I wonder if Jordan Mechner ever thought that his humble yet innovative side scroller would one day become a multi-million dollar franchise, spawning a truck load of iterations, with the last two releases - The Sands of Time (SOT) and Warrior Within (WW) being the most popular of the lot. SOT was received extremely well by people all over because of it's fairy-tale like appearance. A proud yet likeable prince whose acrobatics would put the Cirque du Soleil performers to shame, excellent platforming interspersed with health doses of combat (which many felt was a bit weak, however I do not share those sentiments), and a story line which left a warm fuzzy feeling in your stomach.
The game surprisingly didn't do as well as the developers expected it to, and so developers Ubisoft decided to sprinkle it with tons of violence, carnage and a prince who calls women "b**ches" and decapitates enemies while listening to Godsmack. This game was geared solely towards the mature crowd, but felt sorely short of the standards set by its predecessor. Even though this game was marred by a crap load of backtracking and boring boss fights, it did however provide us with immensely gratifying combat, courtesy the "Free Form Combat System".
So now Ubisoft has two prince games, under their belt, both with their own strengths and weaknesses. Like most (greedy) developers today, Ubisoft decided to milk the franchise even further by introducing a new game that'll merge the platforming and enjoyable aspects of SOT, with the violent combat from WW. This is how Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (TTT) was born. It's too early to decide the fate of this game, but as of now let's take a peek at TTT, Ubisoft's third and most probably final foray into Persia.