Welcome to my story review of the Aladdin video game Nasira's Revenge. I just recently watched a series of full playthrough videos and had so many thoughts I absolutely had to share them. This is my review of the story, just to be clear, not of the game itself. I haven't actually played the game and am not really that familiar with video games at all, but stories are my thing, and I always form my opinions of them no matter where they happen to be – especially if one of my Fandoms is involved. The playthrough I watched was divided into fifteen videos ranging from less than a minute to about twenty minutes long, and I told myself I would watch only one video per day until I was done, which was a great decision as it really built up the suspense and the tension, and I had all this time to wonder in breathless anticipation what was going to happen next. I'm going to go through the story and my impressions as it unfolded, and talk about what I liked (the whole thing in general, for one!), what I would have done differently, and the things I imagined up to enhance the story and add to the actual storytelling element. Because I'm going through the whole story beginning to end in some depth, there will be spoilers in this review, so be aware of that if you don't know this game's story and want to be surprised if you ever watch a playthrough or play the game. Let us begin.
The premise of this story is that it's taking place after the events of the first straight-to-DVD Aladdin sequel, in which Jafar dies. Now his equally evil sister Nasira is scheming with Jafar's spirit to bring him back to life. I just love the idea of Jafar having an evil sister, because in the original Arabian Nights tale (I read and reviewed that too; you can read it here), the final sequence involves the evil sorcerer's brother who is also an evil sorcerer coming to take revenge on Aladdin, and he even disguises himself as a woman to do it, so Jafar's having an evil sorceress sister is just perfect. I'd thought before about Jafar possibly having an evil brother out there like the sorcerer in the fairy tale, especially since no version of that story sequence appears in the Disney movie, meaning maybe it's going to happen in the future and Aladdin and Jasmine will still have to live through some version of it? I felt the same kind of happy as when I first realized Jafar has a son in Disney Descendants who could parallel the Royal Vizier's son from the original Aladdin. I really like Nasira's characterization, too. You can really see the resemblance to Jafar, both in physical things like looks and voice, and in sheer villainy. And yet I don't get the sense that Nasira just came across as a female Jafar; I think she was her own character.
Nasira tells Jafar (she's summoned his spirit to communicate with him; she seems to be incredibly powerful, as we'll soon see) that she's discovered a way to bring him back to life, but it will require three well-hidden artifacts in order to do it. She implies she will be using Aladdin to get those artifacts for her, although I really liked the way she never said how, leaving us guessing and in suspense as the story unfolds. But I had one major quibble with this conversation: Jafar's spirit warns Nasira not to underestimate Aladdin or Genie, but says absolutely nothing about underestimating Jasmine. Jasmine, the girl who fooled Jafar into thinking she was in love with him and almost succeeded in giving Aladdin the chance he needed to get Genie's lamp back. The girl who never stopped resisting Jafar the entire time he'd taken over. The girl who threatened to “get rid of” Jafar and actually scared him because he knew she had the power to follow through on that. How is Princess Jasmine of all people not strong enough to be worth mentioning as someone Nasira shouldn't underestimate?! I would say this was just because Jafar thinks of Jasmine as female property and not as a person, but then, since when does he think of Genie as a valid individual and not as a slave who exists to do his bidding?? (I suppose there must have been some point in the sequel where Jafar underestimated Genie, because in Aladdin Jafar only ever knew Genie when he was bound to the lamp and its owner, and there really wasn't much he could do in the way of defeating him. Unless by “underestimate” he meant he hadn't expected to find a Genie who was able to express a distinct preference for his enemy, and would begin insulting Jafar the minute he got out of the lamp.) As it is, Nasira ends up using Genie in the exact same way she uses Jasmine to move her scheme along, so clearly she thought the odds of either one defeating her were about the same... Now to be fair, Jasmine does get an active, important role to play in this story later on, and I think the reason she doesn't come along for the final stretch of the adventure (as I discuss further on) has nothing to do with this game's potential views on her abilities as a heroine. But if it were up to me, the only reason I would start an Aladdin story this way, with Jafar warning his sister not to underestimate Aladdin and Genie but so obviously excluding Jasmine, is if that were the whole point: a large part of the reason Nasira is defeated in the end would be because of some vital action of Jasmine's, something only she would think of or be in a position to do, and she would be able to do it precisely because Nasira wasn't keeping that close of an eye on her.
The first step of Nasira's plan is to kidnap Jasmine and the Sultan, and for a long time we the viewers (or players I suppose) don't know where they've been taken or what's happened to them. I love the way this story unfolds, leaving me in suspense as I tried to imagine what must be happening to them. I felt really bad for the Sultan, though. I mean, Jasmine at least has that unshakable inner strength that would help her through such terrible situations as being kidnapped, but I feel like the poor Sultan would be totally helpless if anyone kidnapped him. I noticed a bit of an incongruity in the graphics here. Jasmine and the Sultan are meant to be snatched out of their beds by Nasira's henchmen at night as they sleep, but both are wearing their classic, most easily recognizable everyday outfits from the movie. If they were lying in bed asleep, why were they not wearing nightclothes? Surely a Princess and a Sultan have big enough wardrobes to include proper bedtime wear?? I hardly think Jasmine's huge chunky jewellery or the Sultan's turban would be all that comfortable to sleep in! If you want the characters to appear throughout the story in their most recognizable outfits, you have to make it believable – in this case, have them get kidnapped during the daytime when they'd be fully dressed – otherwise, take a chance and give them something new that's appropriate to the situation. You can tie it in with their iconic outfits using colour schemes and the like to make sure it's recognizable. As it is, when Aladdin finally does find the Sultan, he's not dressed in his usual clothes; he's wearing that jester's outfit Jafar made him wear when he took over in the movie, I suppose to represent that he's once again in the clutches of our resident villain. Jasmine on the other hand is not wearing the red slave outfit, which is interesting given the costume choice they made for her father. I suppose it does makes sense, because if Nasira was the one choosing the outfits, she probably totally agrees with her brother about the Sultan being a fool but unlike Jafar has no sexual attraction to Jasmine. Still, this means the Sultan at least could totally have been wearing pyjamas when he was taken. And I'd kind of like to see a whole story sequence taking place with Jasmine wearing her nightgown. It would add an element of vulnerability to her part of the story with the incongruous wardrobe, emphasizing how she was snatched out of her home before she even had the chance to put on a more appropriate outfit, and then she could overcome that by staying strong and fulfilling her role in the story anyway. It would have been very compelling. Maybe they were afraid we wouldn't recognize the characters if they weren't at least introduced to us in their iconic outfits due to the animation quality – because, I have to admit, the graphics were pretty terrible. The characters looked deformed and pixelated and not at all pleasant to look at. But I was able to get past all that thanks to the engaging story.
You can really tell, at this point, that the story is following the Aladdin sequel rather than Aladdin itself, because Jasmine is all alone in her bed at the palace with no Aladdin who is already her husband there to protect her (but no Rajah either; where was he supposed to be??), and the next scene we see is Aladdin asleep in his little home in the city, only now it's fixed up like a modest little apartment instead of being rundown like it is in the movie. Was this also a decision the sequel made? No, that would be too much. Forcing Aladdin and Jasmine to wait a long time before getting married which makes virtually no sense given the events of the actual movie (and the setting and time period too, unless I'm very much mistaken) is bad enough, but there's no way they would have made Aladdin keep living in his rundown street rat home until then! Not when he could so easily have gotten his own quarters at the palace until he and Jasmine marry and can finally live together. It was Aladdin's dream to live in the palace!
Well, maybe that was just poetic license to explain why Aladdin wasn't there to protect Jasmine and her father when they were kidnapped, and so that we could have gameplay of Aladdin making his way through the city to reach the palace and confront Nasira. I was able to forgive Aladdin wearing his rags again in this video game because having him in his most recognizable outfit does help with the sense that it's him we're following throughout this whole adventure. Especially since Aladdin's classic street rat outfit is closely associated with the cunning and street smarts he picked up precisely because he had to live on the streets for so long.
Anyway, so Genie comes out of his lamp (more poetic license, I suppose), and wakes Aladdin with the news that Jasmine and the Sultan have gone missing. He knows this because Nasira has accused Aladdin of being responsible and put up wanted posters for him – which she can do because she has declared herself the new ruler of Agrabah. She just waltzed right into the palace and declared she was in charge now. That's some chutzpah on her part – I'd admire it if she wasn't evil! It's one reason I say Nasira has a distinctly different approach from Jafar – I wonder if he's at all resentful of Nasira for coming up with a way of quickly and easily achieving the same goal he'd been slowly and methodically plotting for years and years? I really want some more exploration of Nasira's powers, and how she uses them throughout the story. How did she just declare herself the new ruler of a monarchy without any connection to the previous ruler?? Did she threaten the people with magic? Did she convince them perhaps that they can't trust Aladdin, and thus can't trust the former royal family who was so willing to accept him, and thus convinced them that she was trustworthy? Or did she just claim the palace as her own and start acting like the ruler? She'd have to do something to back up her rule – in the movie, even when Jafar wishes to become Sultan, he still finds himself having to wish for the power to reinforce his new title once Jasmine declares they aren't going to bow to him, making the point nicely that having power in name only is pretty much meaningless. We do know one thing that Nasira did to secure her rule – she put a spell on the guards so that they would obey her, at least on their leader, Razoul. I'm honestly not sure it would be necessary to put a spell on those guards, because from what I remember in the movie they were always more than willing to do whatever Jafar said, especially if hurting other people was involved. We all know in Aladdin, the guards went way beyond simple antagonists who got in Aladdin's way because he needs to steal and they were trying to uphold the law. They were always very clearly the bad guys. Please remember that when Jafar got a bunch of the guards to help him ambush Prince Ali and secretly murder him in the night so that he couldn't marry Jasmine – none of them knew he was really the street rat they'd been trying to catch for so long. As far as they were concerned, this was an innocent prince who hadn't done the slightest thing wrong – and then as the guards threw him into the water to drown, they were laughing about it. Laughing about murdering an innocent young man. Those guards don't need an excuse to be nasty.
Now, so far all the characters have been acting very much like their movie selves (excepting Nasira who only appears in this video game and can act however she wants because I'm pretty sure she's an original character). As far as Genie went, though... well. Let's just say I could tell it wasn't Robin Williams. The Genie I remember would never have doubted for even a second that Aladdin had nothing to do with Jasmine and the Sultan's disappearance, and he would have known right away, when he meets Nasira and she singles him out, that she means him harm. He wouldn't address Aladdin as “Master” once he was free – he didn't do that even when he was bound to the lamp! Most of the time he called him “Al”, a friendly nickname implying that he wants his master to see him as an equal, not to be subservient. As I recall he only called Aladdin “Master” when he was mad at him. This Genie also gives us no instances of that special Genie brand of humour, he isn't sassy, he doesn't turn everything into a performance, none of those iconic traits that make Genie Genie. And I don't think this new Genie would even be capable of being one of Aladdin's closest and most supportive friends – not to mention of doing anything that would cause Jafar to claim that he had once underestimated him! If this is how they were going to portray Genie, there is really no excuse for not having Jafar say anything about underestimating my girl Jasmine... Well, anyway. I do understand the Genie situation to a point. If Robin Williams didn't want to come back and do Genie for every one of these Aladdin movies and games, that's his choice and we need to respect that. At the same time, Genie is so popular and beloved and such a major part of Aladdin that we would all miss him if he never came back for these new stories. And I know Genie is probably one of the hardest Disney characters to recreate if you're not his original voice actor – I know I always find it difficult to tap into him. But I've seen some really good fan-made Genies in video skits, so I know it can be done. I'm not even looking for one-hundred-percet perfection here, just something that feels like the original character. You'd think the people at Disney would before anything else look for people to recreate Genie who felt about him like those fans must have, who really love Genie and know how to embody him, who can tap into his essence and his driving force, channel the things he's all about, someone whose first priority is to pay Genie proper tribute. It sometimes feels to me, almost, like they were more afraid of not being able to have Genie in their Aladdin stories anymore, and were just desperately trying to get someone who could make it seem as if we still had Genie and hopefully still make us laugh (even if it wasn't at all in the way Genie used to!) If you can't manage to give us something that feels like the original Genie... well, there's really no point in trying so hard. I hate to say it, but... it was really hard to even care about this character who is so obviously not Genie. I honestly think I'd rather have no Genie at all in our story than spend the whole time he's onscreen being disappointed in how he was handled. Just say Genie isn't here because he's off travelling the world like he wanted to – the end of Aladdin makes it seem far more likely he'd be doing that than staying in Agrabah as Aladdin's roommate!
So, in our story, Aladdin has to make his way through the city of Agrabah, avoiding guards and completing side quests, to reach the palace and confront Nasira. The city and obstacles and side quests looked so fun to play through, although of course I wasn't playing the game and can't judge from that point of view. It really was fun to watch, though. Aladdin also collects coins on his quest, which I think is a fairly common video game feature? – anyway, I loved their design too, with Agrabah Palace on one side and the Sultan's face on the other. I would happily accept as canon that Agrabah's currency looks like that. Genie appears throughout this and every other quest as a kind of game guide, appearing to give tips on the gameplay and let us know when we've reached checkpoints, that sort of thing. It's a good role for Genie to have in a video game, letting him help Aladdin and appear as powerful as he's supposed to be, without needing to worry about the overpower issue that inevitably arises when you've got a free, all-powerful Genie coming along to help Aladdin on his quests. He is meant to be coming along with Aladdin on the quest as well, but we don't see that during the gameplay, making me just a little confused sometimes about what his role in the story was and where he was supposed to be at certain times. And why doesn't he just zap Aladdin straight where he needs to go and make things easier – apart from the obvious reason that it would rob Aladdin of his role as Hero and make for a very boring story!
We get a nice long build-up to the confrontation because we also have to play our way through the palace first, which is also filled with various obstacles such as water features filled with fearsome crocodiles. There's a lot of artistic license in the palace design, since in the movie I recall it being much easier to reach the throne room from the front gates! But of course that's for the sake of having a gameplay, and I think it all works great. (I really loved the new addition of huge portraits of the Sultan and Jasmine hanging on the palace walls.) My headcanon is that Nasira altered the palace design herself in order to deter enemies – although it did occur to me that Jasmine might not mind a moat crocodile in her home! She does have a pet tiger after all, and I always like to think the Disney Princesses' love of animals would extend to even the less popular creatures....
When Aladdin finally does reach Nasira, he demands to know what she's done with Jasmine and the Sultan, calling them “Princess Jasmine and the Sultan” which felt a bit too formal to me considering he's pretty much talking about his family, but maybe he just used their titles because he was talking to Nasira, a clear enemy who has no right to be talking about “Jasmine and my father-in-law” so informally. Nasira tells Aladdin she “disposed of” them and that now she's ruler of Agrabah “their services were no longer needed”... And here I thought was a bit of a missed opportunity, because I don't know if whoever wrote the script realized this, but that wording sounds exactly as though Nasira killed Jasmine and the Sultan. And Aladdin, at this point, doesn't know any reason Nasira would have for keeping them alive... I did feel like sometimes the script forgot which characters were already supposed to know what, because there's no indication Aladdin ever thought they were dead and not just imprisoned. I would have loved to see a sequence of our story in which Aladdin breaks down, thinking his beloved Jasmine is dead, and is temporarily unable to defend himself. I mean, we already get to see in Aladdin how Jasmine reacts believing Aladdin is dead, and that's even before they're officially together and, I believe, when she still just really liked him and hadn't quite yet fallen in Love. Can't you just imagine the equivalent for Aladdin?? Of course, this story's main purpose was to enhance the video game, so emotional turmoil wasn't really a huge part of it... But no one will stop me wanting some or reading it in where I think it most appropriate.
Nasira also mentions her intention to revive Jafar, and I'm kind of surprised nobody ever questioned why she would want to do this. I don't think anyone knows she's Jafar's sister, since she never mentions it to anyone until the very end of the game (I was looking out for that). But even if they knew, they might still not understand why Jafar's sister of all people, someone who presumably had to grow up with him and might very well have been terrorized her whole childhood by an evil sibling, doesn't feel safer now that he's gone! The closest we get is Genie pointing out to Nasira that if she means the same Jafar they know, he can't come back because he's dead, and I was honestly expecting his point to be, if you mean the Jafar we know, why would you want to bring him back??
Nasira somehow makes Genie disappear, and has Aladdin locked up in the dungeon. (I can at least imagine the reason why most of the dialogue happened between Nasira and Genie with hardly any contributions from Aladdin, and the reason she was able to catch Aladdin and lock him up so easily, is because he was devastated at Jasmine's apparent death and unable to think straight. Nobody can stop me including these things!) Now Abu has to make his way through the dungeon on a quest to knock out the guard outside Aladdin's cell and get the key to let him out. (I understand Abu needing a key in this case, in order to have some goal within the gameplay. I remember in the movie, Abu was able to pick the lock on the shackles holding Aladdin using only the tools he carried in his vest.)
Aladdin then makes his way through some more obstacles in the dungeon and back through the palace, which is crumbling around Aladdin as he flies through the debris on Carpet, and when he reaches the throne room again Nasira appears to flee – but I didn't believe she was really gone! Actually I don't think I'd entirely processed Nasira's fleeing or wondered what it meant until we next see her. I love the way Nasira's plot kept me guessing for so long.
Aladdin can't leave the palace immediately to pursue Nasira, because first he must battle Razoul. When you win that battle Razoul comes out of his trance, and I like to imagine the whole incident gave Razoul a new perspective on Aladdin, who just freed him from a spell and didn't kill him even though he could have done. Maybe he starts to see Aladdin as more than a criminal and thinks maybe, just maybe, he was wrong about this erstwhile street rat. (Sort of like a Javert from Les Miserables moment, but with an ability to move on and begin a new relationship with his former enemy,and without the suicide.) I find it satisfying to think that, because I honestly do see Razoul and his guards being more than happy to serve Nasira, and I don't think we even need the excuse of them being under a spell to explain why they've turned on Aladdin. I always imagine the guards would be forever resentful of Aladdin being promoted to Prince before they got the chance to arrest him and punish him for his years of thievery. They might never accept him as a respectable authority figure, and jump at any chance of revolution in order to get rid of him. Well, perhaps in Razoul's mind there's a difference between obeying Jafar's sadistic commands, when he's actually supposed to be in charge, and Nasira's, when she's openly acting against the royal family. Maybe that's how Razoul thinks of loyalty, in whatever moral code he has. That could be. Either way, making the spell part of Razoul's character arc would give it some real meaning, rather than feeling like they're just trying to clean up a character who was canonically meant to be nasty and sadistic. Anyway, Razoul is the one who tells Aladdin it's up to him to rescue Jasmine and the Sultan, which I took note of because this is the first time Aladdin actually hears they're still alive. Nasira didn't make that part at all clear – and Aladdin couldn't very well try and rescue Jasmine and the Sultan if no one told him they could still be rescued! That could be part of the whole Moment I want to see between Aladdin and Razoul, having Aladdin get this newfound hope from his onetime greatest enemy.
Aladdin makes his way through a very dangerous-looking oasis, and eventually we find out the reason he went here was to seek out a mystic woman who can hopefully tell him where Jasmine and the Sultan are. And then it became clear what the next part of Nasira's plan was, because I could tell right away that the mystic was Nasira in disguise. This part of the plot was the coolest thing, because in the original Arabian Nights Aladdin story, when the evil sorcerer's brother comes to get revenge on Aladdin for killing his brother – his plan involves disguising himself as the city's resident Holy Woman, Fatimeh. And now we have Jafar's evil sister taking revenge on Aladdin and attempting to revive her dead brother by pretending to be a mystic! I wonder if whoever came up with this part of the game's story got the idea from the original Aladdin tale?? I just love this inclusion of elements from the original source material! The only thing I want to know here is how Nasira knew Aladdin would decide to go seek out this mystic. That's one thing they would definitely have to explain if this were an actual full story! I mean, this isn't even about Nasira anticipating Aladdin's next move here – this had to be part of her plan right from the start; it was too major and would require too much advance planning to improvise it.
The disguised Nasira identifies Aladdin as “the princess's boyfriend and future Sultan of Agrabah”, and am I the only one who sees this as incongruous and irrefutable proof that the sequels' decision to delay Aladdin and Jasmine's wedding doesn't work?? If Aladdin and Jasmine know with absolute certainty that Aladdin is going to inherit the position of Sultan from Jasmine's father one day, then they must also know with absolute certainty that they're going to be married – they would be fiancés, not boyfriend and girlfriend, even if such concepts as boyfriend and girlfriend did exist in this place and time, which I doubt. As far as I know concepts like dating or even courting didn't exist at all until far more recently than Aladdin and Jasmine's time period – and the movie backs up this trait of Aladdin's world, with Aladdin's whole goal being to marry Jasmine rather than take her out on a few dates and see how it goes from there. And, I might add, in the actual movie he and Jasmine are already engaged. Aladdin comes to the palace to ask for Jasmine's hand in marriage, Jasmine tells her father she wants to marry Aladdin, and the Sultan says they'll be married at once. There's a brief upset in their plans as Jafar comes in to take over Agrabah and expose Aladdin, but once Aladdin defeats him, the Sultan changes the law so that Jasmine can marry whoever she wants, and Jasmine chooses Aladdin. They're definitely engaged, and more than likely already married by the movie's final scene. The Sultan never changes the law about when Jasmine has to be married by, and there's no reason why he should, since Jasmine was quite happy to marry Aladdin that very day when that was the arrangement, and it's made perfectly clear that none of her feelings had changed. So to say they didn't get married right away – much less that they became each other's “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” – implies they backtracked their relationship, made it less serious and steady rather than more. Having Aladdin and Jasmine wait for ages after their movie to finally make things official doesn't make them look modern and forward-thinking. It makes them look like they suddenly don't love each other as much as before.
Yes, I know I went a little off-topic there, and that this has nothing to do with Nasira's Revenge specifically. But I will never stop protesting this decision of the sequels to keep my favourite Disney couple apart for so long.
Nasira-the-mystic pretends to communicate with some spirits to let Aladdin know he has to go inside the Cave of Wonders and find a Genie (Nasira has trapped Genie in there). I really wanted Aladdin to say at this point that the spirits were a little behind in his life story, because he's already gone into the Cave of Wonders and found a Genie. You can't tell, in the actual video game, whether he noticed that or not, and it would make for a nice bit of humour if he had. (It was very difficult to read anyone's expression on those pixelated faces; so different from the beautiful vivid animation of the Disney movies!) It was here I started to figure out what Nasira's plan was, and I realized why she would reveal herself to Aladdin as the villain right away, and imprison him directly afterwards with a promise to kill him, if she wanted him to bring her these artifacts. At the very beginning I thought maybe Nasira was going to hold Jasmine and the Sultan as hostages and demand Aladdin find the artifacts for her as some kind of ransom. Her actual plot was better, though – she wouldn't want Aladdin knowing he was being made to help the villain and then possibly coming up with a plan of his own to thwart hers! I really want to know how Nasira ever managed to trap Genie and strip him of his powers, though, which according to Genie is what she did to him. What sort of powers does Nasira have that she can strip a Genie of his magic? Is that even possible within this magic system?? I always thought in this world, Genies had the most powerful magic possible, and their only limitations are the strict rules imposed on them by the slavery of their lamps. If Nasira is powerful enough to strip Genie of his powers and banish him to the Cave of Wonders, how come she can't use that power to just summon the artifacts she needs right to her? Of course I'm not saying it's unbelievable – there's all kinds of ways you could set up your magic system to account for these things. In Star Wars for instance there are force fields designed to break concentration, so that Force-sensitive prisoners can't use the Force to get themselves out of there. Nasira could have a similar concept with her powers that allows her to disrupt the use of Genie magic. And of course you can set up your magic system so it makes sense that someone who can block Genie magic can't perform a summoning spell. Perhaps the two branches of magic are so different that Nasira's talent with one doesn't affect her ability to do the other, or perhaps the artifacts are protected by some other, stronger branch of magic she never learned about. This is all just something else you would explore if turning this into an actual story.
So for the next several sequences of gameplay, Aladdin must battle a giant arachnid who is guarding the scarab medallion, follow it to the Cave of Wonders while avoiding obstacles at the same time as not losing sight of it, and make his way through the Cave to find Genie imprisoned in a vase. In the course of wandering through the Cave of Wonders to find Genie, Aladdin comes across the first of the three artifacts Nasira needs him to collect for her in order to revive Jafar. This will happen again during Aladdin's searches for Jasmine and the Sultan for a total of three artifacts, and that's when Nasira's plan became clear to me, and I understood why she'd taken three of the most important people to Aladdin and imprisoned them in these three specific places. In the context of a video game, the whole thing works really well – the objects (it's unclear what exactly they are; they're sort of long and thin) are just there in certain parts of the game waiting to be picked up, and you can tell you're meant to pick them up as part of the gameplay even if you don't know what significance they'll have later on. And of course someone playing the game will probably pick them up even if they do realize these are the artifacts needed to revive Jafar, because the story is far more exciting if we do make it to the point where Nasira almost succeeds than if we don't. I just can't think of any good reason Aladdin would have to pick up these random artifacts – especially here in the Cave of Wonders, which doesn't let you touch or take anything, but why would he be picking up random artifacts anywhere right now?? And even if he did, what are the odds of him choosing the exact ones Nasira needs? I know we don't need an explanation of this to move the game forward, but it does leave some plotholes in the story element....
Once we find Genie, we get another segment of Abu gameplay as he makes his way through a small chamber in order to find a tool to free him with. Then, of course, the moment that's all taken care of, Abu touches a gemstone and they have to flee the Cave. Abu didn't learn his lesson from last time, I suppose – and Aladdin didn't either; I bet that's the last time he takes Abu into this Cave! Not that Aladdin's likely to ever come back again if he doesn't have to.
Nasira-the-mystic then comes to meet Aladdin outside the Cave, to tell him she's “discovered” where Jasmine is, and Aladdin refers to Jasmine as “the Princess” which is an awfully formal way to talk about his girlfriend who should totally be his wife by now, and then he flies off to find the pyramid Jasmine is supposed to be imprisoned in. Once he's gone, Nasira reveals herself to us viewers, confirming my suspicions that she was indeed the mystic all along.
The whole time Aladdin's going through the pyramid level of the game with all its traps and obstacles was deliciously exciting, as I had no idea whether Aladdin would actually find Jasmine in there or if Nasira wanted to lure him there for some other reason. (Of course I knew by then she mainly wanted to lure him there to find the second artifact, which he does.) But he does find Jasmine, who tells him she was given by Nasira's henchmen as a gift to an Egyptian god, Anubis. (That was the Egyptian god of death; I wonder if he was ever actually supposed to have kept beautiful girls around in cages.) Anubis himself comes in and Aladdin proves himself to be even more impressive and heroic than ever by being able to easily fight and destroy a literal deity. Poor Jasmine – she's all about freedom and not being treated like somebody's prize; it would be the ultimate insult to give her as a gift to anyone! Nasira is objectifying Jasmine worse than Jafar does... Which also means it would have fit very well to give Jasmine the red slave outfit to go with her father in the jester's outfit, although my first choice is still to have Jasmine in a nightgown. I definitely want a scene to show us Jasmine's capture and explore her feelings about it all, to really delve into her hurt and anger at being treated this way – “I am not a gift to be given!”? I did feel like Jasmine's dialogue when Aladdin finds her was a little too much exposition and not enough emotional reaction, although that might just have been in comparison to the super-romantic scenes I'd imagined for their reunion before I got to that part. She does thank Aladdin for rescuing her in just the sweet, romantic way I would have imagined. I can forgive the dialogue because that's probably the game's way of giving us the important information, and it might take too long to have a whole conversation between Aladdin and Jasmine with more lines just dedicated to emotions. One thing I did notice was the way Jasmine talked about “Nasira's henchmen” as though she already knew exactly who Nasira was and what she was up to – which, from what I recall of the game's opening scenes, she wasn't supposed to. Once again it felt as though whoever wrote the script for the game, in the process of trying to give us all the information we need as succinctly as possible, forgot which characters are supposed to know what. I was fully expecting Aladdin to have to tell Jasmine about Nasira once he'd found her, and I think it might have been a little more believable if he had. I mean, even if Jasmine did hear the henchmen saying they worked for someone named Nasira (which is possible, it seems she heard them saying a lot of things!), the name still wouldn't mean anything to her, and how would she know it meant anything to Aladdin?? It would make more sense to at least have her say “someone named Nasira”, and then leave Aladdin, who's actually met Nasira, to explain more about who she is.
Jasmine says she overheard Nasira's henchmen saying they brought her father to a place called the Ancient City, which will be the next part of Aladdin's quest, and there's also this very sweet moment where Jasmine warns Aladdin that the henchmen said they kidnapped her and her father as bait to trap Aladdin, and he tells her it hasn't worked yet. I love the chemistry between them in just those two short lines. The whole situation kind of reminds me of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (spoilers ahead for that if you haven't read it; just skip the rest of this paragraph), where Harry knows someone is trying to get at him by entering him in the Triwizard Tournament, and thinks the plan is failing because he keeps getting through each task without ever getting hurt, but doesn't realize the whole plan is actually to get him through the Tournament unscathed and make sure he wins so Voldemort can use Harry to resurrect himself. It's a similar dynamic here, where Aladdin thinks every time he successfully rescues one of his loved ones without getting hurt is a win against Nasira, but doesn't realize he's actually playing right into her hands.
I'm not sure if this means Nasira's henchmen are too talkative for their own good. I'm pretty sure Nasira meant for them to talk about bringing the Sultan to the Ancient City in front of Jasmine, so that she would be able to tell Aladdin where to go next for Nasira's masterplan, but surely she wasn't meant to overhear anything about this being a plan to trap Aladdin? Perhaps Nasira ordered the henchmen to talk about the Ancient City and then they just kept talking and didn't think about where they should stop? Or maybe they didn't realize it mattered what Jasmine heard, because Nasira never told them her plan was for Aladdin to free Jasmine and for Jasmine to be able to tell Aladdin what she'd overheard? That settles it – now I definitely need a sequence dramatizing Jasmine's capture, exactly what happened and how she felt about it!
Aladdin is still referring to Jasmine's father as “the Sultan”, when talking to Jasmine no less, which feels weird. I wonder what Aladdin would call the Sultan once they're too close for such a formal title to feel right – even if you must insist the Sultan's not Aladdin's father-in-law yet and he couldn't just call him “Father” like Jasmine does! I admit there aren't a lot of options here, since we never hear the Sultan's first name... In this particular case, since Aladdin is talking to Jasmine, I think “your father” might have worked better.
Jasmine has conveniently not only heard of the Ancient City before, but happens to know there's a map to it inside the palace library. (This is where I think having a proper conversation might have helped the info dump sound more natural.) She offers to sneak inside the palace and get the map, and – to my great joy – there follows a sequence of gameplay in which the player gets to play as Jasmine!!! I have not seen nearly enough instances of Aladdin video games with Jasmine as the lead playable character. Her gameplay is about stealth and not fighting, unlike Aladdin's, but that just makes it more believable – because where would Jasmine ever have learned to physically fight a group of big, strong, armed guards specifically trained to fight?? (I have no patience for those stories where they make a woman able to defeat any and all men in physical combat no matter how little sense it makes, as if that is what is meant by “strong female character”.) Jasmine sneaks through the city and into the palace grounds by disguising herself in an urn, and has to freeze and act casual every time a guard turns her way. It's quite funny to think about how the guards clearly don't notice a random urn sitting on the ground where it wasn't a minute ago. It is believable as well, since it's nighttime and dark, and all the guards' attention would be focused higher up than that, looking for full-size enemies and not paying attention to urns. I think this is a great type of plan to have in a story – you know, totally crazy but it just might work. (I declare a headcanon that it was Jasmine's idea.) And I will be forever pleased with Aladdin in this game for giving no objection to Jasmine taking on this quest or thinking it's too dangerous for her.
But then once Jasmine finds the map and brings it to Aladdin.... Well, in context of the video game, it makes perfect sense why Aladdin would go off to the Ancient City accompanied only by Abu and Carpet. The gameplay involves a lot of tight spaces and tricky manoeuvers, and you could never manage it if you had to worry about two people getting through all of that. It's very much the kind of game where you can only worry about one character at a time, and the gameplay always reflects that. Completely understandable. But you know me, I'm all about the story, and in context of that... it makes absolutely no sense for Aladdin to leave Jasmine behind and go to the Ancient City on his own! Even if he did want her to stay behind so she'd be safer – and I'm not even convinced Aladdin would do that, he knew how important adventure was to Jasmine and wasn't the type to think about danger as something to be shied away from – how exactly is Jasmine safer back in Agrabah than she would be with Aladdin?? Nasira's taken over the city, and Aladdin and Jasmine have no idea she'll be waiting in the Ancient City to trap Aladdin the minute he picks up the last artifact in the process of freeing the Sultan – and besides, any of her guards might still grab Jasmine the moment they saw her wandering around free. At this point, they can hardly assume Agrabah is any safer for Jasmine than the Ancient City no matter what might be waiting for them there. She'd be much better off sticking with Aladdin, where at least he'd be able to keep an eye on her and help her out if anything did threaten her! And even if we assume Aladdin somehow didn't think of all this and did want Jasmine to stay behind – do any of us really think Jasmine would ever agree to that?! Would she ever agree to stay behind and wait and do absolutely nothing while her father is in danger?? Because I think she'd argue so much about being left behind that it wouldn't make sense wasting any more time trying to convince her.
But instead, Aladdin gives Jasmine a kiss and off he flies. I suspect the reason the video game gives them no discussion about who will go to the Ancient City and why is because they couldn't think of a good reason why Aladdin should leave Jasmine behind either.
The Ancient City turns out to be an undead-looking ruin of a place, and we make our way through both outdoor and underground locations. It's filled with skeletons and zombies and the like, and my impression is of a city that was once thriving but died out long ago, to become something creepy and haunted. It's a great setting as we reach the climax of our story, and I must say I quite like these new locations we get for the world of Aladdin.
Aladdin has to fight his way through a number of obstacles which looked to me like some of the most difficult ones yet – I can't say for sure because I wasn't actually playing the game, but it would make sense if the gameplay were getting steadily harder – and then at last he discovers the Sultan. I wasn't sure at first if it was supposed to be the Sultan's voice we heard calling to him, because like the Genie, he's got a different voice actor here, and just like with the Genie, I found it all too obvious. That's one thing I do have to mention about this video game, that any time a character was voiced by a different actor than they are in Aladdin, the difference was very noticeable. With, say, Aladdin and Jasmine, who are still Scott Weinger and Linda Larkin, I could always believe it was them on screen, even when I didn't quite agree with the decision to have them say or do whatever they were saying or doing. But every time Genie or the Sultan spoke, I felt like I was watching a different character. They tried, but I don't think the scriptwriters and new voice actors managed to properly embody the essence of those characters, and in both cases certain essential layers to their personalities were left out, leaving the elements that remained feeling poorly executed and flat. In the Sultan's case – well, first of all he sounded like he'd aged a good ten or twenty years since the movie, which I'm sure he wasn't supposed to have done, and I also thought he became a little one-dimensional. Do you remember my saying earlier that I thought the Sultan would be completely helpless if someone kidnapped him? Well, that doesn't mean he has no backbone. In the movie he was perfectly able to stand up for himself, even to Jafar sometimes, if not to the same degree as Jasmine. And there was a certain pride to his character, I get the sense he knew he was in charge and didn't like having that challenged, even as his comical nature undermines the very power he's trying to reinforce. I love the way the Sultan is so multi-layered for a comedic side character, and honestly, I believe that comedic side characters need to be multi-layered if you want them to be funny, otherwise they'll just come across as annoying, badly written characters thrown in for cheap laughs. Not that the Sultan even felt comical here – he was just sweet and befuddled to the point of seeming weak. To have the game play up nothing but his sweet, befuddled side... and not even the same kind of sweet, befuddled side we see in the actual movie... I think he could have been handled better.
Aladdin first frees the Sultan from some sort of prison – I think he was trapped in an organ or something? We never really see that for sure – and then has to free him again from an entity known as the Evil Sultan. I would really have loved some more detail as to what goes on in this city, and who this Evil Sultan is and what he wants – is he some undead ruler who traps unwary visitors in the City forever?? – and what exactly happened to the Sultan. Was he actually imprisoned inside an organ, and was it the Evil Sultan who put him there? Did Nasira's henchmen give the Sultan to the Evil Sultan the way they gave Jasmine to Anubis, or did the Evil Sultan find the Sultan on his own once the latter was taken to the Ancient City? The Evil Sultan's identity is never explained, and there's no mention of him at all either before or after Aladdin's battle with him, although from the Sultan's dialogue he's clearly had a run-in with the Evil Sultan already and knows who he is. So the Evil Sultan and his storyline felt disappointingly unfinished – especially disappointing since if we knew more about him, I could have used the Evil Sultan in my own imaginings about Aladdin! For a time I wondered if the Evil Sultan was going to be our own beloved Sultan put under a spell so that he couldn't remember who he was and thought Aladdin was his enemy, like the spell on Razoul. That would have been particularly devastating for Jasmine – if only she had been there for the Ancient City sequence!
Once Aladdin has rescued the Sultan from the Evil Sultan, Nasira shows up again, still disguised as the mystic, but not for too much longer. She drops the pretense almost right away and reveals herself to Aladdin, and I swear she was taunting him in true villain form even before she takes off her disguise. (Nasira is clearly the sort of villain who delights in being evil, and she was probably quite happy to be openly villainous again!) Nasira casts a spell to freeze Aladdin where he stands, snatches the three artifacts from him which he's somehow been carrying around with him this entire time even though that would really have been bulky and awkward and just inconvenient on this sort of adventure, and she vanishes through a portal she creates from thin air. The whole time this is happening, the Sultan is just standing there slightly behind Aladdin without saying a single word, at least until he falls randomly to the floor – I guess he was supposed to have fainted? Like I said, could have done with a bit better handling of him... Here in particular, I really missed the beautiful Disney animation from the movie with its super-vivid facial expressions – not only would I have known what the Sultan was supposed to be feeling, but I would have loved to see Aladdin's look of shock and horror after Nasira reveals herself and freezes him. The graphics in this game, like I said, leave something to be desired... But anyway. Abu wakes Aladdin from the spell binding him and Aladdin jumps through the portal after Nasira right before it closes – which is an excellent way to explain how he got to her lair with no way of knowing where it was, and is also no less than I would have expected from him. He doesn't take Abu or the Carpet, there seems to be no time – and besides, I'm guessing he wants Abu to look after the Sultan and Carpet to take him back to Agrabah, because unlike with Jasmine, I completely agree that you would get the Sultan to safety rather than bringing him along for such a mission as this! I also like the way that, just like in the movie, Aladdin must face his enemy alone for the final battle. It really demonstrates his role as Hero just like the movie's Final Battle does. Although I can only imagine that if the Sultan, Abu, and Carpet all return to Agrabah now as I assume they will, Jasmine will be pretty worried when she sees Aladdin's not with them and that none of them (as far as I'm aware) can tell her where he is, and she might want to go back and look for him. (Especially as she must be pretty upset about not getting to come to the Ancient City with him in the first place!) That part isn't in the video game, by the way, we don't see what happened with anyone else until the very end of the game, but I like to keep track of what all the characters might be up to. You never know when the actions of some off-screen character will end up affecting the plot, after all!
Aladdin makes his way through Nasira's lair, which is so well designed – like a labyrinth of underground caverns and pools of molten lava, which Aladdin can actually step in if you misjudge his jumps – poor Aladdin's feet are going to be covered in burns by the time he's done with this quest, although I suppose compared to the prospect of Jafar returning that would be the least of his worries. (You'd think Aladdin would at least have shoes now if nothing else!) There are also these cool sword-wielding snakes that Aladdin has to either fight or evade – I guess a love of snakes must run in this family; they're even coloured and patterned like Jafar was when he turned into a cobra. At last, Aladdin reaches Nasira, who seems shocked that Aladdin found her, in spite of Jafar's warning to her right at the beginning of the game to not underestimate him (but why am I not surprised she did anyway?) And the final battle begins. It involves, from what I could make out, Aladdin making Nasira drop the three artifacts one at a time, and then destroying them, before Jafar could revive fully. While this battle is going on, Jafar's head is coming up out of a pit and he's hugely oversized, making me wonder if this is just a side effect of the spell while it's being cast, or whether Jafar was going to remain like that and Aladdin would have had to deal with a hugely oversized Jafar if he had failed. The goal for this final segment of the video game is to stop Nasira from reviving Jafar, but I let my imagination run a bit further and considered how Aladdin might have stopped both siblings from ever being threats again if Nasira did revive Jafar before Aladdin could stop her. In the game, Nasira talks about how unstoppable she and Jafar will be with their combined power, but I found myself wondering all throughout the story whether Jafar would really be happy, once faced with the decision, to share all that power and control with anyone, even his sister – or perhaps especially his sister; sibling rivalry is a real thing! It's also something that's not explored much in this video game, although to be fair Jafar is dead and needs Nasira to revive him right now, so this wouldn't be the best time to bring up any potential resentment, and besides he and Nasira only interact in one scene. Anyway, my thought was that Aladdin might be able to talk Jafar and Nasira into each thinking the other one was going to betray them and take all the power for themselves, and maybe Nasira and Jafar would end up killing each other without Aladdin's having to fight anybody. To be clear this ending exists only in my imagination, and I have no problem at all with the end the story actually has, especially as it works better for a video game to give the player a goal they can achieve rather than waiting for Aladdin to bail them out. But I like my idea as an alternate ending, because it shows off the same talents of trickery and manipulation that Aladdin used to defeat Jafar in the movie.
So the good guys all reunite at Agrabah palace, which looks like new again, and we finally see Rajah, the only scene in which we do – where was he all this time when Jasmine was getting kidnapped and the palace was getting taken over and crumbled by Nasira?? The Sultan praises Aladdin for saving Agrabah, sounding a little more like the Sultan I guess, and Aladdin gets some praise from Genie too, and Aladdin kisses Jasmine, which is always welcome because Aladdin and Jasmine deserve all the kisses they can get, especially after being interrupted just before they could kiss no less than three times in the actual movie. (Yes, I was counting.)
And that's the entire game. I really enjoyed watching the playthrough, especially watching it one video per day which led to some delicious anticipation as I was always in this state of eagerness to see what would happen next. And I just love that such a concept even exists, the whole Jafar-now-has-an-evil-sibling thing. I really do like this in spite of my constantly pointing out things I thought could be handled better! This is just what I do, every time a story comes into my radar. I think if you fleshed out every part of Nasira's Revenge that I've suggested in this review, we'd probably have a detailed enough plotline for a full-on movie. And I think it would be a pretty good movie, too – if Aladdin and Jasmine were already married in it and we had a more movie-accurate Genie and Sultan!
But as it is, I also just enjoy the video game playthrough – especially as I get to imagine up this stuff that I would never have thought of if the game didn't give me the basic plotline to work with. And now Jafar has an evil and powerfully magical sibling as well as a son. You can't go wrong with that :)
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