Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - Help?

[goatdan]

I've had a couple days off work lately due to a back injury, and I have been playing through some games that have been waiting for a while for me to get to them. PoP:SoT is one of these games...

I got to about 33% complete, and I was going through one of the challenging hallway / dungeon things to move on in the game, and I had run out of rewinds but had a lot of health, when suddenly the prince says, "No no no, that's not how it goes." and the Retry screen comes up. Now, no matter what when I restart the game immediately puts that screen up approximately 5 seconds into me playing. I have full health, full sand, and I'm standing in a room and it decides I'm dead.

Is there any way to get around this? As much as I have loved playing this game to this point, I didn't keep other saves and I don't intend on playing another three hours to get back here. Has anyone else experienced a similar problem?

Thanks in advance

[heybtbm]

This is a pretty common glitch. From what I remember, at that point if the girl you are escorting dies (off-screen), you get the game over, "No, that's not what happened" message. This usually happens at 33%. There is no way to back out...you have to start over.

Also there is another infamous game-ending glitch that there is no way back from when you get to the observatory. That one got me the first time I played the game. All I can say is to save in two slots.

[sega-trader]

It's an xbox, you have a giant hard drive for saves. Am I the only one who keeps more then 1 save? I usually keep about 10 save slots I rotate through. In the case of Prince of Persia I made a new slot at every save point.

[goatdan]

This is a pretty common glitch. From what I remember, at that point if the girl you are escorting dies (off-screen), you get the game over, "No, that's not what happened" message. This usually happens at 33%. There is no way to back out...you have to start over.

Well that totally sucks. I don't think that I was even escorting her at this part. Weird

It's an xbox, you have a giant hard drive for saves. Am I the only one who keeps more then 1 save? I usually keep about 10 save slots I rotate through. In the case of Prince of Persia I made a new slot at every save point.

I don't know -- I guess I still expect that games are shipped without bugs that make them unplayable if you do something simple wrong. Maybe I can find another Xbox with the same save without the glitch and copy it on a memory card...

Or I just play the second one in the series, but damn was the first one good.

[Cirrus]

Wow, what a bummer. I never had that happen to me.

I tried looking for cheat codes so you could skip ahead, but I don't think that there are any out there.

However, you can probably breeze back through things very quickly if you wanted to. I remember being able to get all the way through the game in a few hours once I had beaten it once. It's worth it... what a game.

[Half Japanese]

I don't know -- I guess I still expect that games are shipped without bugs that make them unplayable if you do something simple wrong. Maybe I can find another Xbox with the same save without the glitch and copy it on a memory card...

Or I just play the second one in the series, but damn was the first one good.

I'm with you. I don't keep extra saves and don't feel that I should have to for fear of glitches. That said, avoid the second one, it's nowhere near as good as the first. I thought the first was a great adventure game bogged down by boring fighting. The second game (what little I was able to force myself to play) was lots of mediocre fighting that only kept you going for the parts where you were exploring. Also, it seems the Prince spent the time in between the first two games shopping at Hot Topic and listening to bad nu-metal.

[goatdan]

Wow, what a bummer. I never had that happen to me.

I tried looking for cheat codes so you could skip ahead, but I don't think that there are any out there.

So did I... I was hoping, but I didn't find anything either

However, you can probably breeze back through things very quickly if you wanted to. I remember being able to get all the way through the game in a few hours once I had beaten it once. It's worth it... what a game.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about how much fun it was this weekend, and I think that is what I'm going to end up doing... That game was far too good to give up on. I just wish my back-catalog wasn't a million games long!

[goatdan]

Well, I did it! I played through all of the first 33% for a second time, saving everywhere. Just in case anyone else looks for this, I found out what causes the error.

Right before the save point, there are two rooms which you and the girl are battling in. If she does not follow you into the second room (which is pretty easy to have happen, unfortunately) and you save it without her in the room, the game will forget she existed upon the save. Since part of the deal with the game is that she must be alive at all times, when the game believes she has died, it gives a game over. So, you restart, the game takes an inventory of everything, doesn't find her and thinks that she just died, and you get the game over screen.

Sucks, and since she is literally gone, you can't find her. Oh well, I'm doing that "fill all 42 spaces with saves" trick now and it's working.

By the way, first time through -- 3hours 23 minutes to 33% save. Second time, 1 hour 58 minutes... I'd say I have gotten a little better