Beyond her role in the story, though, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Elika is just a MacGuffin to provide new rationales for such worn gaming formulae as checkpoint restarts and double-jumps, as well as a sounding board for the Prince to limply quip to. Add to this her unnerving tendency to skip around a scene to be where she needs to be for a sequence of animation, which will surely be fixed in time for release, and her actions and abilities begin to seem inconsistent – she can magically float in the air, but the Prince needs to carry her when climbing on vines; she’s prone to fainting in cutscenes, but is happy to be left to jump tens of metres down a sheer cliff.

During combat, she’s mainly there to provide magical attacks, dancing around just behind the Prince to complement his sword and gauntlet moves. Though combat shares a similar penchant for blocking and counterattacks to Assassin’s Creed, inflicting major damage requires carrying out flamboyant combos built from the three attack types. Some strategy comes in the form of your wall-based attacks, while The Hunter, a beast you’ll meet several times in the opening couple of hours, has the ability to switch to states that are only susceptible to one attack type. But, in general, a balance of blocking and button mashing seem to suffice in these early stages, a fact compounded by the Prince’s frustratingly sluggish movement in battle.

Elika also stops the Prince from ever actually dying during combat. On taking a number of hits in succession he will hold his side and the next blow will be decided by a single-button QTE. Succeed and the Prince will push the enemy back and recover; fail and Elika repels it and its health is slightly replenished. As a result the fights, which we’ve only seen as one-on-one encounters, can boil down to attrition – employ bad technique and they are prolonged.



How the rest of the game develops has yet to be seen, of course, but there’s something about the inevitability of progress due to the ease of restarts, the impossibility of being beaten in combat and the slightly involuntary nature of the Prince’s movement that makes these initial moments feel rather slighter than they should. Hopefully, the rest of the game will engender a better feeling of involvement.