Of all the games I loved playing when I was younger, no Boss ever terrified me quite like the secret boss did in The Prince of Persia: Warrior Within – The Dahaka. There’s something primal about being chased. Especially when the thing chasing you looks like it was belched from the depths of hell with a bad case of indigestion. Even as solid a backbone as you might normally have, when you’re forced to run from an enemy you’ve no ability to fight, you tend to panic. In Prince of Persia that usually results in unpleasantness.
If you’ve played The Prince of Persia: Warrior Within you know the thing I’m talking about. After the events of the first game the Prince essentially cheats fate by surviving. The rule goes that if you unleash the sands of time you’re supposed to die. Winding back time and trapping the sands again doesn’t change the fact that it happened. Cause an entire two weeks of my life spent on The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time weren’t one giant hallucination, let me tell you. Enter the Dahaka, the guardian of the timeline, with only one purpose in the entire game: to kill the Prince and set things straight. If you can think of something more terrifying than the rightly righteous fury of a demon you can’t touch or hurt, and for the most part can’t see coming, let me know cause this dude means business. In the game the Dahaka quite literally chases the Prince halfway across the earth. The Prince gets so desperate he devises a plan to prevent the Sands from ever being made, by traveling to the Island of Time and facing off against its Empress. It’s easier said than done. Believe me. Things are never quite that simple, after all this is The Prince of Persia, disaster is the shithead’s constant shadow.
Throughout the game you’ve to run from the Dahaka at a number of various points and you transfix your mind on a very singular task each time; getting to water. For some reason, big black and scary can’t cross it and it offers you a small respite from the inescapable knowledge that he’s undoubtedly going to come back. The chases aren’t very long but they can be very tricky, usually involving an assault course of wall runs, traps, tentacles and the ever growing dread that total obliteration is steadily catching up with you. One literal slip up and you’re toast.
There is no way to prepare yourself for the chases but I would recommend if you’ve never played the game to give yourself a little bit of assistance and watch the chase scenes, at least then you have an idea of what’s involved in the chase to come. Believe me, you make less mistakes when you aren’t panicking. Youtube is our friend, forever and always on this one.
At least until you finally get the chance to fight the Dahaka. Now, if you haven’t collected all of the life upgrades the end of the game sees you fighting the Empress instead, my next Boss Rush, but if you have? Well, the next time you go back to the hourglass room you’ll have a little surprise waiting for you; it’s called the water sword and it happens to be capable of turning the Dahaka into fillet strips. Make no mistake, the Dahaka is still one of the most badass characters around but having spent an entire game running from him I just couldn’t allow an ending that doesn’t involve a face off.
What can I say about fighting the Dahaka? If you don’t have a full sand gauge you’re dead. If you try to block anything with your sword, well, you’re dead. If you haven’t spent the entire game practicing your dodge and rolls you may as well just give up now. ‘Cause, you know the drill by now, yeah, dead. The only thing that will get you through this is avoidance, luck, timing your strikes like you’d time your souffle and the mantra “shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit”. When you get to the point where the Dahaka is dangling off the edge of the platform, you just make sure you’re close and you’ve enough sand left to knock him off into the water. Be prepared and watch out for the tendrils, it usually takes a few attempts that see you creamed like an éclair before you get a system in place to beat him. There’s so much luck involved in this it’s not even funny but defeating him is worth it. Oh, it’s so worth it.
The final true cutscene sees the Empress and the Prince leave the Island, and gives us the opening to the next game; The Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Yep. Remember what I said about disaster following this guy?
