Video Game / Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

"I am... the architect of my own destruction."

—The Prince

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the 2004 follow-up to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which Ubisoft hoped would be more financially successful by giving the sequel one of the most amusing Darker and Edgier twists in history. The storybook "Arabian Nights" feel of the first game was replaced by sexual content (including several stripperific female characters, one of which is introduced via a five second focus on her metal thong), graphic violence (the loading screen is a waterfall of blood), language, and heavy metal music by Godsmack.

While the gameplay was refined and improved (especially the combat), the Prince himself was changed into a '90s Anti-Hero instead of the more cheerful character of the first game. Seven years after the events of the previous game, the Prince is being hunted by an unstoppable beast, the Dahaka. The creature is apparently a guardian of the timeline and wants to ensure that the Prince dies for releasing the Sands of Time, despite the Prince having used the Sands to prevent himself from having released them in the first place. In a desperate effort to avoid this fate at the hands of the Dahaka, he travels to the island where the Sands of Time were originally formed, hoping to prevent their creation.

It got a sequel with Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.

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Tropes appearing in this game:

• Actionized Sequel: The developers wanted to show how the Prince is a "master warrior", and thus there was a revamp of the fighting system, adding elements such as Dual Wielding, and much more battles to fight.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: The Dahaka, when he pursues the Prince in the Present, will destroy the Prince if he catches up or even if the Prince takes too long navigating the path ahead and away from him. He drops the "Advancing" and "of Doom" parts in the Golden Ending by becoming its True Final Boss.
• All There in the Manual: The game itself never explains how the Prince has the Medallion of Time. The manual mentions that it was given to him by Farah at the end of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time which is an issue in itself (as it was still in her possession when the Prince departed her palace bedroom).
• Alternate Timeline: Following the revelation that the Prince is trapped in a Stable Time Loop, he discovers the existence of the Mask of the Wraith which could allow him to change his fate. Using it turns him into the Sand Wraith he had seen throughout the game and was killed by the Dahaka, and at this point he is able to change things so his past self is killed and he can then remove the mask. This reveals that there are three: the original unaltered timeline, one where the Prince became the Sand Wraith and was killed by the Dahaka, and the current version where the Prince changes his fate either by killing Kaileena in the present or killing the Dahaka.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • In the good ending Kaileena reacts with surprise and confusion when the Dahaka appears, meaning that the Empress of Time apparently has nothing to do with the Guardian of the Timeline. This is despite the Water Sword, which is necessary to kill the Dahaka, only being accessible if you acquire all the life upgrades on the island which implies some sort of connection.
  • A retroactive one because of the events in The Two Thrones. The third game continues from the good ending of Warrior Within, where the Prince killed the Dahaka and saved Kaileena. The Vizier mentions in the third game that he decided to invade Babylon when the Dagger of Time gave him visions which is why he was able to capture Kaileena, suggesting that her arrival in the present somehow activated the Dagger and caused the visions. So it's left unclear who is invading Babylon in the bad ending, where Kaileena was killed by the Prince and the Sands of Time were destroyed by the Dahaka.
• Animal Theme Naming: In this game, the Prince's main swords (save for the Driftwood Cudgel and the Water Sword) are named after animals, some "noble" (Eagle Sword and Lion Sword), some venomous and deadly (Spider Sword, Serpent Sword, Scorpion Sword).
• Arrow Cam: Thrown sub-weapons would sometimes be followed by the camera in slow-motion until they hit their target.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
  • Combo attacks are named Oronte's Grudge, Ptolemaios' Anger, Wrath of Cyrus, Rage of Darius, Azad's Furious Retaliation, Zaroaster's Ire, Asha's Fury, Ahriman's Revenge, and Mithra's Vengeance. This video's description looks up each name and concludes that sure, they're all Ancient Persia-y, but "it is quite clear that only a few are actually suitable to name combat attacks after."
  • The Soundtrack piece "Conflict at the Entrance" features Arabic Vocals, even though the game is well... Persian.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Stuart Chatwood keeps the same Persian tone, but now with a heavy metal style that clearly fits with the instrumentals of Godsmack's "I Stand Alone" that play in the Dahaka pursuits. Another Godsmack song, "Straight Out Of Line", plays during the credits.
• Backtracking: Obtaining one of the life upgrades requires you to return to a previous location you visited since it requires a sword that can break through walls which you don't have at first. Finding two of the secret weapons requires backtracking as well.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • As he technically never got any of the upgraded swords, and left the Dagger of Time with Farah, the Prince would be back to square one at the beginning of this game if he didn't still have the Medallion of Time, carried over from the timeline where Farah died.
  • The Prince loses his initial weapon, the Eagle Sword, after the shipwreck in the prologue. When he wakes up on the island, he has to fight using a measly wooden stick that does pitiful damage and has very limited combos. Fortunately, he steals the Spider Sword from a mook in a later cutscene. The stick is also a subversion since it becomes a secondary weapon after the said cutscene, which means that it can be carried all throughout the game for as long as the player doesn't break or discard it!
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: In the Water Tower, you'll see a Crowmaster waiting for you on a small stone platform you have to reach. Once you do, the Dahaka shows up, kills the Crowmaster and forces you to undergo yet another escape sequence.
• Benevolent Architecture:
  • For an island trying to kill him, there are certainly plenty of climbable rubble piles and wall decorations. This even extends to seemingly pointless ropes hanging conveniently from the walls.
  • And if you can't get through somewhere in your current time period, switching to the other one will fix it for you. Yes, the game makes the Prince's constant time travel between the past and the present explicitly beneficial.
• Big "NO!": The Prince pulls one right after killing Kaileena, when the Dahaka appears.
  Prince: No! NO! How is this possible? The sands are here in the present, not in the hourglass!
• Bloodier and Gorier: As part of the Darker and Edgier direction, the combat features tons of blood and dismemberment.
• Blow You Away: A secondary power granted by the Sands allows you to channel a blast of sand through your body and knock down all nearby enemies.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: The Empress never utilizes her greatest tactical advantage over the Prince to its full potential: The fact that she and Kaileena are one and the same person the whole time, and thanks to an amazingly lucky stroke of timing, the Prince walks in on Shahdee trying to kill her when he first meets her. This causes him to assume Kaileena is a beleaguered servant, and upon saving her, he puts his trust in her completely to the point of trying to take her away from "the evils" of the island. What does she do with this amazing upper hand? She dramatically reveals her true identity and attacks him.
• Boring, but Practical: The attack used when the player presses the secondary weapon attack button twice when the Prince has no secondary weapon. It basically allows the Prince to grab an enemy and chuck them in any direction. It's not the flashiest move in the Prince's arsenal, but if you can chuck said enemy off a tall thing and let gravity do the work for you, it's a very efficient method of neutralizing foes.
• Breakable Weapons: All your secondary weapons, save for the secret weapons, will ruin and break with use. Some weapons last longer than others, weapons with One-Hit Kill abilities will inevitably shatter after a few kills.
• Bullet Time: One of the earliest powers you can obtain allows you to slow down time, which proves necessary to make it through certain doors in time and can be used to defeat enemies faster or navigate better through certain courses.
• Call-Back: In the same scene that the Prince learns how to become the Sand Wraith, we learn about the Maharajah's trip to the island, and by extension, how he got the sands in the first place.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Weapons marked with the skull icon are "cursed", and thus every time you attack with them, the Prince loses a little of life. Throwing them is fine though.
  • Also the main side-effect of the Sand Wraith's mask, though health won't fall below a certain level.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: In the true ending, after the Dahaka falls down into the water, it rises again one last time as a gargantuan, skyscraper-sized monstrosity, but since water is its kryptonite, it promptly falls back down and dies.
• Clock Roaches: The Dahaka is a guardian of time that hunts the Prince in order to restore time to its original flow. It's implied that whenever someone changes the past, a Dahaka shows up to deal with it. The first one was created when the Prince tampered with time, and a second comes up to deal with his second attempt to fix his own mistake in the game. If you get the Golden Ending, you kill the Dahaka, and the Empress of Time sails away with you. Thus the Sands of Time are not created in the past. (They get created when the Empress is killed.)
• Combat Tentacles: The Dahaka can emit a set of four rope-like tentacles from his abdomen, which he uses to catch and kill the Prince if he catches up. He can also summon them from the walls and ground in an attempt to snare the Prince.
• Complexity Addiction: The Empress employs several round-about measures to kill the Prince: she sends Shahdee after him, curses one of his swords (supposedly), forces him to solve puzzles in two towers laden with deadly traps and mooks, and all the while hopes the Dahaka will finish him off if he doesn't die on his own. When all this (predictably) fails, the Empress goes one-on-one in a sword and sorcery duel and naturally does not emerge the victor. Depending on the ending, she dies twice.
• Conflict Ball: A lot of the story's problems boil down to the Empress picking a fight with the Prince when doing so works directly contrary to both their agendas. The Empress is fated to die by the Prince's blade, and her death will create the Sands of Time, ruining the Prince's life and causing the Dahaka to come after him. The Empress simply explaining all of this to the Prince and just not attacking him would solve everybody's problems, and yet she continues to try to kill him.
• Continuity Cameo: Farah is briefly seen in the last seconds of the true ending.
• Cool Sword:
  • The Prince himself uses swords as his main weapon, getting his hands on a series of increasingly-better animal-themed swords, culminating with the glowing, finely-ornated Water Sword.
  • Pretty much all the secondary swords weapons tend to have unique and distinctive looks.
  • Shahdee dual-wield swords which are essentially a highly-ornated hybrid of cutlass and Kukri.
  • Kaileena as the Empress has two unique swords resembling falxes with massive handguards protecting her forearms and handles perpendicular to the blades, making them similar to Pata or Katars.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover art as well as some promotional artwork show the Prince wielding the Eagle Sword and the Lion Sword together. This is not actually possible in-game since both are primary weapons and the former is lost after the prologue while the latter is obtained about halfway through the game, but is broken and discarded after dealing the final blow against Kaileena. Despite this the Lion sword has a second entry in the weapons file (never used in the final game) as a secondary weapon, and some beta in-game screenshots show the Prince holding both Lion and Eagle sword at the same time, indicating that originally was possible to hold them both.
• Company Cross References: One of the secret joke weapons is Rayman's glove.
• Crucified Hero Shot: In her brief appearance, Farah is shown captured and tied to a crucifix.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Counter-attacks are performed slightly differently compared to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. In the previous game, you must hold block and then press the attack button right before the enemy hits you. In this game, you must instead press the attack button right after the enemy hits you. Attempting to do a counter-attack the old way will result in you getting hurt.
  • Rebound attack and rebound jump have been changed as well. In the previous game, rebound attack is performed by moving towards a wall and pressing the jump button followed by either attack button while rebound jump requires you to move towards a wall and double tap the jump button. This game simplified the controls and rebound attack is now performed by simply moving towards a wall and pressing an attack button while pressing the jump button performs a rebound jump. Cue players performing a rebound jump when trying to do a rebound attack.
• Darker and Edgier: The developer intentionally made this game darker and more serious than its predecessor. This is actually the reason Jordan Mechner, the creator of the franchise, wanted no part in the development of this game; he hated the Prince's self-serving Face–Heel Turn.
• Dark World: The present (your world) is this, with the castle in ruins and overgrown with vegetation. When you find the first time portal, you get to see the castle in its former glory, before some cataclysm befell it. Certain areas are only passable either in the past, or in the present, requiring you to go back and forth between the two to make it to the throne room. And then you find that you are the cause of the catastrophe.
• Deadly Upgrade: The Mask of the Wraith. Putting it on transforms the Prince into a shadowy creature, allowing him to exist at the same time as his past self and change his fate, and even passively regenerates the Sands of Time. This comes as the cost of perpetual health drain, and being unable to change back until the Prince's past self has died.
• Death's Hourglass: Used subtly: outside the throne room, there is an hourglass that counts the time until the Empress will create the Sands of Time. However, as the Prince finds out to his dismay, the Empress dies to create the Sands, so the hourglass was counting down until the Empress's death.
• Developer's Foresight: The Prince's kick attacks after vaulting have their own damage values separate from the equipped weapons, making them quite the ideal offensive moves available when the Prince is still stuck with the Wooden Stick weapon, or when the Lion Sword breaks.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Prince kills the Dahaka in the good ending.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: In the Golden Ending, the Prince starts up a romantic sexual relationship with Kaileena, who is literally the living physical embodiment of the Sands of Time that holds part of the timeline within her by being a byproduct of the moments when the Gods created time.
• The Dog Bites Back: Upon reaching the Sacrifical Altar as the Sand Wraith, you see that Shahdee's attack on Kaileena was caused by the latter insulting and slapping the former after she revealed that the Prince was still alive and had followed her.
• Dramatic Chase Opening: The Prince is running away from the Dahaka. Whether this really happened, or was a nightmare, is up to player's interpretation.
• Drop-In Nemesis: After killing Shahdee and meeting the Dahaka on the island, the monster will chase the Prince in the present, lurking somewhere on the island and popping out in certain segments to chase the Prince. After you transform into the Sand Wraith, the Dahaka will appear in the past as well.
• Dual-World Gameplay: The Island Of Time has to be explored in the restored past and the decaying present, with changing pathways, accessibility, and the characters present in the island.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The hooded figure in the final cutscene becomes very important in the third game (He's implied to be the Dark Prince).
• Emergency Weapon: Upon shipwrecking on the Island, you can use a cudgel made of driftwood as your temporary weapon of choice, which you'll ditch soon enough for the Spider Sword. After slaying Kaileena the first time, you have to use the snapped fragment of the Lion's Sword as your only weapon until you find the Scorpion Sword in the Prison.
• Escape Sequence: The Dahaka chase sequences, most notably in the Catacombs, where you have to evade him three times in a row.
• Fanservice: Out of the Prince of Persia trilogy, this is the game with the most.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When the Prince has his first face-to-face encounter with the Sand Wraith, the Wraith throws an axe at the Prince, which he barely manages to dodge. Astute players will hear the sound of it entering flesh, followed by metal clinking on the ground. The Wraith actually saved the Prince from a sneak attack, as seen from the Wraith's perspective when you play as it during the latter parts of the game.
  • When the Prince kills Shahdee near the beginning, she gets up one last time and says "You cannot change your fate". As this mirrors what the old man told him, he assumes she means him. She's actually talking to Kaileena, and considering Kaileena herself talks about the empress wanting to change her fate, that's a pretty big hint they're the same person.
  • Minor one, during the garden tower escape sequence, after crossing a long pit you briefly see the Dahaka smash down an adjacent wall in frustration: turns out he opened the way to a secret weapon you can collect later.
• Future Self Reveal: It's revealed that the Sand Wraith the Prince has had confrontations with is a future version of him.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game is notorious for them due to the worst of them (such as being turned into the Wraith too early) causing Unintentionally Unwinnable situations that an unknowing player can save themselves into, permanently wrecking their save file.
• Giant Mook: Brutes are humongous, humanoid sand golems covered in armor and used to patrol the Mechanical Tower and other areas. Unlike most enemies, you have to hack at their heels to make them kneel and then you can jump on their back and hack at their heads until they're dead.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: So while you're progressing mid to late game, you'll find yourself on the raised circular platform from early on. You might expect a wave of enemies to show up for you to beat here. You can be forgiven for not expecting a giant sand Griffon to drop down and begin laying waste to you.
• Groin Attack: In both boss battles, Shahdee will kick the Prince in the groin if he vaults over her without attacking.
• Guide Dang It!: Unless you played Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time prior, you will not know about the counter-attack move since this game never explains it to you and neither does the manual. This ends up becoming a major problem during the battle with the Empress since fighting her without using counter-attacks is much more difficult.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The very first boss battle ends with you being beaten up and left unconscious. Why Shahdee doesn't just kill the Prince after that is a mystery…
• Heel–Face Turn: In the final boss battle of the Golden Ending, Kaileena supports the Prince versus the Dahaka by channeling a wave that pushes the latter off the ledge, giving you more time to slash the monster.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Countless enemies, especially the Initiates (sometimes also called Executioners) the player encounters during the last quarter of the game, wear hardly anything but black leather straps.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Dahaka has a tendency to smash walls, doors and architecture in general as he chases you. When you escape him in the Mystic Caverns, he loses you because the bridge he's on crumbles, plunging the roaring Dahaka in the abyss.
• Hotter and Sexier: And how! Warrior Within features...
  • Shahdee and her infamous ass-focused introduction scene.
  • Statues of nude women everywhere.
  • Female enemies who wear thong panties and small tops. They also moan during combat.
  • The Golden Ending contains a sex scene between The Prince and Kaileena.
  • Even the Prince's outfit seems to mostly consist of leather straps from the waist up.
• Idiot Ball:
  • The Prince and the Empress of Time seem to play tennis with it.
  • The Dahaka himself isn't above grabbing it: there are a couple of cutscenes where he manages to grab the Prince, only to angrily toss him away, giving him a shot at escaping his wrath. In the entire Catacomb section, he only barges in the main chamber when the Prince has escaped (though if he did before, the section would be unwinnable). Justfied a little since the Dahaka needs the Prince to complete the Stable Time Loop.
• Improbable Weapon User: The secret weapons will have the Prince smacking enemies with such deadly arms like a teddy bear, a cartoon glove, a stuffed flamingo and a hockey stick. The only realistic secret weapon is a green glowing sword that sucks your health if used.
• Improvised Weapon: After losing his Eagle Sword in the prologue sequence, the Prince is forced to make do with a relatively sturdy wooden stick until he can get his hands on a proper weapon.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Scorpion Sword is the most powerful sword obtained over the course of normal gameplay. It's a fine weapon for the rest of the game and certainly far easier to get than the Water Sword, but leaves you stuck with the bad ending.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Water Sword, which can only be unlocked by finding the 9 hidden Health Upgrades for the Medallion. It kills pretty much all enemies in a couple of blows, can break walls to pieces just like the Scorpion Sword and allows you to fight the Dahaka in the true ending. Among the secondary weapons, the Light Sword is a glowing laser scimitar with a green blade which has top stats but is cursed. It's also located in a mandatory area, hidden behind a fragile wall.
• Informed Flaw: As part of the mid-game twist, Kaileena angrily complains that the sword you've been using all this time is cursed. Which would be reasonable... if the sword had any negative properties at all. It's a straight upgrade when used in-game, however. Although it does break after the fight.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Kaileena's appearance is based on her voice actress, Monica Bellucci.
• Irony:
  • The Prince's quest to prevent the creation of the Sands of Time is what ends up creating them in the first place. He kills the Empress of Time to prevent her from creating the Sands, only to learn that her death is the actual cause.
  • Once the Prince finds out exactly why Shahdee tried to murder Kaileena, the situation becomes rather ironic. Kaileena ordered Shahdee to kill the Prince in order to prevent him from reaching the Island of Time and fulfilling his destiny to kill her, and attacked Shahdee when she failed, causing Shahdee to get angry and retaliate with lethal force. Then the ignorant Prince came in and ended up saving the woman who ordered his own death from the one who didn't want to carry out the order because she felt it was a fool's errand.
• Kill It with Water: All the Sand Creatures will dissolve and die if they come in contact with pools of water or waterfalls, while the Dahaka is vulnerable to the Water Sword. He ultimately dies when he's slashed multiple times with the aforementioned sword and tossed in the ocean.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Thanks to the Trash Talk the enemies (and the Prince) spouts, it's not rare to actually cut an enemy short as he's saying something.
• King Incognito: Kaileena is actually the Empress of Time.
• King Mook:
  • The Imperial Guards to the Crowmasters.
  • The colossal Thrall boss encountered in the Prison is an even larger Brute with a healthbar.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: In a sense. The ending you get only hinges on whether you walk into the final battle with the Water Sword or not. While you are required to have all the life upgrades to get the sword, the sword itself is optional and you can simply choose not to take the Water Sword if you want to fight Kaileena for the bad ending while still having max health. This also makes it easy to see both endings on a single save.
• Ledge Bats: Beasts, which can Wall Crawl, will sometimes block your way on a runnable wall and try to knock you down to your doom. Female enemies do the same, only usually waiting on the opposite end and running towards the Prince when he runs. Sometimes they appear on crumbling planks too.
• Lightning Bruiser: The True Final Boss moves very fast, its attacks are swift, cannot be blocked and do a lot of damage, so using slowdown is basically required just to keep up. The arena generates sand at regular intervals to support the constant use.
• Made of Explodium: The Spiked Beasts found (mostly) in the Mechanical Tower will explode upon death. You can exploit this to your advantage as they also damage other enemies upon exploding.
• Male Gaze: Shahdee's ass-first introduction is a particularly blatant example.
• Malevolent Architecture: Just like the other games, there are spike pits, giant stone pistons, and very long drops to navigate. It's possible that Kaileena could have been trying to stop the Prince by turning the island into an assault course. It probably would've worked, too, if the Prince's main skillset didn't involve getting around exactly those traps.
• Metroidvania: The game's world is interconnected and you often gain access to new areas by obtaining new swords with special abilities.
• Minimalist Cast: If you scratch the old man seen only in a flashback and Shahdee who dies early on, the Prince and Kaileena are the only significant human characters in the game.
• Multi-Melee Master: While in the previous game the Prince only used swords in tandem with the Dagger of Time, in this game he can pick up and use swords, knives, maces and axes, using them to deliver devastating secondary attacks or to throw them from afar.
• Multiple Endings: The normal ending involves the Prince killing Kaileena again. If you get all the life upgrades, you are able to acquire the Water Sword, which turns out to be the only weapon that can even harm the Dahaka, who turns out to be the True Final Boss. By defeating it, the Prince is able to save both himself and Kaileena from their fate — but regardless of the ending, the end shows Babylon under attack.
• Nerf:
  • The rewind and slow-motion abilities here last for 8 seconds, compared to their counterparts from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time that lasts for 10 seconds.
  • Due to reworking of the combat mechanics, vault attacks and wall rebound attacks are not as powerful as they used to be with wall rebound attacks in particular doing pitiful amounts of damage.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The E3 2004 trailer contains a short scene where the Prince fights sand monsters side by side with an unnamed warrior who is then killed and is mourned by the Prince. Nothing like that happens in the actual game. This trailer is actually a remnant from an earlier draft of the script where the Prince must travel to the Island of Time due to being hunted by the Empress's army and the unnamed warrior is the Prince's best friend whose death is one of the things that harden him over the years.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Can happen in the second Shahdee boss fight if the Prince fails to protect Kaileena resulting in her falling to her death.
• Not So Invincible After All: The Prince directly quotes the trope after wounding the Dahaka with the Water Sword and realizing he can finally kill the damn thing.
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Prince realizes just how similar both he and Kaileena are in their desperation and stubbornness willing to take extreme measures in order to prevent their respective prophesied deaths.
• Once More, with Clarity: The Prince runs into the Sand Wraith a few times. It does things reminiscent of the usual Evil Twin, like chucking an axe at the Prince's head or tossing him around a bit. Then when you get the Mask of the Wraith, it turns out the whole time the Sand Wraith was you. And most of the threatening things he did (that you're doing now) saved Prince's life. For instance, that axe from earlier flew past to hit a monster behind him that was about to shank him.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Some secondary weapons are capable of this with the downside of breaking after just a few hits.
  • This is also what happens to the Prince should he get caught by the Dahaka.
• One-Time Dungeon: While there are several of these, fortunately they don't contain anything necessary for the Golden Ending.
  • The parts where the Prince just shipwrecked at the edge of the island in the beginning of the game. At one point, you climb over a door that is too tall to climb from the other side so you can no longer return outside.
  • The areas where the Prince fights using just the broken Lion Sword.
  • The areas where you get to play as the Sand Wraith.
• One to Million to One: Crowmasters can shift into a dozen crows as they retreat to another location after taking enough damage. In fact, your first encounter with one showcases this in a cutscene; The crows getting startled at the sight of the Prince, they immediately form into the Crowmaster.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: A classical-type griffon serves as a boss during your time as the sand wraith.
• Palette Swap: Essentially you can sort most enemies by categories, such as the vanilla warriors (Raiders, Wardens and Initiates), she-warriors (Red, Invisible and Blue variety), Beasts (Spiked Beasts and Scavengers) and Elites (Crowmasters and Imperial Guards). The Shadows are apparently without variations.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Averted with life upgrades. There are nine of them in the game. You must find all to get the Water Sword, which enables you to fight the Dahaka and get the alternate canon ending. Fortunately, the game allows for plenty of backtracking from the Central Hall, so all the upgrades can be collected just before the True Final Boss. In fact, one of the life upgrades requires you to backtrack.
  • Played straight with some of the secret weapons. Out of five of them, two are located in a One-Time Dungeon and can no longer be obtained if you missed them.
• Poor Communication Kills: Around 90% of the game could have been avoided, if the Prince and Kaileena had sat down and talked for 5 minutes.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Downplayed. The Island of Time has visibly decayed in the present day due to nobody maintaining it after the Empress' death, and while some of the traps are still working, many are malfunctioning or outright broken.
• Rescue Sex: The Prince and Kaileena get it on in the Golden Ending where he saves her from the Dahaka.
• Retcon: The manual claims that Farah gave the Medallion of Time to the Prince at the end of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time which contradicts events depicted in that game as the Prince is shown leaving the Medallion by Farah's corpse shortly before he performs the big rewind and she clearly still has it in the final scene before the credits.
• Ret-Gone: In the "bad" ending, the Dahaka removes all evidence that the Sands of Time were ever created, including destroying Kaileena's body and the Prince's amulet. This ensures the Prince's survival, though fans who only got the bad ending would wonder why Kaileena is suddenly alive in the final game....
• The Reveal: Three major ones:
  • The Sand Wraith, a strange humanoid creature you see but never interact with is you.
  • The Empress of Time is Kaileena.
  • The Sands of Time are created by killing the Empress.
• Screw Destiny: The motive behind the Prince's actions. Also played literally in the true ending, where the Prince and Kaileena get it on.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Kaileena sees her own death in the timeline and attempts to correct it by sending her army after the Prince, which of course brings him to the island and gives him the motivation to kill her. Because the Prince had no prior knowledge of this and only sought to prevent the Sands of Time (which had already affected his life) from being created, his own quest to change his fate counts as more of a Stable Time Loop.
• Sequence Breaking: There's a glitch that can be exploited to skip a cutscene and keep on playing as the Sand Wraith until the end of the game. The Prince will still be able to keep the mask's gameplay benefits, as well as retain the Wraith in cutscenes.
• Shows Damage: A heavily-wounded enemy will turn ochre-colored and emanate small clouds of dust. Justified, since they're made of sand and the damage is making their appearance break apart.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Signifying his more combative stance, the Prince also has his costume redesigned to something that looks more like proper armor.
• Spoiled by the Manual: The game manual describes the Sand Wraith as the product of an artifact that allows the same being to exist in two places at the same time. From this, it's easy to deduce that the one encountered by the Prince has to be another version of a character in the game - possibly Kaileena, but most likely the Prince himself.
• Stable Time Loop: More like a Stable Time Loop within a Stable Time Loop. After the Prince kills Kaileena, he realizes that in doing so, he still allowed the Sands to be created. He thus goes back in time as the Sand Wraith to kill his former self, so that he would not kill Kaileena in the past; he would kill her in the present, which would then entail that the Sands would be created seven years after the events of the previous game.
• Stalked by the Bell: If you stick around one place for too long while chased by the Dahaka, it will instantly kill you regardless of how far away it actually is at the time.
• Stock Footage: Whenever you travel between the past and the present using the Time Portals, two specific FMVs play that show how the environment transitions. Both videos are pre-rendered with the Prince in the portal, which can be jarring once you get to play as the Sand Wraith mid-way through, with the Prince still appearing in the reused videos, but his actual in-game model at those points is the Wraith.
• Stripperific: Every female character in the game wears skimpy clothing. Oddly enough, Shahdee's in-game armor is slightly less skimpy than her cutscene counterpart.
• This Cannot Be!: Sometimes, slain enemies will express utter disbelief in the Prince's victory.
  Keeper: This... this is not how it's supposed to end!
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: If you get ahold of a secondary weapon, you can toss it in order to damage or possibly One-Hit Kill an opponent, depending on the weapon type and the situation. Hitting an enemy perched on a wall or plank with a thrown weapon is the safest way to eliminate it. The downside is, you lose your weapon.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Shahdee at one point informs the Empress that the Prince "is approaching the island"… even though there are supposedly decades separating them.
• Title Drop Chapter: Viewable from the save screen, the final chapter in the game is called "The Warrior Within".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The Prince is considerably darker and more violent than he was in the last game.
• True Final Boss: The Dahaka, provided you find all the life upgrades in order to acquire the Water Sword, the only weapon capable of harming it. Otherwise, the final boss is just Kaileena, which leads to a major Downer Ending with only the bleakest of hope as the Prince is freed from his curse but at the cost of just about everything.
• Unexplained Recovery: In the opening cutscene, the Prince is shown being chased by the Dahaka, and after being cornered in an alley, draws his swords and seems prepared to go out fighting. We never do find out how he got away. However, if this was a nightmare, all makes a lot more sense.
• Unique Items: There's only one instance for each of the secret weapons in a playthrough. Once you've missed them, they become Permanently Missable Content. Once you do acquire them but throw them away, they're gone.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The first Crow Master will teach you the importance of vault attacks in combat, since they No-Sell nearly every simple attack.
• Wall Slump: The Prince does this in the catacombs following his realization that by killing Kaileena, he created the Sands of Time.
• Wham Line: When the Prince first enters the Empress' throne room, he finds the place empty save himself and Kaileena. Then she declares that only one of them can cheat fate and grabs a pair of swords, and the Prince comes to a startling realization about Kaileena:
  The Prince: You...ARE the Empress!
• World of Buxom: Every female character (i.e. Shahdee and Kaileena) has large breasts.
• Worst Aid: In the opening sequence, the Prince can restore health by drinking salt water directly from the ocean. In real life, this can charitably be described as a "bad idea".
• Worthy Opponent: Several enemies in the game regard the Prince as such. Special mention goes to the Crow Master, who will not attack you if you are knocked to the ground.
  Crow Master: Defeat does not suit you, Prince. Get back on your feet.
• Wrecked Weapon: The Lion Sword snaps after the fight with Kaileena, leaving only the hilt and a small part of the blade. While it does deal damage, it's painfully weak. The Prince later finds the Scorpion Sword as a direct upgrade and replacement though.
• You Already Changed the Past: By killing Kaileena in the past, the Prince created the Sands of Time so that his past self (i.e. the version in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) could open them. He then allows the version of him that killed Kaileena to die at the hands of the Dahaka, so that he could kill Kaileena in the "present", thereby nullifying his fate.

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