Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (video game)

The first game in a Continuity Reboot series of the Prince of Persia games, well-known for popularizing Le Parkour moves as a refinement to the Platformer genre. Followed by Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

The Prince is a young man accompanying his father to an Indian-like kingdom, whose Vizier betrayed them to the Prince's armies. Among the spoils of that kingdom is a large hourglass called "The Sands of Time" and a dagger that the Prince claims. The Vizier then tricks the Prince into opening the hourglass and unleashing the curse of the sands upon the land. Confused over what happened, he finds himself in the company of Farah, a princess of the kingdom he just ransacked and who has knowledge of what he has done, and has to go fix what he broke.

"Nizam: Words won't stop our enemies once they're armed with Alamutian blades. We attack at dawn."
 * Action Girl: Farah.
 * Anachronism Stew: Averted. According to the description, the events take place in 9 century Persia. The rest of the games, and the movie, on the other hand...
 * Arbitrary Skepticism: Farah surely had known about the dagger's time-twisting power before the adventure began, but
 * Armor Is Useless: The Prince takes the same amount of damage both before and after he removes his armor.
 * Character Development: The plot of the original Sands of Time is fairly bare-bones, with more focus on the relationship between the Prince and Farah.
 * Claustrophobia: The Prince mentions this in the first game. It doesn't come up much.
 * Clothing Damage: The Sands of Time starts with Sleeves Are for Wimps (one at a time) and goes all the way up to Shirtless Scene.
 * Dawn Attack:


 * Eleventh-Hour Superpower: Both inverted and played straight. The Prince loses the Dagger of Time, meaning no more rewinding, but does get a sword that One Hit Kills all enemies.
 * Escort Mission: Much of the time, you work with Farah but it isn't as frustrating as most other examples because Farah is very competent with a simple bow, so she can slow down the creatures while you hack away at them.
 * Guide Dang It The penultimate battle is against The Shadow. Hitting him damages yourself as well as him, and even though you have way more hit points you die as he does. You defeat him by, a move that was available from the beginning of the game but is suicidal against every other enemy.
 * I Can't Use These Things Together: The Prince in The Sands of Time will occasionally gripe about Farah and her attitude, or reminisce about his love for her. This gets lampshaded twice, by the Prince himself, no less. "Why am I talking to myself?"
 * Literally Shattered Lives: The game allows you to use one unit of sand to freeze a target for destruction with the Prince's normal sword.
 * Literary Agent Hypothesis: Sands of Time sets it up as though the Prince is retelling his story to the player; hence, whenever the player dies, we hear the prince going, "No, wait, that wasn't how it happened, hold on..."
 * Mind Screw: Some of the visions as you get further into the game, showing the death of the princess as well as of the prince himself, even though they don't happen that way. It is the first time in the game that the visions start to steer you wrong.
 * Mundane Utility: Throughout, the Prince uses the Dagger of Time's rewind feature to evade death and save the day. At the end of the game, he uses it to... kiss a girl without her knowing.
 * No Flow in CGI: Averted: the Prince's long hair and poofy sleeves and pants react fairly realistically to his movements.
 * Nostalgic Narrator
 * Second-Hour Superpower: The Dagger of Time.
 * Self-Made Orphan: . Guess what happens.
 * Standard Hero Reward: Subverted.
 * Unreliable Narrator: This happens whenever Prince narrates his (permanent) deaths.
 * "Wait, that's not what happened..."
 * Unwitting Pawn: The Shah and Prince. They are convinced by the Vizier of India to invade India for no good reason outside of "Fortune and Glory", while the Vizier helps them in exchange for his choice picks from the Maharajah's treasure chamber. Needless to say, the Shah immediately agrees to this offer from a man who is offering to betray his sovereign and his nation to an invader and who in fact SOLICITED his betrayal to a random party and who can be assumed to have a powerful ulterior motive, and invades India. As a result, a Sand Apocalypse happens.
 * Vague Age: It's hard to tell how old the Prince is.
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: The only hint towards the Vizier's plan until the end is his coughing up blood in some cutscenes, implying he's suffering from a disease, possibly tuberculosis.