I've only played the sands of time trilogy, but from what I've seen 2008 is very split with people either loving it or hating it.
It's a gorgeous game with great music. Don't know why people got so hung up on the death mechanic; it was the operative equivalent of restarting with the exception of cutting about 15 unnecessary seconds from it.
That said, I can't help but agree that the gameplay was way too prescriptive, in fact, with the marks on the walls telling you exactly where to go. Even with collecting every single light. There was only one section in the whole game that I was stuck on - in the floating waterfalls area - because I didn't have the right power-up at that point.
The dialogue was great. UC-esque in fact, considering Nolan North was the Prince's voice actor.
I enjoyed it and thought it was a great building block for an improved sequel (in the vein of ACI -> ACII), but, alas, we never got to revisit it.