarina of Time, not Majora’s Mask. But one of the Zelda games has a giant hand drum fight boss.

But yes, fortunately, most of her attacks are parryable, so once you learn the timing, it’s not all that bad. I mean, it’s still tricky and you got to learn moveset, but it was pretty fun fight overall.

[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:08] Speaker A: After you knock her health bar to zero. She gets the upper hand, though, because all sneaky characters are like this. And she’s about to kill you. She’s got your. Her hands around your throat when the real knave shows up and spears her through, saving Sargon.

[00:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:26] Speaker A: So thank you. Thank you for that.

[00:28:29] Speaker B: Thank you.

[00:28:32] Speaker A: Fortunately, you know, she just kind of vaporizes the way that you’d expect.

And then you come back to at the Haven with Artaban and Neith, and Sargon thinks there’s more.

There was more he could have done to save Rajen, but they just tell him, just remember her. Honor her by remembering her. Something along those lines.

[00:28:55] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:58] Speaker A: And then if you’re free to stand and move about the game again, it kind of semi places you back a lot earlier before Prince Ghassan gets killed, at least in the conversation with Artaban. So Art. Or maybe that’s just the way he perceives things, because Artaban says he’s all kind of discombobulated by the weird goings on of Mount Kaath. And when Sargon asks if he’s ready to head back home, he mentions that Anahita double crossed us all so he’ll stick around to be your sparring partner.

Now, after being your trainer throughout the game, you can check out his menu again and fight Artaban as a final, final boss fight.

Now.

What was that?

[00:29:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I saw this too. This is in the walkthrough that I watched as well. The person fought.

Yes.

[00:29:50] Speaker A: Now. Holy hell. What a matchup. He’s super strong.

Super fast and has this kind of mesmerizingly gorgeous backdrop of just standing on an ocean during one phase of a dance.

[00:30:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that looked really nice.

[00:30:04] Speaker A: Yeah, really cool looking. Doesn’t really look like, honestly, like sort of the same animation style of the game, but just so cool to see. Especially like all the bright, like, at the, like the sun’s there out and it’s not just darkness all the time, which is a good switch from what we just went through.

And at least since we’re not in Rajen’s mind palace anymore, we are back at full strength, full potions, full health, and have all of our amulets back.

He truly feels like the culmination of everything you’ve both learned and acquired throughout the game.

You know, at the end of the day, he gives you a round of applause and then goes on reading his book sitting on a wall. He’s very impressed by Sargon and so am I.

And Artaban congratulates him by gifting him the book he was just reading. And then there’s some banter. He says, sargon says, I don’t want to read that book.

And he gives it to you. And it’s basically a book about Sargon and how proud they all are of you.

A little bit of a tearjerker right at the end, I was gonna say. What a nice book. Yeah, you’re a. Yeah.

And that wraps the DLC Mask of Darkness. Frustrating, fun, freaky deaky, you know. Thanks, Jen. You are indeed rad, despite what everyone says about you.

[00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:31:28] Speaker A: And now we are happy to welcome Parse, the resident expert on Persian mythology in our Discord Server. Welcome, Parse.

Thank you.

[00:31:37] Speaker C: It’s an honor to be here. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I will try my best to be as informative as possible.

[00:31:45] Speaker A: That’s quite all right. You are our expert, at least compared to everyone else here, so that is still helpful. But yes, since we found all the lore and mythology so interesting in this game, we wanted to dive a bit deeper to get a better understanding of the characters, locations and other details covered in the Lost Crown, and are lucky to already have this connection.

So, Parse, is it safe to assume that you had played other Prince of Persia games before the Lost Crown?

[00:32:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I pretty much played every available one, even the very old ones from 1990, if I’m correct.

Had to use some sort of weird application for emulating them on my PC.

[00:32:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds about right. I did quite a lot of emulation back in the day as well.

I don’t think I had played any other game in the series though, before.

[00:32:47] Speaker B: Nope.

[00:32:48] Speaker A: I had always had some interest, but didn’t quite get the chance or take it off the backlog, so to speak.

[00:32:54] Speaker B: Same here.

[00:32:56] Speaker A: Do you have a favorite among them all?

[00:32:59] Speaker C: It’s.

It’s a bit hard to choose because. Well, I grew up with the Sands of Time trilogy, so if I wanted to choose, it would be a game from there and probably the third one, the Two Thrones.

But I’ve been growing a little fond of the other recent Prince of Persia game, the Rogue.

[00:33:31] Speaker A: Prince of Persia. The Rogue. Yeah. I’m super intrigued by that one.

[00:33:35] Speaker C: Yeah. It is so good. Like the Rogue, the Roguelite and Elements, great. The combat, great parkour, the music. In particular, the composer that they got for that game is Persian, so everything is just spot on.

[00:33:59] Speaker A: And I’ve been gushing over the music for this game as well.

[00:34:03] Speaker C: Well, when you get Gareth Cooker, it’s

[00:34:07] Speaker A: hard to go wrong.

[00:34:08] Speaker C: And on an ost, he tends to cook.

[00:34:13] Speaker A: That was a good way to put it.

[00:34:14] Speaker B: That is. Yeah, that’s a good way.

[00:34:17] Speaker A: Did you play Dead Cells? I believe Rogue Prison Persia is at least partially by those developers.

[00:34:22] Speaker C: Yes, it is. I played a little bit of it. I don’t own the game myself, but I played it at a friend’s place.

I can tell a lot of the shared DNA there, especially in the combat.

[00:34:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. I believe it was also a PlayStation plus inclusion at some point, so I think I have access to it. I’ll give it a shot, especially with your.

With your praise for it here.

[00:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I’ll have to look to try that as well.

[00:34:51] Speaker C: I wholeheartedly recommend it.

[00:34:54] Speaker A: All right, good.

What specifically would you say that the Lost Crown did better with Persian mythology than the other games in the franchise?

[00:35:03] Speaker C: Well, let’s see.

So the very first Prince of Persia

[00:35:09] Speaker A: games,

[00:35:11] Speaker C: you would be.

No one would blame you if you didn’t know that they were like a game about a Prince of Persia.

Like, the first game was completely set in like a dungeon and a castle and you had to climb up and kill the vizier.

The second game was.

I Barely remember. I played the port on the mobile game.

But basically there wasn’t a lot of Persian stuff in those games. Then the Sands of Time trilogy, it only had very few mentions.

The furthest that they got was setting the third game, Two Thrones, in Babylon.

But again, there was not many Persian myths there as well.

Their first real attempt was at the 2008 reboot, just titled Prince of Persia.

And I Remember, that was what introduced me to a lot of Zoroastrian, or should I say Zatosht things. That’s how we call it in Persian, like haramazda or.

Or mazd. A lot of those concepts. That’s where I learned them from.

But unfortunately, that one wasn’t too accurate.

It was too video gamey, if I have to say.

[00:36:40] Speaker A: Got it.

[00:36:41] Speaker C: But nevertheless, I appreciated it a lot because any sort of information or any sort of representation is decent enough to. As a springboard to do some research on your own, then, for the Lost Crown.

I appreciate it a lot because it leaned very heavily into all those concepts and myths and in particular, old Persian poetry.

We, when we were growing up in school, we always had these poems in our Farsi books, and in particular, most of them were from the Shahnameh, a poetry book by Ferdowsi.

And it used a lot of Zoroastrian myths and.

And made stories with them.

And whenever I. When I was playing the Lost Crown, it felt like I was playing one of Ferdowsi’s poetry.

[00:37:58] Speaker A: Poetry works. Okay. Very cool. And poetry especially is a really good way to be learning deeper into a language as well. I recall that with English, actually.

[00:38:10] Speaker C: That is such a good point, because the whole reason that Persian as a language still exists is because of Ferdowsi’s efforts through his poetry.

[00:38:25] Speaker A: Oh, no way.

[00:38:26] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:38:26] Speaker A: That’s great.

[00:38:28] Speaker C: Yeah. If.

If that, if those poetry works didn’t exist, if other poets after him didn’t step up to continue his style, Persian as we know it would probably not be here.

[00:38:42] Speaker A: Okay. That’s even more wild.

Well, thank you.

Thank you. To them.

That’s a big deal.

[00:38:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it really is.

[00:38:54] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, so I’m going to.

You’ll have to send us over the spelling of that because I definitely want to dig deeper. It’s just so interesting, especially saving language essentially from the brink of extinction.

[00:39:09] Speaker C: Of course. I would love to.

[00:39:13] Speaker A: Okay. And so I think there’s, you know, there’s a number of things. Right. Obviously there’s a number of proper nouns and other names of places and things that are mentioned throughout the story of the Lost Crown. And I think that there are so many of them that write you.

We’re playing a video game, so. And so much is invented for video games.

So I think my sort of questions come about around how much do some of these characters represent something that was actually a part of that mythology or part of those poems and what is sort of more, I suppose, invented for the sake of the story?

But I’M first off most curious about the setting of this game right after you get past the original kind of castle area and move on to Mount Kaf.

So is what is the history or background of Mount Kaf?

[00:40:08] Speaker C: Well, let’s see. So Mount Gough, that’s how we call it.

Like genius.

[00:40:16] Speaker A: And yes, please correct all of my bad pronunciation.

[00:40:19] Speaker C: No, no, no, no. It’s completely fine.

From your own language you are correctly pronunciating it. I’m just saying it in Persian.

Mount off is basically just a mythical mountain. As far as we know, it doesn’t actually exist.

And it’s shared in a lot of myths.

In Zoroastrian myth in particular, it is the home of creatures that we call the thieves.

And they are best way to prove. Let’s see, they are just basically just evil kind of creatures.

They’re not particularly demons. More like they’re beings that were rejected by Ormost or Harumazda. And calling them false gods wouldn’t be far off.

And it’s their home, it’s their land.

And other than that, it is where the Simurg has its nest.

And in many, many stories in ancient Persia, especially in Shahnameh, it mentions the Albor’s mountains, which is another name for the, for the Mount Gough.

And that’s pretty much it. There’s also mentions of the mountain in Islamic literature, but I wouldn’t know more about it.

Mostly what I know is that it was the home of the Deeves and that Seamorg had its nest there.

[00:42:14] Speaker A: Okay, okay, interesting. So at least, at the very least that tie in of the Simurg nest either at the top or. Yeah, within the mountain is very much tied into the story. Right, consistent. Yeah.

[00:42:30] Speaker C: And well, the mountain is like in the game a magical place, especially with time elements and whatnot.

So you know, a sort of ancient, ancient beings that were. That are known as false gods living there, it would warrant some sort of magic.

[00:42:53] Speaker A: Right, that. That seems reasonable. Yeah, I think that’s kind of across all kinds of mythology that seems to make sense. And a lot of it’s explaining how the world works back in those times. So it tracks in my book.

So right as we begin the game right after the very first sort of animated cutscene, there’s a bit of an introduction to your band of misfits. The immortals.

Are the immortals from the mythology as well, or is that something that they invented here?

[00:43:29] Speaker C: Well, I did a bit of research after I was first asked that question and turns out they were an actual thing, like a real unit. But of course it’s not like how the game presents it.

Back during the Achaemenid era, which is what the Lost Crown also draws heavily from.

There was an infantry unit that had 10,000 members and it was known like throughout as a great, great military unit. It even was part of Cyrus the Great’s royal guard.

And the name Immortals was given to them because whenever any of those 10,000 men were injured or killed, they would be immediately replaced with just a snap of a finger.

That’s what they would call them, the Immortals.

[00:44:37] Speaker A: Gotcha. Okay. So it just had a. There was someone always available to take someone’s place.

[00:44:42] Speaker C: Pretty much, yes.

And they were named the Immortals by some Greek historians.

I may be butchering the pronunciation, but in particular it seems like Herodotus had names of that.

[00:45:05] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, like some of the best names out there, especially in ancient war times, I think the being named something very kind of grandiose and interesting is usually coming from the other side. That’s very afraid of it

[00:45:21] Speaker C: pretty much.

[00:45:22] Speaker A: And so. Okay, so they adapted the concept into this group of a handful of soldiers because that serves the story better.

[00:45:29] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much.

[00:45:30] Speaker C: Yes.

[00:45:34] Speaker A: And you mentioned the Sumer. So obviously that is a large, large part of the lore within the game.

Right. We’re collecting the feathers to get our different time based power ups.

Um, we. It is very important for naming the next king of.

Or I guess prince or king of. Of Persia. Right. Um, and so it sounds like that seems like it would come from, from this background too.

[00:46:04] Speaker C: Well, let’s see.

So I have a few things to say about Simorgh. Um, basically it had another name before the Pahlavi era and I can’t pronounce it at all.

So I’ll type it later for you all.

[00:46:24] Speaker B: It’s.

[00:46:24] Speaker C: It’s a common thing with a lot of ancient Persian us, Modern Persian speakers just can’t say some of those words.

But yeah, it is pretty much just a benevolent creature, a bird like.

A bird like deity of sorts that has its nest up in Mount Gough or Albors depending on what you’re reading.

And.

Well, let’s see, it is mentioned in

[00:47:01] Speaker A: a lot of stories,

[00:47:04] Speaker C: in particular in the Shahnameh.

Again I will be mentioning that book a lot here.

So in the first story of Shahnameh, the Seamorg finds a small child by the name of Zol who ends up being one of the big heroes of those of that book.

And Seamorg raises that boy up there. And in further down the.

Further down the book when Zall’s son Rostam is Injured by his half brother, Zall goes to the Seamorg to beg for Rostam’s life.

The Seamor tries to.

To save him, but Rostam is too prideful to accept the help and he dies.

And other than that, there is some Zoroastrian myths about it, and there’s also some Islamic literature about Seamorg, completely different from ancient Persian myth, where it is said to be an allegory for the divine self.

In particular, there’s something about the name Seymour which is funny.

So we have this old story that we heard as kids.

Basically, there are 30 hens, 30 chickens that go on this grand quest of finding the Seam Org, and they travel far and wide. One of them is too prideful to.

To call off the search because they’ve been traveling for too long. They haven’t found a trace of this Seamorg.

And I don’t remember if it was them staring into a mirror or a body of reflective water.

And all 30 of them came to the.

To that reflective surface. They looked down and they said, truly, it seems we are the Seamorg.

So why is that a joke?

It’s because sea means 30 and morg means hen, chicken or bird.

And the whole story is just a linguistic pun. It is the earliest version of. What are we, some kind of suicide squad?

[00:49:54] Speaker A: Okay. Wow, that. Yeah, those are. Sorry, were you saying this is more of like a.

A school for, like, school children, that kind of thing?

[00:50:04] Speaker C: Yeah, we had it in our Farsi book when we were kids.

[00:50:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, that’s perfect. Like, yeah, yeah, you learn a bit along the way and. And yeah, it’s interesting story out of

[00:50:15] Speaker C: story about self discovery and saying that, oh, it seems like the greatness was within me all along.

[00:50:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[00:50:24] Speaker A: Okay. That kind of actually reminds me of the end of the game where he. Sargon’s just sitting out at the palace and looks into the pool of water there and sees himself because he’s great, I guess.

[00:50:34] Speaker C: Exactly.

[00:50:36] Speaker A: And the.

And the old man, Al Qarash looks. And he’s that bird. No, it’s the other way around. The bird is the old man.

[00:50:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I had my prediction wrong on that one.

[00:50:52] Speaker A: You’re getting it.

Very interesting.

So I think. Let’s see, I’ve got a handful of these bosses that we come across.

What do you know about Jahandar the Manticore?

[00:51:06] Speaker C: Well, there’s not anything that I know of and my uncle knew of about anyone, anything called the Jahandar. There are some shahnameh figures, Jahangir, which means the world taker or Jahan Suz, which is the world burner, but Jahandar, which means the one who has the world or carries the world, doesn’t exactly ring a bell. But there are a lot of manticores.

[00:51:39] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:51:40] Speaker C: In Persian myth.

Fun fact, Manticore itself is basically the name just translates to man eater. And the name came from the Persian word, the Persian word matkar.

So they are as depicted as in the game. They are like creatures with the body of a lion, a scorpion tail, a human face.

Obviously human face was toned down and it was said that they had the voices of.

Their voices sounded like the trumpets in a way.

[00:52:28] Speaker A: Interesting, interesting, yeah.

[00:52:31] Speaker C: And that is all she wrote.

[00:52:35] Speaker A: Okay, that’s curious. Okay, so the specifically named Manticore here, that was what imprisoned by King Darius is an invention. But the manticore itself does live within the mythology.

What about Azhdaha?

[00:52:52] Speaker C: Uh huh. Ajdaha.

Pretty, pretty close pronunciation actually.

[00:52:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So I started. I realized that I was doing a bad job so I started listening more intently to the.

Obviously to the Persian dubbing and dubbing.

[00:53:09] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:53:09] Speaker A: And tried to capture and practice the names of these a bit better. So thanks, I appreciate that.

[00:53:16] Speaker C: Good. Full marks on that one.

[00:53:18] Speaker A: You did good.

[00:53:20] Speaker C: But yeah, because I heard a lot of people call him Azdah.

[00:53:24] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:53:26] Speaker C: But yeah, so the Eza, it is what the name says. It is what it is on the tin.

A dragon.

And there are some dragons in Persian myth particularly there is one that I. That my uncle knew of and apparently it isn’t slain.

It is a dragon that is sealed in Mount Damavand, which is an actual mountain in.

In Iran. It is one of the.

One of the volcanoes in northern Iran which I’m actually close to.

So I’m hoping I don’t get a.

[00:54:18] Speaker A: Get a dragon.

Yeah, I don’t want to visit from one of those anytime soon.

[00:54:23] Speaker B: Nope.

[00:54:25] Speaker A: And so curious. So you’re saying dragon. I mean to me, within the game itself, the art design seemed to be a bit more like a giant snake. I don’t know if I recall wings.

[00:54:39] Speaker C: Very astute. Very astute.

[00:54:41] Speaker B: It’s like a cobra is what it.

[00:54:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks like a large cobra.

[00:54:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Where astute? Because in some Islamic, Islamic myths, Azdahas or dragons are known to be snakes that grew too large and were banished by God.

[00:54:59] Speaker A: Okay, okay. So so different from the sort of more medieval like medieval like you know, England, European dragons or the kind of wingless dragons of what like Japan and China?

[00:55:18] Speaker C: I suppose so. Yeah. Well they are all reptiles, so they are very.

[00:55:22] Speaker A: That is true. I Mean, they all seem to be in the same family, if you ask me.

[00:55:27] Speaker C: I would say the same.

[00:55:30] Speaker A: Okay, sorry for peppering you with all these questions, but I got more.

What about Anahita, your mentor? That betrays you?

[00:55:41] Speaker C: Well, of course I have to say that the Anahita in the game and the Anahita in myth are very different. They share a name, but they’re not exactly the same person.

In Zoroastrianism, it is a very. It’s very much a single God religion. Uh, everyone worships Ahura Mazda, but there are some figures that they call, well, I call Izad.

And they are basically beings with high divinity granted by Ahura Mazda.

And eventually, as time went on,

[00:56:31] Speaker A: the

[00:56:31] Speaker C: people of Persia were so intermired with the Izats that they ended up thinking of them as gods themselves.

And Anahita herself is basically just a lady of the waters.

She’s also considered to be the guardian of the month of Auban, which in our calendar is a month in.

Let’s see, it’s around October or November, if I recall.

Yeah, it is.

And let’s see if I wanted to draw a comparison.

During the period where the Greeks ruled over Persia, there was of course, a lot of cultural exchange and eventually like pantheons were like, compared to each other.

And Anahita became associated with some of the other gods and other pantheons, namely Athena, Aphrodite and Artemis.

And also in, if I wanted to say in Zoroastrian iconography, the lotus is associated not with exactly her, but with her cult, especially. Especially in the Sassanian era.

That is most of.

Most of my information on her.

But yeah, she is not particularly a God in Zoroastrianism, but she is considered to be someone with high divinity.

[00:58:23] Speaker A: Okay, okay. So I mean, they make her in this game, right, like the general of the immortals or of the army.

So has a high degree of power, but yeah, not necessarily calling all the shots. Okay, so that’s interesting. And you say the lotus flower, you mean.

[00:58:41] Speaker C: Yeah, we call it the Nilufar.

[00:58:43] Speaker A: Okay, okay.

[00:58:46] Speaker C: And well, a little extra point here.

We have a lot of.

A lot of names in.

A lot of Persian names originate from these gods and myths.

A particular for what I call my own name originates from there.

I’m not too sure where my uncle just said it out loud, but I would guess that Anahita was named after the God and isn’t any sort of representation and isn’t.

[00:59:28] Speaker A: Okay, it was a good point. Yes.

Which it very common in many regions around the world to name after important people or things or what’s that?

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And someone like that can reach a high place then. Curious.

How about Varam and King Darius?

[00:59:52] Speaker C: So Varam, that’s also another thing I did a little bit of research on for the podcast.

So Varam, the character himself is entirely original for the game, but the name.

So there is another name in Zoroastrianism. It is another one of the Izads called Bahram.

And one of the names that originated from Bahram was Bahram.

And another name for this Izad is.

Which may be familiar, if I’m. Well, if I’m correct, there is an attack early in the game, like one of the.

One of the early attacks that Sargon has, where he does like a dash and then a vertical slice. Yes, yes, he says.

[01:00:57] Speaker A: I’m a big fan of that one.

[01:00:59] Speaker C: Big damage.

[01:01:00] Speaker A: Always big damage.

Yeah, that’s a great attack.

[01:01:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So he’s basically just shouting whenever he’s doing that attack.

[01:01:16] Speaker B: Okay. Trust me.

[01:01:19] Speaker A: So even funnier when he uses it against him then.

[01:01:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, take that.

But yeah, the name Varam is an offshoot of Vera, basically.

And the Izad in particular is basically the God of victory, or some would say the God of war.

[01:01:48] Speaker A: Ah, well, that’s too. I guess there’s associated. But can go in very different paths.

How about.

[01:01:58] Speaker C: We’ll see if Kratos ever faces off against him.

[01:02:03] Speaker A: You know, that’s. That’s always. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, especially with this is a Lo Fae announcement as well, being in that kind of mixed afterlife.

[01:02:15] Speaker C: Yeah.

Pretty high for that game.

[01:02:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Cool. What about Faraham’s father, King Darius, or at least father in the game?

[01:02:26] Speaker C: Well, let’s see.

King Darius himself was known as one of the great kings of Persia during the Achaemenid era.

Well, let’s see, he was the third king.

And during his role there was.

Persia was expanded quite a lot.

It had a lot of regions under its belt, particularly the.

The Balkans, some of the coastal.

[01:03:06] Speaker A: Coastal.

[01:03:07] Speaker C: Coastal regions in the Black Sea and some of eastern Libya and Egypt, Northeast Africa. There was just.

Persia was big back then.

And.

Well, he was.

Some people called him the shopkeeper because he was.

He standardized the gold coin doing it. He created a road called the Royal Road, and it was 1600 miles, and it allowed you to cross that in seven days.

And there’s also a famous decoration of him that says, if I want to translate, I am a son of Persia, an Aryan of Aryan stock, which

[01:04:02] Speaker B: sounds

[01:04:03] Speaker C: very Especially for Westerners would sound kind of not great, but Persians back then were very big on the Aryan Aryan stuff.

[01:04:18] Speaker A: Interesting. Meant something different back then too.

[01:04:21] Speaker C: Well, yeah, it meant something different but.

And he also believed that Ahura Mazda himself chose.

Chose him to freed to rule over Persia and eventually his role came to an end because of a revolt in.

In Egypt.

And that was during the time where he was preparing for multiple years for war with the Greeks

[01:04:59] Speaker A: during. For the. For the battle of Marathon.

[01:05:01] Speaker C: But eventually he had to. He died carrying.

Carrying shame with him.

[01:05:11] Speaker A: I think it’s hard for anyone to avoid that. Really.

Pretty much.

Interesting. So okay, a very true person here. I doubt he was a giant 10 foot zombie with ice and fire blade, but. Which is a good thing, right? It sounds like he was a much better guy than that.

[01:05:32] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely not.

Definitely not what was portrayed in the game.

[01:05:38] Speaker A: I would hope not. I would hope.

[01:05:39] Speaker B: I feel like. Yeah, I’m sure obviously they’ve made him talk as they call what the great.

The great king or whatever. So it’s just, it’s like, oh, he’s great. Let’s just make him larger stature for game wise.

[01:05:50] Speaker A: It just pretty much. Yeah, you gotta be a. If you’re gonna be a boss. You know, the camera.

[01:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, very much.

[01:05:58] Speaker C: There’s a lot of pictures of him throughout the places that he ruled.

A lot of vases, a lot of texts.

And if I am correct, there’s also some.

There was some stuff in Egypt especially some. Some of those bases.

[01:06:26] Speaker A: And

[01:06:29] Speaker C: like in particular, if I remember correctly, there were hieroglyphs on a specific Egyptian alabaster vase that said King of upper indoor Egypt, Lord of Two Lands, Dariush, living forever, year 36.

Huh. And yeah, there’s a lot of references to him in. Especially in Greece and Egypt.

[01:06:57] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I mean I’m definitely gonna have to research that more considering how based reality it is.

Okay, I’ve got two more to ask on. You’ve mentioned multiple times throughout here. And so it sounds like it’s, you know, the overarching God essentially is our Mazda. Right?

[01:07:17] Speaker C: Yes. Ahura Mazda or as he has been known since the Pahlavi era or Mazd, which is a pet peeve of mine because during the 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia he was called or mosque.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but that game does not take place during the Tel Aviv.

Most definitely not with those attires and sand everywhere.

[01:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:07:50] Speaker C: But yeah, basically if I wanted to describe Ahura Mazda, he is just God.

[01:07:57] Speaker B: Got it.

[01:07:58] Speaker C: Yeah.

[01:07:59] Speaker A: The way he was mentioned and referred to and described within the conversations in the game, it seemed to be what it was alluding to.

[01:08:08] Speaker C: Yes, he is just God as we know him in many religions.

The only thing is that he has seven or if I wanted to say seven archangels or like the Ezads, which Anahita is part of.

[01:08:28] Speaker A: And

[01:08:31] Speaker C: he is the opposition of what we call, how do I say, lies or chaos, which deeds from with which the deeves follow.

[01:08:49] Speaker A: Okay, interesting.

Pretty much interesting.

[01:08:55] Speaker C: Yeah. There’s not much more that I can say about, about him other than the fact that he’s God.

[01:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:09:02] Speaker B: Okay.

[01:09:03] Speaker A: That, that easy to create a one to one across a lot of cultures with that. Yeah, there’s.

[01:09:09] Speaker C: If I’m also correct, he is like Aramaza is also part of the 101 names of God, if I am correct.

[01:09:20] Speaker A: Gotcha.

Gotcha.

[01:09:22] Speaker B: Okay.

[01:09:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds like it makes sense.

Early on in the game there’s a lot of sort of those stele like the tablets or statues or what have you that with text on them that give you bits of lore. And, and you of course your checkpoints here are the Soma tree. So I’m curious about Otra as a concept as well as the Soma tree.

[01:09:47] Speaker C: Well, I wouldn’t know much about Otra, but I do know a little bit about the Soma trees.

So at first I thought that didn’t, didn’t really exist, but after talking with my uncle, apparently there are divine plants in Zoroastrianism called the Hauma and they, if you check the proto indie Indo Iranian word for those, it ends up being Salma.

So.

[01:10:23] Speaker A: Okay, so it’s a fairly close but not exact pretty much pronunciation.

[01:10:28] Speaker C: Okay. Yes, pretty much. And it is in the Avesta, which is the holy book of Zoroastrianism.

It is a, it’s. How do I say this?

It’s explanations for what it is are scattered through a lot of passages. But basically it is a plant that has stems, roots and branches like normal things. But the, the main part is that it, it is a plant that furthers healing, it makes someone stronger physically, and it is a plant that is most nutritious for the soul.

And if I’m correct, whenever you go to the checkpoints of the Soma trees, you like go to full health.

[01:11:26] Speaker A: So you do, you get a full heal up, you get your potions replenished and, and you can adjust your amulets and for surges.

Well, I think I want one of these trees for myself.

[01:11:38] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:11:39] Speaker C: Good luck finding them.

[01:11:40] Speaker B: I haven’t found any.

I live in Iran.

[01:11:43] Speaker A: Gonna take multiple flights on, you know, a lot of kind of trekking, but seems worth it.

[01:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah. If you do find one, just ship us over the seeds. We’ll plan to row.

The world will be a better place

[01:11:58] Speaker A: with more of these trees around. Yeah, I’ll let you know.

[01:12:02] Speaker C: But I also came to know that it is also in the Shahnameh and let’s see a person called Hum himself who ends up binding Afrasiab who is one of the kings of Turan during it. He’s like a antagonist, one of the main antagonists in that book.

[01:12:44] Speaker A: Well, okay, yeah, thanks so much Pars. Super interesting information here and typically when I either finish a game or walk out of a movie, I if there’s lore behind it, I go on a deep research that spends a lot of probably too much time on it. But you know, hearing it from someone that knows a bit more detail than just reading a Wikipedia article is a lot more interesting. So I’m going to have to keep digging and see what else I can find.

Well, thanks so much Parse for joining us. It’s been really interesting to have you on and happy to keep chatting as always in Discord,

[01:13:24] Speaker C: any bit of interest towards these sorts of mythological stuff for Iran is very helpful.

Us Iranians ourselves don’t really have much access to this stuff ourselves. We have to go looking out for them or ask around.

So any bit of interest really helps.

But overall I’m very happy to help.

My information may not be 100% accurate most of the time, but I hope that these games and their, their rich lore ends up making people interested in going out and reading about this stuff

[01:14:12] Speaker A: themselves and yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say. I think it’s just so great that something like a video game that so many years ago was just looked down upon in many ways can generate the type of intrigue for many people to go and dig deeper about the cultures around the world.

I think the same can be said for the God of War series in both of its iterations and many other game series. And I really appreciate having the chance to have played this one and chat more about it with you.

[01:14:41] Speaker B: Oh yeah, definitely.

[01:14:43] Speaker C: Of course, I will always be happy to talk about these sorts of things and I sure hope you guys go and read the Shahanameh.

[01:14:57] Speaker A: I’m going to add it to my book backlog.

[01:15:01] Speaker B: Yes.

Yeah, that’ll be added. Might as well be happy to hear your thoughts.

[01:15:08] Speaker A: We’ll get back to you. I can’t Promise it’ll be soon, but it will happen.

[01:15:13] Speaker C: No pressure.

[01:15:16] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you so much.

[01:15:18] Speaker B: Thank you so much.

[01:15:19] Speaker A: We’ll continue the discussion. Thank you for having me.

And now for the bookend. Alex, now that we’ve played it, how does the Lost Crown compare to your expectations from our pre playthrough episode at the start of the season?

[01:15:32] Speaker B: It exceeds it.

Yeah.

[01:15:36] Speaker A: The.

[01:15:37] Speaker B: The whole game was. This was my first Metroidvania that you’ve completed, right?

[01:15:42] Speaker A: I mean you’ve started up a couple.

[01:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah, but this is my first one I completed and I completed it not like fully, like platinum trophy wise, but I completed it pretty close to that. Like I searched all around the map.

I found what I all the stuff I could find. Basically the exception of a few few Xerxes coins that were a little.

Had some crazy platforming that I didn’t need to do slash want to do.

[01:16:09] Speaker A: And based on our chat last week, you. You found a lot of the optional side quest type things that aren’t by any means required for.

[01:16:17] Speaker B: No.

[01:16:18] Speaker A: For, you know, finishing the story.

[01:16:20] Speaker B: No, there was only one that the Impossible Climb was the one I didn’t do because. Yeah, that was just. That was crazy. I tried it a couple times. I was like, no, this is nuts.

But I did a lot of the others and it was fun. It was. Overall it was a really good game. I had a lot of fun with it.

A lot of fun with it.

[01:16:36] Speaker A: That is great to hear.

[01:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:16:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I love, love, love the mobility in this game.

[01:16:44] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:16:45] Speaker A: Even though much of it is just animation flourishes and not like major movement outside of the traditional Metroidvania power ups, those kind of flourishes and backflips and all that just add some spice to the animation that I couldn’t get enough of. It made it feel all the more lively and acrobatic, like I would expect a Prince of Persia game to be, having not played one before.

Something I mentioned not in the first episode about our expectations for the season, but the first gameplay episode is how I was excited for the soundtrack by Gareth Coker. And it’s great all around, but credit where credit is due, it’s not just Coker featuring Metrics on some tracks as I had originally thought. She has many individual songs on the soundtrack too, and they’re just as great, I would say. I enjoyed some of them significantly more as well.

And Gareth Coker is a high bar, so I’m a huge fan now.

Another person to add to my long, long lists of musical artists.

[01:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a. It was A really good soundtrack. It was really good.

[01:17:55] Speaker A: So I think it’s time to kind of give a bit of a rating and a review. What would you classify this as?

[01:18:03] Speaker B: Let’s see. I would.

I’m not putting the DLC into this.

[01:18:07] Speaker A: That’s all right. You can. You can.

[01:18:09] Speaker B: Yeah. But for just the main game overall, my first Metroidvania and like fully completing the. The story was okay. It didn’t massively hook me. It’s not a story.

[01:18:24] Speaker A: It’s not here, as you have more discussions about them, that Metroidvanias hardly have stories in most cases.

[01:18:31] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:18:31] Speaker A: So they’re more environmental. But this one had a bit more of a blatant, obvious story to it with some cutscenes and all that.

[01:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:18:38] Speaker A: So you can absolutely judge it based on its story.

[01:18:45] Speaker B: I’m gonna go with 8.5 out of 10.

[01:18:49] Speaker A: Great.

[01:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a really good time with it.

[01:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I have a number of Metroidvanias under my belt. I think this puts me at 17 or 18, possibly.

Big fan of the genre. Although there are so many more out there play.

And I, after playing it, totally get why so many people say it’s one of the best modern Metroidvanias that can sit alongside Hollow Knight and Ori and a number of other series.

And so I’ll give it a nine.

You know, overall, I really enjoyed kind of the biome diversity. I enjoyed.

Enemy variety was awesome.

[01:19:39] Speaker B: Yeah, the enemy variety was great. I really enjoyed the boss fights.

[01:19:43] Speaker A: Yes, the boss fights killed it, you know, beyond your normal grunts in the kind of city areas of the game, the lower and upper city. I really enjoyed most of the enemies we fought throughout. You know, they kept. Keep you on your toes. They’re interesting. I especially love those time afflicted guys that threw spears in reverse in the pit of eternal sands.

And like some of the beastly enemies like, it just the. The variety was great and. And really kind of just enjoyed the entire experience. There were, you know, some less interesting moments or areas, but all in all, great game.

[01:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:20:23] Speaker A: I think the thing that keeps it for me from reaching up into a 9.5 or a 10, if it at least allowed you to reconfigure your controls to allow D pad for movement, I might have given this A10.

[01:20:37] Speaker B: Okay.

[01:20:39] Speaker A: And. And you know, granted, A10 is a masterpiece, but no game is perfect or ever will be.

So I would, in. In this situation where I was allowed to use the D pad for movement or reshape my controls to use it, I would give it a 10. With the caveat that the story is good but not perfect.

Very much intrigued obviously to learn more about lore and Persian mythology. So that’s a great detail there that you don’t get out of most games.

[01:21:11] Speaker B: No, that was a really good detail.

[01:21:12] Speaker A: But the story moment to moment with all that other context taken out was good but that’s about it.

Just give me D pad especially in this DLC.

I understand like especially in any 2D.

Especially side scroller or platformers that have bows in them give you or almost force you in many cases to use the stick for movement because of aiming to be more free instead of eight directions. Get it?

But why not let me move around with the D pad and then use the stick to aim.

It’s I don’t know. I just need more precision on my landings in some cases and there are some moments where I would land on a platform what I thought perfectly and the stick would like not drift but do something or I’d linger on it too long and fall off.

Yeah, that just bothers me anyway, that’s more user error but it’s a 2D game. Let me use a debug.

Rant over Parting thoughts.

[01:22:25] Speaker B: Parting thoughts I had a great time with it. Yeah, I was kind of shocked. There was, I was a little skeptical going into it as I said since I knew it was going to be like the first Metroidvania that I will be at least doing my best to complete and I definitely completed it and a little bit more.

Yeah. But I had a really good time. I, I, I enjoyed that definitely. I feel maybe compared to some others and I’m sure compared to some others a lot of the whack whack trees around so it gives you pretty good like safe points. They weren’t like super close but they were close enough to each other where if I had to run back and forth it wasn’t, it didn’t like seem like didn’t make you feel like oh God like all the way back.

[01:23:09] Speaker A: But yeah, but they were fairly generous with them with this place.

[01:23:12] Speaker B: But then once you can get the fast travel and then, and then once

[01:23:15] Speaker A: you can get the fast travel perk the tree. Fast travel trees.

[01:23:20] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:23:20] Speaker A: After is huge. It’s huge. I loved it. It was great.

[01:23:25] Speaker B: That was massive.

So yeah, no parting thought. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I had a really good time with it. I put a lot more hours into homing game than you expected. Than I expected. And yeah, I had a really good time.

[01:23:41] Speaker A: Yeah I, I, I want to know more about Fariba like Who is this kid? How does she have whatever powers it is that she does have? And who is she really like? Is she just an alternate version of the mage that’s sitting right next to her in the Haven?

That’s a theory. I would kind of like to know more about the Blacksmith. The giant, I guess. Goddess Blacksmith.

[01:24:07] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:24:07] Speaker A: Who gives you all your upgrades.

That was pretty cool.

Yeah. I don’t know. I’m curious about some of these characters to know more about them, but since many of them don’t, you know, have much basis beyond a game invention that probably we’ll never find out.

I just got to accept that I wish they had given the chakram its own dedicated button.

[01:24:33] Speaker B: I. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Because there are many times I’m trying to throw it and I’m just shooting arrows.

[01:24:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think specifically for me because I wanted to use it a lot more in combat. It’s like a. It’s a cool weapon to have, but holding triangle took too long and it was just too unwieldy with the fast pace of the combat.

Like I could never get it off fast enough before getting hit. So what’s the point of that?

[01:24:57] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:24:57] Speaker A: You know, So I practically never used it.

Parse actually in Discord at one point said that, hey, did you know that you can parry your own chakra when it’s coming back to you? That’s cool. But enemies are coming at you too fast for me to actually get much use.

But it’s.

It’s a cool weapon. I just would have preferred a different button placement for it so I can use it consistently instead of by accident.

And there’s so many possibilities available with that kind of thing. But nope, I will say that you do you have the option. If you go through all the platforming, you can unlock a number of amulets since they strip them all away from you in the Mask of Darkness.

And you can get a vampiric version of the chakram, which is so much more fun than the regular version that I wish I played the DLC much earlier. So I could use this vampiric chakram in the base game, which I don’t know if you saw it used much in your playthrough.

I think there’s a third amulet that I didn’t get. I got one amulet first that lets you jump up and hit down X and it’ll place this kind of proximity mine esque circle on the ground, which never actually hit me one for me. So good riddance. But this chakra you throw it. And then when it’s out in the middle of the air, if you hit triangle right there in that spot for like three or four seconds, it’s just spitting there. It lights up red and anything that gets caught in it gets damaged in this whirling blade. And then when it comes back to you, it heals you.

[01:26:32] Speaker B: Oh, okay. That’s cool.

[01:26:33] Speaker A: It’s awesome.

[01:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah. That been cool in the main game. So yeah, that would.

[01:26:37] Speaker A: So I doubt I’ll ever replay this, but if I do, I want to do the DLC the second I can get access to it.

[01:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:26:46] Speaker A: And I guess okay. Otherwise it came to me after playing this dlc. In hindsight, I’ve realized that not a single boss is fought in a room that has platforms in it.

Like not a single platform, with the exception of maybe the jailer in the Sacred Archives.

[01:27:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s more of a mini boss.

[01:27:05] Speaker A: It’s more of a mini boss. Did it have a health bar? I don’t remember.

[01:27:08] Speaker B: No, it didn’t.

[01:27:09] Speaker A: So if it doesn’t have a health bar and its name on the bottom of the screen, it doesn’t. So it doesn’t count.

So there’s no major boss fight with platforms in it, which kind of struck me as odd. But it didn’t need them, which is an achievement on itself.

Otherwise, I. So I came across a post on Reddit from someone whose username is totally butchered because I think Autocorrect screwed it up. Dimitro, something like that. On the Prince of Persia subreddit the other day. That gave some insight, I’m sure is also available in many other places of the Internet. But this is where I found it. But about how the most famous enemy in the first Prince of Persia game exists because of a system memory limit.

And I bring this up because of an assumption that it’s relevant to the Lost Crown. So this person Demetro says everyone remembers the mirror fight in the First Prince of Persia from 1989, where your own shadow steps out, picks up a sword, and you find out you can’t just kill it. Ring any bells?

[01:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:28:18] Speaker A: So yeah, the alternate Sargon we face off against and merge with eventually all have a very legitimate multiple timelines based lore reason for existing in the Lost Crown.

But it sounds like finding a little reason to do so is a callback to that original Prince of Persia.

[01:28:37] Speaker B: That’s cool.

[01:28:38] Speaker A: The interesting thing is that in that game, that enemy only exists, right, because the game ran out of memory. So Jordan Mechner, the creator of the series, couldn’t fit a new enemy into the Apple II’s minuscule 128 kilobytes of RAM.

So instead of making one, he flipped the prince’s own animation against itself and called it the Shadow Man.

[01:29:03] Speaker B: Huh.

[01:29:04] Speaker A: Pretty cool.

[01:29:05] Speaker B: That’s cool.

[01:29:09] Speaker A: Now, of course, of all the games on our schedule for this podcast, this is one of the ones I would least expect to find it. But since it came to mind while playing, I’ll mention it.

In our first handful of games we played, there was this very unexpected through line that connected various games in the most random way, but has not made an appearance in a number of seasons.

Can you guess what it is?

[01:29:32] Speaker B: Oh, pizza.

[01:29:33] Speaker A: That’s right, it’s pizza.

[01:29:35] Speaker B: Pizza.

[01:29:36] Speaker A: We haven’t had pizza appear in any of our book club games in so long, it almost makes you wonder if we’re focused on the right thing when deciding what’s next.

Maybe we should reprioritize our upcoming season for the more important things.

[01:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe we should.

[01:29:52] Speaker A: I don’t know.

[01:29:52] Speaker B: I feel like there might be.

I think some of the ones that we have coming up, I think there’s a chance.

[01:29:57] Speaker A: There’s a possibility. There’s a chance that we’re in a world with pizza again, and if not, we’ll need to start correcting it.

If anyone has any suggestions for games that they know have pizza in it, we’ll be happy to hear them.

[01:30:10] Speaker B: Exactly.

[01:30:12] Speaker A: Okay, jokes Aside, I think 9sols is going to have to be my next Metroidvania because if I play any other ones and then go on to that, I’ll lose my parry coordination that I just picked up by going back to just having to jump and dodge. Only I had seen.

[01:30:31] Speaker B: I’d seen clips of that one and yeah, that one was supposedly to me,

[01:30:39] Speaker A: another masterpiece, but very difficult.

So I definitely will play it at some point. Um, give it a try, but don’t hate me if you don’t like it.

It’s often compared to Sekiro, so. But. But the pairing is supposedly amazing. I’m sure Nine Souls implementation of pairing is very different from Prince of Persia and from the sounds of it. Yeah, significantly more difficult, but better to start from an arbitrary kind of 50% skill set from Prince of Persia than the 0% skill set that I would be if I switched over to a non parrying Metroidvania I had thought of

[01:31:25] Speaker B: for my next Metroidvania that I want to play is potentially doing one of the biggest ones of all time in Symphony of the Night.

[01:31:37] Speaker A: There’s no going wrong with that.

[01:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:31:40] Speaker A: I think maybe half the people that are fans of Metroidvanias might suggest that since you’ve played a modern one already, go back to the start. It’s not a bad choice. It’s a great game.

Ask the guys over at the inverted castle what they think.

[01:31:57] Speaker B: I know. I was. Yeah, I will have to ask them. Yeah, I actually, when you were talking about Nine Souls, I had just started.

I started listening to their episode on Nine Souls because I’d seen about. Yeah. Because I was just intrigued.

Also, I didn’t mind if I was to get to that game in the future. Like, if I listen to it now, I’ll probably forget some of the stuff.

[01:32:17] Speaker A: Sure.

For sure.

[01:32:19] Speaker B: So, yeah. But I had started it, so I might. I’ll probably continue the episode with them. But yes, I’ll have to intrigue to see what they think. But yeah, Symphony of the Night is the next Metroidvania that I’m solid play.

[01:32:31] Speaker A: So, yeah, so that you’re already kind of answering my question that I had here, which is, you know, what do you think? Did this experience and the fun you had with it convince you to insert more Metroidvanias into your regular rotation of game genres that you play?

[01:32:47] Speaker B: Yes, it definitely has. So, yeah, it’ll be. Yeah, I think Symphony of the Night’s big one, Hollow Knight, which as I said, I’d started a long time. But I’ll probably. I’ll go back to that. I will definitely. I think now that I’ve had this experience with it too and fully finished one and kind of know overall in general what to expect or what like Metroidvania is more like then I definitely think it will help me keep. Keep going on other ones that I want to play. So, yeah, so Symphony Night, that was probably the.

The next one that I will. Since I know that is one of like the godfathers of Metroidvanias.

[01:33:26] Speaker A: That is the first Metroidvania first. It’s the first. Hold on. It’s the first Metroidvania format Castlevania game.

Okay. To reflect back to our first episode of this season.

So Metroidvania being an amalgamation of Metroid and Castlevania since the very first Metroid game, it was always in this format. Castlevania had a number of games beforehand. I believe a final one was Rondo of Blood, which may have had another name originally, which is the lead. It’s like the. Not the prequel because it came out first, but it’s the lead into Symphony of the Night. Story wise, they actually connect.

[01:34:09] Speaker B: Okay.

[01:34:09] Speaker A: But that one’s in the classic Castlevania format, which is.

Is it level based? It’s somewhat level based. It’s level based, yes. And you go through different areas and fight bosses, move to the next stage, whereas Symphony of Knight moves into this interconnected world with backtracking and ability gating and the classics of the Metroidvania genre. So Metroid really created it and Castlevania combined and merged with the concept. And I think every Castlevania since Symphony of the Night has been like that, with the exception of those 3D ones.

Okay, someone correct me. I’m probably wrong about that.

Anyway, Symphony of Night, great game.

Cool. Highly, highly recommend as well.

And I’m glad, you know, both. You’re welcome for giving making you play one of these and thank you because this is like a personal victory for me.

[01:35:08] Speaker B: Yeah, you’re welcome.

[01:35:11] Speaker A: So everyone, what did you think of Prince of Purse of the Lost Crown? Let us know on Discord.

Yes, definitely. And you know, based on this positive experience, we’ll probably get another Metroidvania on the schedule in a number of seasons, too. Oh, we definitely will.

[01:35:24] Speaker B: I know there are definitely some other ones that neither of us have played.

[01:35:28] Speaker A: Can’t beat that. There’s a lot of them out there. Oh, yeah. I have a list of options for you already, so.

[01:35:34] Speaker B: Okay, good.

[01:35:35] Speaker A: Cool. Tune in next time, everyone, to find out which game season 11 of the gaming Backlog Book Club will be about. Or join our Discord for a bit of a preview.

[01:35:45] Speaker B: Yep. Thank you everyone. Thank you for following along through this awesome game, Prince of Persia and the Lost Crown. So we appreciate it and have a good one.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of native games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music, or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram under the same name. Thanks.