I dunno, whilst ICO certainly has it's charms, the most notable of which being the castle itself, the number of issues I have with it are mounting up to the point where I'm playing it for the sake of finishing it, rather than because I'm enjoying it. My main problems are:

Combat in general is frustrating rather than fulfilling. The shadows stay out of reach far too long meaning you're spending most of your time sitting waiting for them to come to you. Also they clip through walls and woe betide you if there's a pool at the top of a ladder or something as the collision detection to get onto a ladder is frustratingly bad when you're being chased by a bunch of monsters, all of which can hit you hard enough to stun you so you can't possibly reach Yorda in time. It's also really fucking annoying that she never runs away from the things and in fact, seems less responsive to you pulling her around when they're there, forcing you into a long and boring fight rather than allowing a far more exciting dash for an idol door.

It's really annoying to solve a puzzle that's particularly time consuming, only to game over because of Yorda getting grabbed and then having to repeat the easy yet time-consuming puzzle again and again. After a couple of attempts you feel like you're being punished, not challenged.

Whilst the camera work is generally ok, it's sometimes really hard to see the point you need to jump from or which direction. That the camera swings from a fixed point with the right stick rather than fully rotating makes the game harder than it needs to be for the wrong reasons at time. Once I've worked out where to go, I don't want to be defeated by the camera angles, the annoying as fuck Windmill jump being a prime example.

I'm finding that at first these were minor irritations but are now becoming so prevalent they're turning me off the game completely, to the extent I found myself getting irritated by the way ICO runs and his stupid, orange hot-pants last night and had to turn it off. It's only a short game by all accounts but for me it's best approached in very small stages.

For the record, I just finished lighting up half the gate and lowered some big drawbridge across the first area, then had a game over trying to get to a save point when Yorda was grabbed and carried fucking miles away down a long chain, causing me to stop playing before I got angry again.

Mate, you really shouldn't play it, if it's frustrating you so much. Seeing frustration in the things you do, and not finding enjoyment.. well, anywhere, it really can't win you over like this.


Personally (and this is no longer aimed at Shin), I never had a problem with the combat, and never quite understood why people felt complaining about it was useful criticism. It's simple yes, but nowhere was it frustrating. And if indeed it gets frustrating to someone, you can drag Yorda over to an idol gate and end the battle right there.

I only noticed this on later playthroughs as I fought the fights as they came. You just timed your strikes and kept close to Yorda. You had plenty of time to save her if she ever got caught and the sense of panic as you are trying to save her from a shadow pool is there for a reason if she ever does get carried to one.

The baiting shadows baited you away from Yorda precisely so they could grab her and stop you from saving her. It's a bit silly to get mad at the game for showing slightly cleverer AI in such simple battles. The most frustraing enemies were the little spiders that climbed walls, as they were hard to reach before they climbed too high up.

There are like two times when you need to leave Yorda's side and go to another room, and if you don't dawdle around, she won't get attacked while you are away. The whole point is to protect her as the whole castle is out to get her and she's not only a friend but a means of escape. I never understood how people could complain the game eventually punishing you if you leave her alone and unprotected for far too long, but this is because I didn't feel she was a burden and was constantly neglecting her.

Camera angles were a problem at the windmill in one jump, everywhere else it was always in the right spot, so I dunno if my playstyle is so radically different from other people's or if the game actually requires such a different approach or what.

I think to be fair I was over-emphasising my annoyance, having just put it down. The Windmill jump took too many attempts for me and there was another one soon after swinging off a chain near the top where it seemed pot luck rather than judgement to get your height right on the chain to make the jump. Other than that the jumps are easy enough, although having to track back past a long shimmying section is always annoying if you miss one. The Euro version super-jump helps too (I did a bit of wider reading).

I also get that the Shadows are trying to lure you off but I'm not too keen on how it relies on you getting bored of waiting to trip you up. I guess I either want to run in and fuck 'em up or ignore them and run off, the middle ground doesn't suit me so well.

I don't think I've lost Yorda once from being in another room. I tend to lose her when she gets grabbed just as I get hit, then gets carried to a pool on another level, needing a chain or ladder climb to reach. There was one particular section where they kept dragging her off to a raised bit and every time I tried to get on the ladder I missed by a fraction then got hit. I think it was particularly annoying as there was a lot of shimmying to get to the point they attack from the reload and Ico does that really slowly.

Like I say, for the most part I'm enjoying the puzzles and the landscape is incredible. Every time I turn the game on I play fine for 45 minutes or so, then run up against something annoying. Playing in small stints is fine though as it's a relatively short game and it certainly makes a nice change of pace from EDF. :)

Regarding losing Yorda in another room, I was going by one of the main complaints I've heard from people who didn't enjoy it. Often it was mentioned they HATED the way you'd go off somewhere and later you'd hear a yelp from another room and soon everything was grey and white as you game overed.


Looking at your experiences, it's like reading something I'd write when I was gritting my teeth through Uncharted 1. Everything about the game just kept infuriating me. The shooting was decent on its own, but when there was so much of it, and dying made you repeat the entire 10 minute battle, it quickly became extremely unenjoyable. The platforming was brief and felt unpleasant because of the disconnect with the animation and the environment, the static camera angles and the flimsy analogue stick making most of the shimmying and jumping from ledge to ledge really frustrating and forcing constant restarts.

Like you said before though, it's very rare you need to leave her for long and as far as I've got, on the occassions you do it's blindingly obvious what you need to do so you don't waste time looking around. I think I left with a particularly bad taste in my mouth last night because my girlfriend got home and I thought I'd make a run for a save point, went across the balcony in the room where you collapse the bridge in the centre to get to the couch in the next area and got chased by Shadows, the camera made me get stuck on a pillar then Yorda was dragged down to floor level, meaning I needed to run the length of the level and slide down a chain to reach her, basically no chance. I've only got to back-track back to crossing the ramparts back from where you first get the sword so not actually that far.

Like I said, the good bits are really good and in small doses I can live with the bad bits. It's really making me want to play SotC again though!

I will admit, the one thing that kept me going so long the first time through is missing this time.

It comes from knowing what to do, and that's entirely unavoidable, but generally in replays of games I really enjoy I still derive considerably entertainment values from either the gameplay or one of several other factors.

In ICO, clearly a large part of that came from the discovery of what was coming next and the environment's mysteries, amongst plenty of the game's subtleties and charm. The fact that I know what's up next is what surprisingly draining my second play's enjoyment factor.

While I anticipated this to some degree, I didn't quite anticipate the level to which that sense of discovery affected my enjoyment of the title. It's making the replay a fair bit less enjoyable than I was hoping.

I've clearly been spoilt by this generations hi-def nature because firing up this game was incredibly jarring at first and it took a little while for my eyes to get used to the pixelated nature of everything (especially the text). However, I'm glad I stuck with it, because once my eyes got used to it and the thing got in motion I was able to appreciate the beauty of the game, a lot of which is in the excellent animation work. I'm really impressed with how stunning a creation Yorda is.

Shin, having read your comments after I'd finished my run through I'm a little surprised by some of your comments.

I didn't find combat at all frustrating, in fact I rather enjoyed on the whole. I enjoyed the game of baiting the shadow monsters in and them trying to drag me away from Yorda. It was fun, and I thought it showed a nice bit of AI that didn't just stand there and let me club them. As for getting knocked down, I found that if you sort of move the stick rapidly and hit the buttons that Ico got up a lot, lot quicker. Plus I actually found Yorda did run from the shadow monsters a little. Not masses, but she wouldn't necessarily just stand there. Plus if you grabbed her you could make a decent dash for it. I don't know, just for my money I didn't encounter any of the issues you're talking about with the combat/fighting element.

I'm a little confused about which windmill jump you're talking about. I assume the one you guys mean is the one where you've got to jump onto the windmill arms, in which case I found the camera lined itself up for me perfectly. I actually thought the camerawork was, on the whole, excellent.

There were only a couple of minor frustrations I found throughout the entire game and they were both based in a couple of tricky jumps you had to make that both came quite close together. The first one the piston jump, which seemed to have really odd timing on it and I ended up having to press jump much earlier than I would have thought. The other was a waterwheel bit that was right after that and that was the most annoying bit of the game. The timing on the jump to the wheel, climbing up and then aiming yourself and jumping onto the bar was killer and was made really frustrating by how often Ico would just bounce off the wheel rather than grab on. But for two sticky points in the whole game, I'll let it off.

I guess then you're either lucky or much better at judging the jump length than me. It wasn't the take off point I struggled with, it was not being able to see how much I missed the grab by so not knowing if I was timing it too early or too late. It only took about five attempts before pot luck kicked in but with a good minutes worth of climbing between each jump it quickly got annoying.

I suspect that as I already said, I'm just letting minor irritations get blown out of proportion and I think some of that is due to all the rave reviews I've seen the game get. When so many people bang on about what an amazing experience a game is, you set yourself up to really enjoy it so when you find a few annoying things about it, they seem much worse.