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One of the best "video games" ever made.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It completely transcends the concept of a video game. It is an interactive work of Art. How is this for a review......PLAY IT.

Fantastic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Having played games for a while now (since '89), I have become quite jaded in recent years and look with disdain upon 99% of all games released on the market nowadays. This game, however, falls in that select 1% that serves as a breath of fresh air. This game does have good graphics, but it could have worse graphics if it wanted to; this game is fun, and no other game on the market compares to it. Climbing the colossi is very fun and very addicting. Not only is there the actual challenge of finding a way to climb it, but there is also the excellent orchestral score that accompanies it. Once atop a colossus, the orchestra booms with a bombastic score that will excite you. There are no minor enemies, only bosses. The world in the game oozes with plenty of atmosphere, and the controls in the game are flawless. The story, while somewhat abstractly told, is nonetheless enjoyable. A must-buy.

Colossal a$$ kicking!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had owned this game once before. I had purchased it when it was first released, but unfortunately my little brother lost it and I never had the chance to beat it. Then I saw it on amazon and just HAD to get it. Game came with a great price, and it was in PERFECT condition. If you haven't played this game GET IT! It is a great deal now that it is even cheaper. If you watch G4tv they have raved about this title as one of the greatest games you've never played. I must agree with them, although I liked the looks of it when it came out and I bought it, I don't know anyone else who has even played it! This is a shame. The game is different, but it is awesome in its differences. One thing I like best about video games is great boss battles, and this game is essentially nothing but battles with massive creatures that you must figure out how to take down. Armed with only a sword, a black horse, and a bow, you must climb to the top, of some of the biggest bosses you have EVER seen in a game, and defeat them in their own unique way. If you like boss battles this game is for you, if you liked ICO this game is made by the same people and even has a very similar art style. Basically this game rocks! This game is an essential part of any PS2 owners library.

There's no other game like this.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game has it's problems: There's slowdown, the camera and controls can be a bit wonky, and a couple of the colossi are just plain frustrating to fight. However, all that is outweighed by the fact that there just isn't any other game like this. Very unique, and it looks very nice for a PS2 game.

Great gift!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Okay, this is going to be a woman's perspective on this game. I bought it for my husband and the kids and I were glued to watching him play until he beat the game. We would wait for him to get home from work and have the game on and ready to go when he walked in the door so we could watch and help. Need I say more??? My mother even came over two different days to watch. That's all she came over for! The battles are awesome, figuring it out was more and more difficult and it really kept us at the edge of our seat trying to watch him defeat the next one and the next one, etc. Great game!

Pretty but... Eh..

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game is very beautiful, graphics are wonderful. Its so repetative tho and it can get annoying after a short time. You run to a place kill a Collosus and magically appear where you started from. Also there are no monsters that randomly appear for you to attack or anything, no new weapons or armor. Obviously that was intended to keep it simple and so you focus more on the goal then trying to lvl off monsters and obtain l33t weapons. I feel they could have done a little better in certain areas such as jumping on your horse... UGH! The huge colossus are fun to climb and bring down tho, and with them being on land air and water you need to think a little bit about how your going to grab on.

This type of gaming has potential. I would like to see this type of gaming faster paced, smarter and MORE monsters and also as a type of MMORPG. I can see for the real gamers who enjoy playing games with skills that this type of gameplay would be what they might want in a MMORPG. I could see a game with this type of gameplay intertwined in it, small monsters you can straight up battle and huge monsters that groups of people try to storm up to hit vital areas while others are distracting it on the ground. I am very eager to see if any big game companies decide to try this..... or stick to the same old same old WoW DAOC and other such MMO styles.

OUR HERO HOLDS ON BUT DOESN'T REACH THE TOP

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: December 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Shadow of the Colossus (SOTC) excels in many areas. For one, the game is very simplistic. There is no leveling up, there are no side quests, no secret weapons (at least not the first time you play), all you do is run around this HUGE seamless map and fight a total of 16 giant monsters. Some fly, some walk, some slither, some swim, and one that just stays right where he is.

The boss fights are truly amazing! And like many reviewers have said before, when you slay one of these mammoth beasts, you can't help but feel a little sad at having killed such an amazing creature.

Another thing this game does a good job at is giving the player the sense that they are seemingly powerless. When you shoot an arrow at one of these monsters, chances are it will hit the fur and deal damage equal to 1/100 of the monster's total health, or the arrow will BOUNCE (great arrow physics in this game) harmlessly off the monster's armored body.

The environments are breathtaking (deserts, forests, lakes, mountain passes, valleys, etc), all the time reminding you of Ico because of the shades of colors used are so similar.

Then there are the minor details that add to the game: 1) If you reflect the light off your sword into a grassy area, a small ball of fire will appear for a split second. 2) Arrows shot at the monsters stay embedded in their fur. They don't disappear instantly and it is often possible to pepper the top of a monster's head with arrows until it looks like a pin cushion!--and the monster STILL isn't even close to dead yet!!!

When it comes to boss fights (and that's all this game really is), my favorite ones were against the flying creatures (especially the second one), the two-legged monster with a sword in his right hand, and the lizard monster in the arena. But to be honest, all the fights are exhilirating in their own little way.

I rated Ico 5 out of 5 stars. Unfortunately, SOTC only captures about 4.5 out of 5 and right now I'll go into why SOTC slipped half a point.

Simplistic, but TOO simplistic: All you do is run around on foot or with your horse, Agro, and follow the beam of light that your sword provides to find the next monster. There are no minor enemies of any sort. Sure, a few lizards and birds you can kill and eat, but this doesn't noticably alter your character.

With a game that is boasting such beautiful environments, I felt that the least they could have done was have a crystal (that acts like a camera) to allow players to take screenshots. Maybe this could have even been incorporated into a clever mini-game.

Although you have an arrow and a sword, you always have to resort to the sword to finish off a Colossus. The arrows are mostly just for distraction or for hitting hard to reach areas. Don't get me wrong, I wounded the first Colossus down to half of his health with only arrows, but I was disappointed that I couldn't finish the job with that same strategy. It would have added much more replay if there was more than one way to kill a Colossus.

If there was one thing I hated about SOTC, it was the camera.
When you're riding your horse, the camera is usually situated so that you and the horse are on the left side of the screen (why not centered???) and directly behind you. The problem with this, is that you can't see directly what is in FRONT of you. Your horse is not so dumb as to jump off a cliff, but still, many times you'll find yourself almost doing just that. The simple solution to this problem would have been to have a "Lock" feature, to keep the camera in place or locked onto a specific target.

One of SOTC's strong points is it's sprawling, open landscape, just waiting for an adventurer like you to run around and explore it. But at the same time, they stabbed themselves in the foot by making it that you can only fight the Colossi in a specific order. And every time you kill a Colossi you get warped back to the huge castle you started at. The game would have been much more adventuresome if the sword did NOT give you clues to where the Colossi were, but if instead you just wandered around until you bumped into them.

The gameplay is very short-lived. I beat the entire game, from the time I pressed Power on my PS2 to the time the game said, "END", in about 11 hours. To be honest, I wouldn't mind fighting a few of the Colossi again, but to play the whole game again would seem like a chore.

This brings us to the ending of the game. After having finally beaten the last Colossi, I was disappointed in many ways by the ending.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS****************

For a short while, you get to CONTROL a Colossus, but the controls provide little or no positive feedback. I could make my Colossus turn around, but it appeared that it randomly breathed fire or smashed his arm into the ground. What's the point in letting a player control something if you are not really in control if it???
SOTC would have had so much replay value if there was a mode (after beating the main game) where you get to control all of the 16 Colossi and fight a computer AI character. Really! Who WOULDN'T want to shoot lasers at a little guy on a horse or shake your body around and try and throw him off and then step on him?

After that part of the ending, the horse (thought dead from falling into a river) meets the princess in the castle and together they find . . . a baby???!!!

In ICO I really cared about the fragile princess, trying to rescue her while fighting off hordes of shadow-shapes. In this game, the only emotion I felt at the end was sadness, because the main character you've identified with for 11 hours is now nothing more than a child without a future.

*****************HERE END THE SPOILERS

With so many complaints, how can this only result in deducting HALF a star in the overall rating of this game? Simple. SOTC earns its high marks because it is an original follow-up to a great game and offers gameplay and experiences that you will not find on any other console. The developers of this game get major kudos for thinking outside of the box and trying something different. This game is just brimming with wonderful ideas, unfortunately it could have used a few more and just needed a bit of polishing up with a few others.

Our hero effortlessly holds onto the harsh crags towards the very top of a mountain of great video games but fails in ever reaching the summit.

Great adventure but might be too simple for some

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: September 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Pros:
* Huge world to explore
* Great story line
* Easy to play
* You get to kill colossal enemies

Cons:
* All you do is kill the 16 Colossi. There are no real side quests except to get power ups and replay to try the Battle attack.
* The graphics are a little on the dated side.

Twas good until the final battle

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: January 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

You have to be an expert to kill the final colossus, even after reading the online cheats and guides. The final battle goes far beyond challenging to just simply annoying. I liked the game until this final battle. The save points are non-existant except after you kill a colossus, so be prepared to spend lots of hours playing the same final segment over and over again unless you are an expert. The hardest of the first 1-15 monsters took me a few hours to kill (each), but #16 has been defeating me for over a week and I've re-played it dozens of hours. I consider the final battle a design flaw which ruins the overall game because what good is it if you can't finish it?

Great Idea, poorly made

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 13
Date: November 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

From early previews, this game appeared to be an original and very entertaining adventure game. After its release, it received much praise and high scores on many review sites, so I decided to purchase instead of rent.

I won't elaborate on the story, seeing how its explained numerous times in other user reviews.

Although Shadow's story and concept are quite original and refreshing, the game suffers greatly from its execution. Graphically, there is an extreme amount of pop up. Areas almost directly in front of you will suddenly pop into higher polygonal and textural resolutions. This happens quite often and is somewhat distracting as it brings the player out of the experience. Post God of War, graphics should look much better than this, even on the PS2, and especially from a first party developer.

Secondly, the camera system is horrendous. Although you are able to control it with the right analog stick, the camera automatically resets back to its own position as soon as you let go of the stick. The angles during colossi fights are supposed to make the scale more impressive, but they actually hamper game play. A free camera system would greatly have improved the title, and made it much less frustrating. Being able to zoom out to an overhead view would be a great addition, while still maintaining the sense of scale. There are times where you will have no idea what direction you are running in, or what your surroundings are, simply because of the poor camera system.

The controls are also somewhat of a disappointment. Very unintuitive, and odd at times, they can be extremely irritating when you are battling, to when you are simply riding around on your horse.

After much frustration from one particular colossus, I decided to hang up my sword. When having to wait for a specific attack in order to climb the giant, you should not have to wait twenty plus minutes while you run around trying to trigger this event to occur.

I will say this is truly an interesting and innovative title in the sense of its story line and concept. However, the mechanical flaws greatly outweigh the positives in my book, making this a rental at best.

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