I cannot stop thinking about how good this game is.
Being my personal sleeper hit of 2024, The Lost Crown might not be my favorite game released that year but it sure is the one I keep having to stop myself from replaying over and over again. Going in I expected to like it well enough, with the game getting favorable reviews from the people who had played it priming me for an overall enjoable experience at the least. What I hadn't expected, however, is just how much cool shit the game throws at you and how much I would end up loving it in the end.
The story is maybe my one true complaint about the game. It centers on Sargon, a member of the Immortals, an elite fighting force of Persian soldiers loyal to the crown. When the prince is kidnapped by the head of the royal guard, the Immortals are sent to the cursed city of Mount Qaf, a place where time flows unnaturally and timelines converge upon one another to form a nightmare mix of disorientation and confusion. Pretty early into the game, it's revealed that Vahram, the group's leader, is the real one responsible for the kidnapping of the prince, and quickly kills him before dropping Sargon into the depths of the city. Sargon survives, however, and begins his quest to change the past and save the prince from his fate, as well as stopping Vahram from usurping the crown.
My biggest problem with the story is that it all feels so.... scattershot. Even with the game accounting for sequence-breaking by explaining that the curse of the city causes everyone to experience time at a different rate than everyone else, things feel a bit too spaced out and broken up. You'll go from being best friends with one of the characters to fighting them a few moments later, despite both parties being privy to the full details of the situation. Vahram's motivations are clearly explained, but still lack the feeling a being properly fleshed out. I can put it out of my mind, mostly, to focus on the raw gameplay experience and just how good it is, but it's noticeable when it does pop up.
Mount Qaf, like Dracula's Castle, Zebes, and Hallownest, deserves to go down as one of the great locales in the genre. It's full of gorgeous areas, from the frigid platforming climb of the Tower of Silence to the centipede-filled descent through the Pit of Eternal Sands. By far the best area is the Raging Sea, a stormy ocean that, while in the middle of destroying a fleet of ships, was locked in time, freezing both the wreckage and the water alike. It's absolutely fascinating, and nearly every area is an absolute treat to explore. The focus on platforming challenges, while fun and quite intricate near the end of the game, never overstays its welcome and is instead used just often enough to be extremely enjoyable. The map itself, too, requires special mention. Much is done to ease the frustrations of players not soulbound to the design tropes of metroidvanias like I am, with many placeable map markers, a camera system that allows you to take screenshots of places to review later, items you can buy that mark the chest and collectable locations in a specific area, and plentiful fast travel near the end of the game when the player is making last-minute area roundups.
The aforementioned platforming is bolstered heavily by Sargon's set of upgrades. It's so good that it's truly hard to describe how simultaneously extremely important yet wildly superfluous the double jump is, despite being the power that most often expands the playspace of a metroidvania like no other. One of the first things you get is a midair dash, which quickly becomes your workhorse ability and never really stops filling that role. It's so useful that most of the places you would assume would be accessed with a double jump are instead typically reached with the dash, allowing the game to open up far earlier than expected. Another surprisingly useful power is the ability to mark and recall to a specific spot, which isn't super useful in moment to moment gameplay (unless you get creative with it) but is used extremely well in later puzzles. There are a few lock-and-key type powers, like the dimensional tear and chakram throw, but the majority of your abilities are useful all throughout the game.
Metroidvanias typically have a middling relationship with combat. At the best of times, it's a fun bit of spice and friction thrown into the loop of exploration like Metroid or Castlevania. At worst, it's a detriment to the entire experience and actively drags the game down with it like the latter half of Hollow Knight. Up until now, I had yet to find a metroidvania that truly offered a combat experience worth talking about on it's own. The Lost Crown is that game. It's nothing special, mind you, I'm not praising it as the next Devil May Cry or God Hand. The game is still relatively simple, with the most unique mechanic being a parry Sargon can perform on certain attacks. But it doesn't need to be super complex; in fact, being very complex would disrupt how the combat plays into the rest of the game's flow. The general improvements are to how average enemy design interacts with the Sargon's kit. Most enemies are just interactive enough that you need to keep an eye on them and not mindlessly button-mash, but you still can hit the point where you go on a power trip trouncing early-game enemies with your upgraded abilites and better game skill. It's great.
The bosses, too, deserve special mention, as they're what truly make the combat shine. Again, they aren't anything too in-depth, mostly composed of flashy attacks with some cheeky parry windows, but almost all of them have at least two phases and attacks that interact with Sargon's movement kit in extremely fun ways. A highlight is Darius, fought near the end of the game in the Tower of Silence. It's clearly heavily inspired by Gwyn and Gael of Dark Souls fame; his first phase being a large, lumbering man swinging around a giant sword and creating ice hazards, and the second phase having him move around on all fours in a bestial manner and augmenting his attacks with fire instead. It's one of the more movement-heavy fights, with the presence of three grapple points above the arena leading to points where Darius covers the floor in fire and the player has to dodge his flurry of attacks with nothing but double jumps and grapple dashes. It's a phenomenal boss, and is thankfully simply the highlight out of a lineup of fun bosses.
Tragically, due to a relative lack of marketing and the choice to release as a timed Epic exclusive on PC (seemingly like an attempt of self-sabotage by Ubisoft), the game performed poorly during it's release window, and even after an entire year it's only hit about 3 million players as of September 2025. Certainly not the numbers Ubisoft expected, leading to the proposed sequel concept being rejected and the team behind the game being disbanded and moved to other projects. It's a damn shame and it makes me incredibly upset, because as much as I adore this game and implore you to go try it out even if you aren't a big fan of the genre, it's not perfect. The story is lackluster and some of the later platforming challenges tend to toe the line between fun and masocore, especially in the DLC. All that being said, the team did a phenomenal job with what they had and I wish them individually the best of luck on future ventures, even if I'm sad they'll probably never get a chance to really flesh out new ideas in the franchise's space.
Anyway as a parting gift here's one of the funniest lines of dialogue I've ever had the pleasure of encountering in my entire life.
