1. The game only has two outcomes: Either you get stuck, or you finish the game -- there's no dying, and there's no Game Over screen.
2. The puzzles are VERY creative, and some of them had me stumped for quite long, even half an hour at a time, especially the one in the final boss battle.
3. The combat system, while improved in many senses, was quite damaged in others; some movements now feel very clunky and heavy, and sometimes it's real hard to position yourself correctly to land your attacks without taking a blow. True, you can't die anyway, but getting hit implies the battle lasts longer, and due to the strange new system, you'll want to get rid of battles quickly.
4. ALL enemies (including regular mooks) have now health bars, and while some of your combo attacks can siphon away big chunks of it in a single combo, they can all be blown away with one hit kills if you either drive their backs to the wall and attack them there, or ring them out (remember, this is a Prince of Persia game; most of the game is spent on insanely high platforms and places).
5. Bosses must be dealt with creatively, since right before the fights, almost all of them have very strange and headbanging puzzles set by themselves. The one before the final Concubine fight had me stumped for a good twenty minutes, until I figured out that the only way to force the illusions to disappear was to try to kill myself so the real Elika would rescue me.
6. Elika, for an AI-controlled assist, is fucking SMART. Didn't make my life more difficult fighting bosses, and the way she behaved in the puzzles was very intuitive.
7. The Prince is, if not the king of 2008's one-liners and miscellaneous funny short dialogue, certainly a good contender. "Can you believe that? I've still got sand in my shoes... And worse places!" and "I'm gonna have blisters on my blisters by the time we finish." are nothing short of pure gold. And these small exchanges between the Prince and Elika had me chuckling every time they'd spout them: "I'd like to know more about the girl who got me into this mess." "Well, then you better learn to speak donkey." / "I'm starting to feel all of this on my shoulders... You... couldn't give me a back rub, could you?" "That's right, I couldn't."
8. Collecting the Light Seeds is a freaking chore, but it's needed to get one of the skin sets of the game (the prototype designs of both characters). And apparently the almighty powers of the internet have failed me in finding an alternate way of unlocking those.
9. The cel shading in this game is absolutely GORGEOUS. If this game isn't THE game of the year in terms of visual beauty, it most surely is a strong contender for the title. The graphics are absolutely breathtaking.
10. The fact that you have to fight the four bosses six times really forces you to figure out their fighting patterns and learn how to exploit them -- especially useful when fighting the Warrior, since nothing you have can actually damage him, to the point that even the game itself tells you that none of your attacks will chip him, and you have to use the environment to bring him down... Literally.