After about 20 hours and some change of absolutely amazing gameplay in one of the best games I have ever played in my life, I find myself at the final level in the game. They don't explicitly say that it is the final level but it is relatively clear that this is the case.
Getting here from the Windswept Wastes was no picnic and it was some of the most difficult platforming of the game. I say difficult but it was also really fair. That is one thing I really have enjoyed about this game, none of the platforming is Prince of Persia frustrating, it is just really challenging and you'll get it after a couple of tries.
This level has some pretty tricky platforming that for anyone that grew up in the 90's is going to find quite familiar. These lasers turn off and on and you have to time your jumps accordingly. To make it up to the top.
Fortunately, and this is one of the reasons why this game is so great, these lasers do not one shot you with contact, they just damage you. You can actually take quite a few hits from them if you have your healing ability equipped, and I suggest you do so since there aren't a great many enemies on this level at all. The dangers are mostly environmental in nature.
in this tall platforming tower you need to make your way to these red blob things and destroy them. They will pull back the tentacles that are blocking your way at the temple entrance that is "advertised" as the final area that you must gain access to.
There's a lot of them though, so settle in because the various tricks you have to use in order to get to all of the tentacle deactivators are going to be tough for different reasons. Basically, you are going to need to use every single skill that you have acquired along the way.
some of it is really tough such as these rotating things that if you touch any of it other than the centers, it will hurt you and make you fall. Once again though, it will only take a couple of times of doing it wrong before you figure out how to do it right and once again, if you have your healing skill equipped, you can have a lot of tries at this before your health will be all used up.
Your thumbs are going to get a workout because many of the areas you go to have these teleport tubes and you aren't really going to know what you are going to face on the other end of it until you warp through it the first time. We've seen these before in other zones but not to the degree that they have them here.
This is all a bit tough, but also fair and I loved it even when I did it wrong. You can probably tell by looking at that last photo that almost all of the areas around you are thorn-covered and that means that almost anything you can land on is going to damage you. But it doesn't KILL you, and that is what I love so much about this game.
There is a sub-boss in this level but I think the devs intentionally made this one kind of easy. There are a lot of ways to defeat this guy but if you managed to powerup your bow projectiles you will make quick work of this thing. If you didn't you can still just jump around until you whittle him down. It's not tough.
To someone that hasn't actually played this game, a lot of these sections might look seriously difficult and I can relate to that. but the thing is that if you have been playing the game, almost all of these button combinations that you have to hit are like second nature to you at this point and while some of it is quite tricky, non of it is dark-souls sort of unfair. Almost nothing insta-kills you and if it does, it reloads you right next to where it happened. It isn't a big deal.
It will take most people around an hour to 90 minutes to complete this level and the internet experts can do it in 20-25. Speed runners can do it in much less than that.
I found this level to be icing on the cake and it was absolutely brilliant. There is only one thing left to do, and hat is to fight the main boss baddy, Shriek
But I suppose we'll save that epic fight for another time
all uncredited images are screengrabs from my own gameplay
