With Ubisoft’s long-suffering Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake now officially canned, PC players are doing what Ubisoft wouldn’t by giving the 2003 classic a visual polish that actually respects the source. A new Sands of Time Remastered mod for the original PC release effectively turns the game into a soft remaster, no publisher reboot required.
Released in August 2025 and updated into late 2025, the mod overhauls textures across environments, NPCs, and key items so they hold up at modern resolutions, while still keeping the original models and lighting intact. Cutscenes are upscaled to HD, and the Dagger of Time gets a redesign to better match how it appears in cutscenes and on the box art. It’s a tangible upgrade rather than a total art-style rewrite.
On top of that, you can stack a Reshade setup on top, including Ray Tracing-style effects, if you want extra bounce lighting and reflections. It’s still post-process fakery, not native path tracing, but combined with the HD textures, it makes Sands of Time look surprisingly sharp on a modern monitor without turning everything into a smeary beige reboot.
The catch, of course, is that this salvation is PC-only. Sands of Time still isn’t playable on PS5 or Switch, and on Xbox Series X, you’re stuck hunting down an original Xbox disc and relying on backward compatibility. With the official remake dead and console access stuck in limbo, this free PC remaster mod is the cleanest way to revisit Ubisoft’s beloved action-adventure epic.
Source: Nexus Mods via DSOG
What did you think of this article? Let us know in the comments below, and chat with us in our Discord!
This page may contain affiliate links, by purchasing something through a link, Retro Handhelds may earn a small commission on the sale at no additional cost to you.