I’m not sure if it’s because I am playing the PS3 version but I have been really irritated with the controls of Shadow of the Colossus. I kept running into situations where I was doing things like jumping over Agro instead of getting on them and the Wander’s arms twitching and moving me slightly to the left when I try to jump to a higher ledge. The controls don’t seem as smooth or as snappy as they should be considering it’s the core element of the game. I feel like there are games that came out around the same time (Shadow of the Colossus came out in 2005/2006) that had better climbing/jumping mechanics.
I also had issues with the bull-type colossi that knock you down. By the time the Wander decided to get up and the animation finished the colossus was already about to attack again. Supposedly you can wiggle the left stick and button mash to speed this up but I really didn’t notice a big enough difference. Rolling out of the way rarely seemed to help.
I don’t know how much of this is me needing to “get good” but it really prevented me from enjoying the game. I feel like I’d probably recommend watching a boss battle compilation than actually playing the game.
Mostly venting here but what did you think of Shadow of the Colossus? Do the PS2 or PS4 versions feel better than the PS3 version?
I had the same experience with the game. It has a really cool world and story but as I finished the game, because I guess I wanted to be able to say I’ve finished one of the classics, I felt mostly just annoyed. There were moments where the game felt truly magical but the controls were constantly stopping me from getting immersed. It’s one of those unfortunate instances where everything else is great but it fails for me in the most important aspect of a game which is the gameplay.
I gave up after trying to ride the horse out of the temple at the start of the game.
Yeah I had issues with Agro throughout my playthrough. I saw a few posts with people praising the horse AI and saying how good it is in the sand worm colossus (number 10) for example but I found I was regularly running into things, coming to sudden stops over small ledges, and slowing down randomly.
I initially thought the idea of of a horse with a personality was interesting, but it killed my excitement immediately. I really want to play the game through but I’d rather use my limited playing time on something else
It’s wild to me that so many people have trouble with that game. It controls exactly like ICO. Maybe I was just used to it when SoC came out?
Maybe it’s because they played Shadow of the Colossus and not ICO?
I feel like the former has a bigger following than the latter. I imagine a lot of people going back and playing Shadow of the Colossus are either doing it because they are going back and playing cult classics or because it was remastered for the PS4. ICO wasn’t remastered outside of the PS3 version.
After my experience I probably won’t play ICO.
