So I’d heard lots of good things about this game and decided to finally give it a go. I picked up the PS3 HD collection, which includes Ico and SOTC.
From the get go, it felt like a frustrating experience. Very little is explained to you about how the mechanics of the game work. I found myself trying to grab ledges on the colossi that weren’t intended.
The game clearly wants you to experiment to find out the different ways in which the colussi will react, but it’s often such a slow process that it starts to feel like a chore for half of the battles. And often I was so close to a solution but some small thing would be off, so I’d try something else instead. Then it would turn out that I had it right the first time, I just needed to be standing a metre to the right. So many times the solution felt illogical.
And whilst holding on to the head of a colossus and getting that final hit in is extremely satisfying, on some occasions the window would be so small that I’d get shaken off and have to repeat the whole process to slowly chip away at its health. Knowing exactly what I needed to do, but having to do it multiple times soon became quite dull.
About half of the colossi were genuinely fun to fight. The bird one in particular stands out - soaring through the air as you climb along his wings was incredible.
I will say that the atmosphere, music and story were beautiful. It’s a great piece of art. But a lot of people claim that this is one of the greatest games ever made, and I feel like the ‘game’ part is lacking quite a lot.
Is there something I’m missing? I actually enjoyed Ico a lot more.
Yes I played Ico (PS3 remaster) and really enjoyed it. The atmosphere felt very similar and the ending was beautiful, but most importantly the gameplay was far less frustrating in my opinion. It was clear what the ‘puzzle pieces’ were/what I was working with - whereas with SOTC I sometimes struggled to work out what was actually intended with each puzzle.
I’ve also played The Last Guardian and loved it. People say that controlling Trico in that is frustrating, but I had far more trouble with the player movement and vague requirements of each boss in SOTC.
I’ve never played Guardian unfortunately, I want to really bad though. I love ICO and Shadow so much. I’m down with the way Shadow controls, to me it makes sense. He’s not a warrior or a hero, he’s just a young guy in love and takes on something horrifying. The controls are very ICOish. Lots of stumbling, and turning around.
But. I’ve only played the original releases. I don’t know what the remasters changed. I replay ICO every five years or whatever. Unfortunately Shadow is a bitch to emulate so I might just have rose tinted glasses for it.
The controls are very fluid, a lot like Ico. Whilst they are satisfying, there’s a lot more time pressure in SOTC so the issues with the controls become more apparent.
Apparently the HD collection on the PS3 made SOTC a bit harder, with stamina draining faster and Wander getting tossed around easier. Perhaps this is is part of the reason why I found it so frustrating at points.
Ah I see. Yeah less stamina and harder to hold onto the things could def be negative. I’m surprised they didn’t make those changes a different selectable difficulty. There’s so much optional extra stuff in the game its an odd choice that they just upped the challenge like that.