Prince Of Persia: Great expectations not meet

Before I begun let me give you some perspective. I had just finish playing Prince of Persia: Sands of Time over the holidays for the first time and immediately the game became one of my top all time favorites. I was pre-warned that this new Prince of Persia fell short on many things but I put all that a side and popped in the disk. If you read my Uncharted review you will know that I spoke of three things that makes a great action adventure game, exploration, story and combat. Prince of Persia is the primary example of what happens to a game when you screw one of these up. Prince of Persia exploration was not bad, the world setup worked and the world itself was fitting of a next gen title. The controls were a little clunky at times but over all the exploration experience was a good one. The compass feature was very helpful and worked most of the time. The only serious draw back to the exploration was the collection of light seeds which forced players to replay areas and dragged down a already sluggish game. Prince of Persia story also feel under the category of good but not great. The over all prince and princesses attitude were entertaining but in order to get a lot of the back story you would have to putting playing the actual game on hold which is never a good thing. The combat of Prince of Persia is what destroyed this game and removed all hopes of me enjoying it. Combat was scares and extremely repetitive. There where only two types of enemies in the game generic mini bosses and main bosses. The combat consist of the prince performing a few sword attacks, then being forced to block this would repeat over and over until finally you chipped away all the boss health. Also you could never die in battle but by pressing the wrong button the princess would have to save you and the boss would regain health. Combat was rarely a surprise and the difficulty level consist of your moves being restricted. In short Prince of Persia combat consist of you following a hidden direct of press this now and the player has no freedom to fight their own battle. Also all the great acrobatic combos that made the new age Prince of Persia games so popular is no where to be found. Prince of Persia was a failure because it forgot that combat is suppose to be fun and without good combat in an action adventure game you have a game that is boring. I sent the game back to gamefly without completing it cause of pure boredom.