Released in December 2005, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones is the final game in the Sands of Time trilogy. On a cue from its fans, Ubisoft brought back Yuri Lowenthal, the actor who voiced the Prince in the first game, and they didn't try to make the hero completely dark and foreboding this time. The game starts off where Warrior Within ends; the Prince returns with Kaileena to his home city of Babylon, only to realize his previous actions were not exactly for the greater good.
Category Note: Rival Swords, the Wii version, is not considered a separate category because it's almost identical to the other versions.
100% hard difficulty: 2:24:24 by Justin Salamon, done in 22 segments.
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Author's comments:
It was difficult planning segment breaks because each save costs about 9 seconds. Obviously, I wanted to keep the segment count low, but I also had to account for all the difficult tricks in the game. At the end of my planning for the run, I'm positive I came up with the best possible segment breaks ... actually very similar to how Fluffy broke up his run, except I put in extra saves before each boss fight and one before the Hanging Gardens (very difficult segment). So, my run has 3 more segments than his ... 22-19.
Fluffy's run was timed at 2:38:07 ... however, timing for his run stopped after the Vizier fight, and didn't count the dark prince part. His actual time is around 2:43:35. I found this out while timing each of my segments, while comparing them to his run. Before doing any official timing, I originally thought I had a time just under 2:19 because my run is 19:10 faster than Fluffy's (and I was comparing it to his 2:38 time) ... but turns out my final time is 2:24:25. I originally set a goal to improve Fluffy's run by 15 minutes, so I definitely surpassed my initial goal. Other tricks came about as I worked on the run, so that's reason enough why my goal was achieved.
I want to thank everyone who supported me during my running of this game. Thanks to everyone who posted in my thread for this run ... you're help/encouragement/suggestions were greatly appreciated. Thanks to fluffy for his previous run ... it served as a valuable tool for planning my run. I'd also like to thank the few people who had valuable tricks posted on YouTube ... biggest thanks to TI2ophy for his ultimate glitch (which I refer to as the drop glitch) which altogether probably saved me 4-5 minutes through the entirety of the run. Also, thank you to the SDA staff for your hard work and the time you put into running this site. Keep up the good work!
It's possible to skip the second speed kill tutorial, but I need to kill that soldier to have a secondary weapon for two drop tricks - one later in this segment and the other in segment 2. It's difficult to get past the archer at the end without getting hit, but I get by him just fine.
There are many difficult jumps in this short segment. I don't remember the exact re-start count I had for this segment, but I know it was over 300.
One thing I should mention is throughout this whole run there are a few times where you'll see me stand still a bit when I'm around certain archers. This is intentional, because without doing so I have a high risk of getting hit with an arrow. Having said this, you'll notice in the beginning I hang on a ledge for a second, and this causes the far archer to hit the other archer with an arrow ... I can now reach the second floor safely. The rest of the segment isn't overly difficult, but it is somewhat lengthy.
This segment has a difficult archer pass at the end. It's impossible to get past them without getting hit by at least one arrow, and I get hit at the perfect time. There are a couple small mistakes in this segment, but nothing that cost too much time ... 2-3 seconds.
Getting hit while opening the first part of the gate is important because you save a couple seconds not having to open it all the way. Right after this I use the drop glitch which saves almost a minute. There is a difficult wallrun jump at the end of the segment which I take an extra second to make sure I'm lined up correctly.
Not a very difficult segment. I pick up the secondary weapon to perform the drop glitch twice in this segment, and also so I have it for the first boss fight. I get hit by two arrows after picking it up ... there wasn't much I could do about that.
The first half of the fight is super easy, but the second part is fairly random. He takes damage sometimes, other times he does not. I found that taking damage myself throughout the fight gave me a better chance of landing heavy damage to him. There were a few attempts where I took absolutely no damage at all, and after a certain point his health would not lower, no matter how many times I hit him. So I had to find the perfect balance between giving and taking damage ... and what you see here is the result. Also, at the end of the segment I was lucky enough to get a fast dark prince animation. Randomly, it seems, the game will play the transformation scene 2-4 seconds faster than normal. That's what happens here.
In a 100% run, the dark prince part can be completed without picking up any sands. I had to throw one of the enemies twice because he didn't go over the ledge on the first throw ... cost a couple seconds.
The first half of this segment is very difficult. Getting to the first pillar is so difficult because while jumping back and forth the game often triggers you to jump towards one of the invisible enemies on the ground. After this part there are other fairly difficult sideways jumps in the hallway part. Once outside, there is a difficult wallrun to get to the second floor which you have to be perfectly aligned to complete the trick. The sand gate is a pain because it requires throwing guards through a tiny window. Lucky I complete the sand gate very quickly. Honestly, the segment is perfect up until I make a stupid mistake trying to wallrun up to the dagger plate. Ugghhh. At least I didn't have any other stupid mistakes the rest of the segment.
First thing to note is that the audio cuts out for a split second during both transformation scenes. I don't know why this happened, but it shouldn't be a surprise since this game is full of bugs/glitches. There were a few spots where the camera went all funky and I lost my place for a fraction of a second. I also hopped over a ledge incorrectly at one spot which cost a second. Other than that, a very nice segment with a beautifully performed drop trick in the marketplace which saves over a minute.
Easy segment. At the end, I go back to get the secondary weapon for the boss fight ... I save time in the end by doing this. This is the only spot where I can get a secondary weapon for the fight, so the backtracking is necessary.
Just like the first boss, I take some damage after hitting her a couple times ... if I don't, her health won't go down much, if at all. ... oh, and remember that secondary weapon I got in the last segment? Well, just look how fast I was able to get to the dark prince transformation cutscene after initially taking damage. That's the only time I was able to do those sequence of attacks, and I was in complete shock that I had already finished the first half of the fight. I now had to make sure the second half of the fight went right, or that miracle would be all for nothing.
For the second half of the fight I was able to defeat her in 4 rounds, which is very rare to get. If you don't beat her in 4 rounds, you'll have to face her 6 times because the game automatically makes you fight her an even amount of rounds. Out of all my attempts with this boss, about 90% of the time I would get a 6 round fight. So, basically what you see here is an almost flawless fight ... I got nervous towards the end, I didn't even think about blocking the flying dagger (which I probably would have realized was coming if I had kept my cool). So that ended up costing me about 3 seconds ... but I'll take it, because everything else was literally unbelievable, and will probably never be matched.
Very beautiful segment. Unfortunately, I got a slow-mo kill during the sand gate, but it didn't cost too much time since I was able to run towards the gate during the short cutscene putting me in position to close it after the slow-mo was done.
It's funny how you can go through all the difficult parts of a segment perfectly, and then mess up on the easiest things (like what happened in my segment 9). That's what happened here, as I somehow forgot how to wallrun during the life upgrade. Luckily, I was able to correct the mistake quickly and only lost 1.5 seconds.
One of the hardest segments in the game. I remember almost losing my mind here. The dark prince part is what caused just about every re-start ... insane amount of things can go wrong and ruin the segment. I was lucky and got a 4 second fast transformation scene. Getting to the sand gate was a rare thing during my attempts. I must have played this over 300 times and probably only 15-20 times I made it to the sand gate. I made it past the sand gate about 4 times, only to screw up royally in the long puzzle 3 times before I finally got this run. The puzzle isn't hard, but there's a lot of platforming and one little mis-jump will ruin the segment. I took this part just a little slow to avoid any mistakes and got through it fairly quickly ... about 4 seconds from my fastest time.
I run into many of the objects while in the chariot because the fastest route is through them, not around them. The boss fight is the easiest in the game in my opinion, and I beat them very quickly. The last part went well. I don't think it's possible to get through that part without blocking attacks from at least 3 enemies ... it's just so random. I do know that I took out the first 5 enemies as fast as possible, and in all honesty, the rest of the fighting went really well.
Easy segment. There are a few spots where enemy randomness can cause problems, but overall this went really well. I pick up a secondary weapon for 3 drop glitch spots in the next segment.
Probably the toughest segment in the game. I discovered two awesome cutscene skips for this segment. One is skipped with the help of the first drop glitch (saves about 25 seconds), and the other is skipped by a perfectly aligned jump off of a wall to the sand gate area (saves well over a minute). About 20% of my attempts made it to the sand gate which is the last one in the game. I only had one mistake this whole segment ... it happened after I raised the first platform in the puzzle area. It wasn't my fault ... it was the game's fault :P
Not really too much to say about this segment. The jump trick between pillars is somewhat difficult to set up. You have to be perfectly aligned on the pillar to get up to the second floor after jumping back and forth numerous times, and I was able to do it without hesitation.
The Underground Cave was the only spot where I had mistakes in this segment. A few enemies got in my way, and I had a silly little hop on a ledge to a dagger plate.
Moving the first block was a little choppy, but I didn't lose much time. You'll see a psycho girl gets in my way and I have no way to avoid her even though I slowed down time. I thought about re-starting after this happened, but I continued playing hoping for a perfect run after that ... and that's what happened. I got an amazingly lucky dagger plate skip after jumping off the spring board which I've only had happen twice, ever ... and that saves about 4 seconds. I made sure to end the segment with 3 sand tanks for the fight against the Vizier.
Vizier fight went very well. I had only one mistake in this segment ... I attempted to jump too late on one of the platforms which left me hanging for a second. The part with the dark prince was flawless, and was extra special because the level didn't load correctly ... the golden hue background didn't load, so the level was black instead.
And that's it! Hope you enjoy the run.
Single-segment 100% easy difficulty: 2:34:15 by Justin Salamon.
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Author's comments:
OK, now that I've described the hell that is SS running this game, let me get on to my miracle run ...
I choose to do this on easy difficulty basically because I knew getting a decent SS run was going to be extremely hard, so I needed all the help I could get. Easy difficulty isn't really too different from the hard difficulty ... differences are that enemy attacks don't do as much damage to you, and your attacks on certain enemies will do more damage to them. Since there really isn't too much combat in this game, it's not really a big time saver. Enemy AI doesn't change AT ALL ... in fact, I had more difficulties around archers on easy than I did on hard.
This is a 100% run ... so I close every gate and get every life upgrade. Because I previously just finished my 100% segmented run of this game on hard I already knew the route and it was easy to know where I was going at all times.
I was amazed that I didn't have any problems at all with the speed kills. Because much of this game is relied heavily on motion control, there is always the risk that the game will not read control movement correctly. This happens so much, but thankfully I was able to get through this whole run without any major problems.
After I completed the run, I was initially disappointed because I remembered only the big mistakes I had throughout the run. But when I went back and re-watched the run, I realized I executed so many difficult tricks flawlessly and the brilliant moments definitely outweighed the ugly moments (which were often caused by bugs and glitches in the game).
The final time of the run is 2:34:15 which is over 9 minutes faster than Fluffy's 100% segmented run on Hard (he was timed at finishing in 2:38:07, but timing stopped after he killed the Vizier. His time was actually 2:43:35) and is about 10 minutes slower than my 100% segmented run on Hard. A perfect SS run would be around 2:30, but that will probably never be reached. If I had enough patience to try to improve this run I could realistically get below 2:32 ... but it's not worth it. I already have a great run. This run is really something spectacular when you look past the few ugly parts, and I'm sure anyone that watches this run will agree.
Here are some highlights of the run. What I list here are any big mistakes or any areas of greatness. I do want to point out that the first hour of the run is by far the most difficult part. More archers are in the first part of the game, and they can definitely screw up many parts of the run (you'll see in this run). Most of the mistakes and ugly parts of the run happen in the first half of the run ... so be prepared for that. The highlight of the run is from 1:59-2:02 ... 3 minutes of awesomeness that could never be replicated again in a SS run.
10:40 - had a little bit of a problem here. Anytime you're around archers, they seem to ALWAYS mess you up ... I also had issues with the motion controls jumping off the wall here. Cost about 10 seconds total
22:50 - this is the ugliest part of the whole run, and the sad thing is it wasn't even my fault. This game is just so buggy and you can see it wouldn't let me jump correctly here. I'm perfectly aligned, there's no reason why I should be jumping at an angle ... but this problem seems to happen quite a bit. Thankfully this is the ONLY real ugly part of the run ... cost 25 seconds.
23:25 - these enemies always get in the way ... nothing I could really do
29:32 - this was just a case of bad luck with the archer
30:08 - this is the first use of the drop glitch which saves about a minute. This glitch can be very frustrating ... it takes a couple tries to get it, but I'll take it for a SS run
40:56 - an above average first boss fight
53:55 - this trick is VERY hard to do but I was able to get on my first attempt. Normally it takes about 15-20 seconds longer to do this in a SS run
1:05:18 - flawless execution of the drop glitch ... I think this is the quickest I've ever done this part, and to do it in a SS run is unbelievable
1:09:13 - this is the first true mistake in the run that was entirely my fault. I got caught on the wall after opening the door with the switch and I should have realized that I was going to be cutting it close to making it under the door. I should have slowed down time here. This mistake cost me 18 seconds
1:12:13 - OK, this is where I really need to explain myself. There is a BIG glitch in the game where if you don't die before climbing up the ledge at 1:14:56 the game will FREEZE, and it sucks big time. I tried so many ways to get around this freeze, but the only thing that worked was I had to die somewhere previous to that point. So that's why I die intentionally here. It's right after a checkpoint so I only lose 15 seconds, and again, it's the ONLY way I could get through the freeze.
1:13:49 - another case of an archer completely screwing up my run. This is just bad luck and cost me about 20 seconds
1:15:56 - an average boss fight here. She is such a pain (notice how she kicked me to the lower level at the very beginning ... my goodness)
1:28:30 - this is one of the hardest places to do the drop glitch ... I was VERY surprised it only took two attempts to get it
1:36:03 - here's another bug in the game ... see how I disappeared into that shutter? This has happened to me quite a few times, and when it does happen it is impossible to jump correctly off the next shutter. Thankfully I was barely able to rewind time back to the platform I started my wallrun from, or this run would have been over.
1:36:40 - PERFECT execution of this trick which saves so much time it's ridiculous. For all the bad things that have happened in this run, it's perfectly executed tricks like this one which makes up for all that lost time
1:47:22 - can you believe it? This is a 30 second boss fight?!?!? This was blazing fast ... the fastest I've ever beaten these guys (mostly because it's on easy LOL)
1:57:11 - I had a complete brain fart here. For some reason I didn't think I had enough sands to use the "winds of sands" which would have beaten these two enemies in about 4 seconds. Rather, I spend about 20 seconds killing them the old-fashioned way. I should have saved 16 seconds here
1:59:10 - OK, this is the most beautiful part of the run. This drop glitch here skips a cutscene and some platforming, and saves me about half a minute. But the thing is, this is EXTREMELY difficult to do. If you do the glitch any later on the ledge, you'll trigger the cutscene. If you do the glitch any sooner on the ledge, you'll fall down into the abyss. In my attempts of doing this trick in my segmented run I had failed attempts about 90% of the time doing this trick here, just to give an idea of how hard this is. And if you do screw the trick up, it's almost impossible to recover from ... you might as well trigger the cutscene if you miss.
1:59:31 - this is actually my favorite/luckiest part of the run. I questioned whether or not to put this trick in, because doing this causes the game to freeze 50% of the time when you go to close the sand gate. I took the risk and it paid off ... the game didn't freeze!! You'll notice I take a few seconds to line myself up on the pole because you have to be in the perfect position to make the jump off the wall and onto the ledge by the sand gate. It's not too hard to pull off if you know exactly how to line yourself up. This trick saves about 1:15 because it skips a crazy long cutscene
2:01:10 - Because I was nailing tricks perfectly over the previous couple minutes, I decided to pick up a secondary weapon to do the drop glitch here. And I worked perfectly, AGAIN!! ... however, my luck ran out because I struggled with the drop glitch from 2:03:08-2:03:19
2:10:16 - jumping between the pillars here saves almost a minute. Although I make it look easy in this SS run, this trick is actually VERY hard to pull off. It takes about 7 jumps to get up to the second floor, and many times when you get to the top you won't be able to grab the ledge. If this happens, you're dead, because you won't be able to rewind time far enough to get back to the starting point to re-position yourself. This was really risky to put in a SS run.
2:13:00 - I needed sand, so I stayed to fight some enemies to get some sand ... but this fight took a lot longer than I wanted it to.
Basically the rest of the run went very, very well. I had an almost flawless Vizier fight starting at 2:30:14 and the final part with the Dark prince is really easy.