The second half of the Ico & Shadow collection, this was the stronger game right up until the final colossus, which was so out of step with the rest of the game that I nearly gave up on it. Shadow was released a full four years after ICO, but if you told me they were released in the same month, I’d believe it. The world looks similar, without much color, and neither game let the story get in the way of fantastic puzzles that often frustrated me to the point that I felt super dumb when I did finally figure them out. The main characters also seem to be the same people, just one has horns and the other…well he doesn’t until he does. They both even feature the same villainous smoke creatures that come out of the floor!
As I mentioned, this is a solid game that I was actively recommending to my wife, but that last level commits the cardinal sin of changing the game play style at the very last moment without rhyme or reason. In fact, I actually think there were several bugs on that final colossus, the most alarming of which was that two of the ‘critical points” never showed up. I ultimately had to look up the solution and it didn’t make me feel good about not knowing how to do something that wasn’t being hinted to at all.
Maybe the ps4 remake fixes these errors, but because of how this one ended, I can’t recommend it at all.
