ok. i collected 26 in King's gate.
How do i move onto to the next area? what is the next area?
I am not able to teleport in the map yet.

Open the map and set a destination for the next one (East-West) and use Elika's compass (the Y button) to follow for how to get there.

how do you heal a fertile ground? by collecting those blue balls?

Once you get to a fertile ground, you will have to beat one of the 4 bosses in the game. Then Elika heals it by mashing the Y button.

This causes the blue balls (light seeds) to show up. You collect those to unlock Elika's "plate powers" back at the Temple. Those powers (Red, blue, yellow, and green) are necessary to heal the fertile ground beyond the first 4.

Here's the map:



The 4 spots nearest the Temple is what you have to heal first. You'll face each boss once before you move on to the main game of healing the other 16 lands and ultimately killing the 4 bosses.

Heh heh.

And people complained this game was too easy.

So I'm reading this thread, and I realized that I can no longer read the word "fertile" without my inner-voice reading it "fur-tile"...and I think it might even be in the princess' voice.

I know this is a joke, but it segues well into my thoughts about the game.

The combat in this game is NOT too easy. If anything, I found it annoyingly impenatrable much of the time, and I ended up relying on the "Elika throw" move much more than I would have liked.

If anything is too easy in this game, it's the navigation. It's so pretty and fluid and well animated that it becomes effortless. Your success ultimately relies more on timing than on creativity or puzzle solving...two elements sorely lacking from Sands of Time.

The only battles I had a problem with were the big baddie that you had to flip over the side of cliffs. He got on my nerves every single time I had to fight him.

Oh he was easy. I'd just go to a corner and let him walk up to me. I'd roll under him to get bihind him and either push him into a pillar or off the edge of the arena. Easy.

The Alchemist is the one that got on my nerves cos he'd get behind me if I backed him into the corruption and then I'd get knocked into it.

i feel like an idiot in this game.
I got the 60 blue balls, went back to the temple and activated one of the plates.
Now I get a msg on top of the screen to press Y to use the plate.
I press Y and nothing happens. Pressed it repeatedly and nothing.
what am i doing wrong?

Yeah, that was confusing the first time. You're not actually on a plate yet. You're in some sort of nether-world and it's basically a training ground for that plate. There's probably a wall right next to you you need to run on to find the plate.

I was able to pick this game up at Target for $15 on Sunday -- in the Canton, MI area.

is the epilogue d/l content worth getting?

I haven't played it yet, but I expect it to be one of those weekly XBLM deals eventually. I'll get it then.

That's what I'd like to know. I'm curious as to what the epilogue reveals but I don't have my PS3 hooked up online.

Just a guess, but I bet you can watch the whole epilogue on YouTube.

I loved the epilogue, but I'm a bit biased. Been a huge fan of PoP since Sands of Time. It'll probably come down in price eventually.

I just beat this today, and my feeling is it was all right. As many people have said, they did make things awfully easy--yes, some parts I needed to repeat about a dozen times, but I always knew how I could beat it, so it didn't hold me back.

One thing I thought kind of funny (aside from was I thought I had done horrible with the drops. It seemed like some times it took me a dozen go throughs to finally get through a segment. But even with that, I got the "Treat Her Gently" achievement.

However, I have no desire to play this again, and I don't want to drop money on Epilogue, so off to Ebay this goes. I bought it for $14, so I might make a buck or two!

Ahhh, Gamefaqs says an update to the game glitched out the counter. Now it all makes sense.

i find the controls pretty frustrating.
the prince jumps when i want to wall run, wall run when i want to jump, etc.

Once you have all 4 power plates, you don't need to collect anymore of those blue light balls. Is this correct?

That's (essentially) correct. You just need to heal the lands and kill the four bosses. Then you can move on to the endgame.

Finally opened the game and started playing, pretty cool. So is this PoP the same as the previous trilogy or something else? So far, I've got about 170 blue balls, and battled a few bosses.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but are there any minions to battle, or 'wave after wave of men' for me to kill, or just lots of jumping around and few boss battles?

This is a new prince with a new story. His name is Drake and he's looking for some kind of fortune. There are only a few minions that spawn throughout the world so it's mostly a platformer with a handful of boss battles.