Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s new DLC makes a great game even better

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is one of 2024’s most underrated games. It’s been a year full of creatively diverse games, so this Metroidvania from Ubisoft has flown under the radar since its launch in January. It still stands as one of my favorite games of the year, as it features some of the best 2D platforming action since Celeste and utilizes features like Memory Shards to make a daunting Metroidvania feel approachable. I returned to it to check out its Mask of Darkness DLC and fell in love with it once again.

Mask of Darkness is a challenging DLC meant for players who have mastered the complexities of The Lost Crown’s silky-smooth platforming. It fleshes out the backstory of a character the main game mostly ignored and features some of the best art in the entire game. It celebrates almost everything good aboutThe Last Crown and provides another reason for people to check out this great game once again.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown — Mask of Darkness |DLC Launch Trailer

The main story of The Lost Crown follows a group of Persian heroes called The Immortals as they try to save a kidnapped Prince at the time-bending Mount Qaf. Through a series of betrayals I won’t spoil here, player character Sargon ends up fighting many of the Immortals he formerly called his friends. One Immortal who briefly appeared in the main game, but wasn’t fleshed out much, was the assassin Radjen. Mask of Darkness is all about her, as Sargon is trapped within her mind palace after attempting to confront her.

Throughout Mask of Darkness, Sargon learns about much of Radjen’s backstory and grapples with the fact that Radjen will never be able to escape her trauma. I thoughtThe Lost Crown‘s narrative was one of its weaker aspects, but for what’s technically a sidequest, this DLC features some of the game’s best writing yet. The mind palace premise also lets Mask of Darkness play with trippy visuals and send Sargon through memorable backgrounds during his descent into Radjen’s psyche. I