Shadow of the Colossus Review
The following review is of Shadow of the Colossus, the game regard as nearly perfect by most critics and is seen as a masterpiece by many gamers. It released in 2005 for PS2 but notably I’m playing the HD remake for PS3 bundle with Ico. The format here is simple like the premise of the game, there’s 16 of these colossi so I’m going to be looking in depth at each fight, written directly after for every last boss. This is my analytical and unfiltered analysis and feelings on each boss:
Colossi
1. Challenging, Does a decent job of showing the player the ropes while being tough. Very furry, it’s easily understood and climbed once you get where to. Stamina bar is piss poor at this point so if your not fast or you can’t grapple with the awkward motions of holding grab and jump and then not jumping but at certain points having to then it’s not so bad. Ok, good starter.
2. The best, slow enough to further ease players in, good tense music when on ground and epic build up as you approach a stab point. The theme near the stab point felt epic. Stabbing is seen clearly, very visceral and you feel it in the wind up and it really leaves an impact when the player makes a hit. Enough flat points on back to not be annoying two stab points introducing multiple loca
tions, shooting the underside of the feet was cool, really really great, done with perfection.
3. Interesting concept and a fun enough boss once you figure out the crux of him hitting the pad, Climbing his hammer thing is easy to understand, it’s very obvious and precise as to where you need to jump, stab points are clear, falling off is not a big deal but slightly annoying. This boss challenges the conventions of being able to jump directly and immediately onto an enemy as it’s a bit of trial and error to figure out how. Overall, a fun enough boss.
4. The hiding mechanic is neat, clear as day that the dangling hair was the jump point, not to difficult to grasp once you understand the concept. Falling is a small inconvenience but it’s really not that bad. Kills the concept of just climb the enemy and starts the “the enemy comes to you” trend. There’s waiting, it’s fun but I got impatient. Still a great boss and the execution is fine.
5. This boss is a pain in the ass. Falling off is a tedious punishment as swimming is painfully slow and it could take a long time to swim back to a platform given you can randomly fall anywhere. The boss itself I like but luring it over and waiting for it to come to you can take forever and on some levels it’s annoyingly slow. When your on the bird though, the climbing is fine, the stab points are very evident and it was a nice touch to put them on the wings as well and to let you hang on its skeletal structure when it flapped. It’s a cool boss once you’ve gotten to it but the punishment is so severe for falling off and sometimes there’s really not a lot of stable ground to stand on for a bit of a stretch which is a problem since there’s not a lot of white lizards to this point, about three by my count.
It’s fun to explore the vast land in between these two, it opens up a lot of shrines, each of which has a lizard for stamina, and I probably collected like 30 health fruits long the way which is very helpful and satisfying to collect. The world itself really begins show its stunning beauty and scope at this point and it looks amazing and impressive on this collection.
6. I can appreciate what they were going for here but FUCK THIS GUY! The controls on him and climbing his beard trying to transition to his body are fucking terrible. If this was Uncharted I would have a clear ability to make this foot jump with complete accuracy and zero movement problems but no, it’s very unresponsive and does a shit job of allowing me to jump or making my climbing path clear. This lead to numerous times of me losing all my damn stamina and other times pulling it off perfectly. Also you can’t really move when an enemy is shaking which is fine but this one won’t give me a damn chance, he shakes so much and it’s ridiculous. On top of that finding a spot to stand and regain stamina is a fucking nightmare due to his constant twitching and it’s fucking tedious a shit to hide behind a pillar and have to wait like two minutes for him to bend down. DID WE NOT DO THIS WITH BOSS 4? There it was done a hell of a lot better too. Also this is notably the next time the “Shadow of Colossus” epic theme from the second fight plays but it feels so cheaply implemented as there’s no build up like in the second fight. Overall, it’s unenjoyable in comparison to the others. It’s a pretty low point so far where the flaws of these mechanics really start to shine through which is a shame as everything was fine for the most part up to now.
7. This boss is a good version of a water boss for this game. The last boss that flew over the water had too steep of punishment as the player fell but would have to arduously swim back to the platform and wait. Here it’s a much shorter wait as the only time wasted is actually spent allowing the player to dodge the electric spikes on its back as it emerges and gives them time to line up for the tail when it emerges. While the points holding on as it bobs through the water are wasting the player’s time, it’s no different than the constant shaking and in fact it keeps you on your toes so you’re not in constant progression which is a unique emulation of the climbing mechanic. The creature is very long and actually has 4 stab points, one next to each of the spikes that when hit knocks out the electricity that would harm you when it dips through the water which is a good reward for each progressive accomplishment. It then makes that area a safe zone to allow your progression. The stabbing itself gets tricky if you don’t time it properly thanks to the dodging but not annoyingly so and balancing that with your attempts to get back if you haven’t got enough time so you don’t get shocked can get tricky as well. Occasionally the creature stayed under longer and deeper than normal at which point I was forced to retreat to the surface to start again, keeping all the spikes dead of course. It’s padding but its harmlessly executed here and I didn’t mind. You’re stamina and air meter work as one in the same though and if its deep enough you could theoretically be killed one it runs out as it starts to deplete your health. Overall, the challenge was fair, the twist on the mechanics in water was nice, this boss was a properly done water boss.
8. This was a fun one. The mechanic having a multi floored tower with a smaller boss that comes to you when provoked is a good balance of what they accomplished with the hiding bosses and an element of using your bow kinda like #2 to knock it down off the wall. Having its weakness on its belly is a deceptive thing for a first time player as you go to climb him like the others and then get decimated by his gas bombs which is a new element in itself that immediately takes a lot of health so the player realizes the best option is to flee. On the second floor the bow can be used so naturally the player shoots it from the open spot only to get gassed up here, adding a dangerous amount of depth to this boss’s attacks. To get a better shot however, he climbs to you and eventual the solution becomes clear, hit him from a nearby window to distract him and make him climb there and then while he’s distracted shoot his legs to knock him off. Jumping down is a small hit to your health at times but its necessary as he gets up faster than you’d think. Since he’s a bit smaller though this is reasonable. Two stab points at his underbelly and its notable you have to grip the underbelly to stab. It really takes all the elements 6 tried to a new level, the hiding, the distraction, only it doesn’t do anything with its bad climbing but other bosses have done that much better anyway. All in all this was a nice fight, the level of strategy and depth here may make this my next favorite fight to 2 right now.
9. An elegant callback to the 2 boss fight but bigger, badder, and much more deadly. It even has elements of the previous fight with luring the enemy to the geysers. At that point the fight becomes shoot its slightly exposed legs that are sturdy to knock it on its side and eventually climb the bottom onto the top shell once it flips over. In that light it even mirrors the previous fight by flipping the mechanic that the underside is weak back in its head. Atop it’s a rocky and unstable sprint to the head and it’s pretty simple to take him out all in one shot. His really challenge comes in the luring segments as he’s more agile than you’d think for being the biggest and most daunting colossus yet. He can shoot an array of light bullets down at you from afar and if he’s not near a geyser this could take you out pretty quickly. You have the option to use Agro this fight so you can use him to dodge the bullets but I mostly just rolled out of the way. This is probably my second or third favorite at the moment, I like his scale, his agile yet slow nature, and it was just a good boss fight in general. Also props to this fight for making a callback with the tense music and then the Shadow of Colossus epic tune from the second fight and actually making it feel right as it only plays when you have the upper hand and is not lazily added like in boss 6.
10. This fight is a new take on 7 wherein the difference is this is a sand worm now so you can’t follow him under the ground. But what does this then leave us to presume? Nothing. The pattern is completely random, you have to hit its eyes, when and if it feels like showing them, and wants you to use Agro which to their credit worked ok here. Then when its blinded you just wait for it to bash into any random wall and stab it’s one point until it decides to go back down forcing you to do it again. Waiting is the bane of a player’s existence and so the random elements here as well make this fight needlessly more difficult. The idea is fine but much like the semi solid ground he glides through, the execution here isn’t very intuitive. I literally only knew to shoot the eyes because of the voice. At least the fight mechanics work and the setup of denying your expectations of just grabbing on is fine but it’s rather cryptic after that about what to do. The cues aren’t very clear and the waiting sucks. It’s really not an offensively bad boss at the end of the day, they just give you nothing to work with.
11. This boss is the smallest yet and he’s not really that threatening and instead he’s just annoying. The last guy took you down in a few hits, granted he was huge but still, It’s impossible to lose to this guy. That’s not to say he’s easy though, quite the opposite is true. At first it’s pretty clear once you find him, get the fire scare him off the ledge but then what? What advantage did that give me? Even if he was upside down the mark is on his back. I wouldn’t know because by the time I got down there he was up and rearing to go. This fucker is fast and if he rams you, you get knocked down and take a minimal hit but getting knocked on your ass is horrible in this case because you have to mash triangle for a set time to get up by which time he’s already gonna knock you down immediately again. Remember how waiting sucks? Well it gets worse. If you to finagle him just right and get behind him at a certain angle (what angle is a complete mystery) and actually jump and grab his back (that’s right, when he fell the armor on his back shattered so the fire only did that) you’re treated to more waiting as he flings you around wildly and your weight problems of not being able to establish some ground to stab, a thing that has a wind up so it’s barely doable here, happen about 4 times. This is not only a fundamentally terrible thing to do given that the player has no control over this (as far as I know? Is there a better strategy?) making all this waiting pointless as well as any stab you make totally luck based. The only thing I like about this boss conceptually is that he’s afraid of fire which puts some real character to this creature as you see HIS fear for once rather than your own. It shows emotion other than rage for you and it makes you feel kind of bad for hurting it. Overall, this boss is a bit of a mess but it had potential somewhere I’m sure.
12. This boss was the single most tedious boss so far and hopefully for the entire game. This is because even once you’ve snuck onto his back and hang out there, it takes upward of possibly 10 minutes? I don’t know specifically how long but a very very long, drawn out, sluggishly horrible amount of time for it to get anywhere near a building top of which there are 4 to start. It’s agonizing how long you wait for this thing. About a half hour into the fight, I assume as I have no concept of time when playing it, I may have figured out you can steer in lazily by how you grip the grass on the head but it was unresponsive at times so maybe I was just delusional by that point. And when you finally get to a building top, be sure NOT to grab the clearly patterned legs that are never used for anything else and look like they may lead to the mark as their the emphasized part which is generally by this game’s logic where you climb as their a giant misdirector to . No instead grab a tuft of grass on his chest. Now I know what you’re “Jon just use the sword to check out where the stab point is!” but no, that’s not what any sane person would do because he’s firing at you constantly. And again once you are finally able to hit him after all that bullshit and about 15-20 minutes of solid waiting, you only get in one or two stabs before he throws you off, regardless of time as its not timed, its segmented to make you wait at least twice if not three rounds like me. This fight took an eternity and to me that’s terrible game design. Games are about fun and ones like this I get it are about the experience of fighting these enormous colossi and I love those parts but bosses like this are tedious padding that could be so much tighter. Again maybe I’m an idiot and there’s an easier solution but I’m playing this game blind, without help because I want that experience of feeling out how horrible or brilliant I think the designs to some of these scenarios are along with getting to the solution myself. There’s simply no reason to make a player wait this long. A minute or so for the scenario to change or for the player to see their opening is fine but this crosses a fine line. If I’m not attacking or doing anything but holding on that entire time then don’t waste my time. The idea was fine but the implementation of several minutes of waiting is an atrocious gaming sin.
13. This boss is a combination of 5 and 10 though it worked significantly better in the more open environment as it gave me room to move freely on Agro rather than get distracted by objects and pillars though notably there is a bit of that. The only other annoyances here are the third round where the bags become hard to hit due to it flying higher and the fact that it takes to going underground to knock you off itself which by this point has become an obvious intentional design choice so it’s a rather mood point. The weakness, the bags beneath it filled with air, is clear and concise, no confusion here and the climb point is obviously the wings as they start to drag. Catching up to it with Agro can be challenging but often times its easier to find its flight pattern an take a sharp turn to cut him off. Also the use of Agro and bow here is well implemented. The stab spot are often hidden under flaps that open when its flying and the wind is pushing against them which is a nice touch. It’s also cool that you find this boss by running over an irregular structure at which you pass it hope of collectables. This rewards a player for being in an explorative mindset such as myself as every time I see a structure the game has programmed me to stop and find the white tailed lizard. Overall it’s a nice boss. Coming off of 12 and its very disheartening experience, it’s great to see the game pick up again.
14. I like this boss but figuring out what to do initially gave me some trouble. The pattern of what you have to do, getting it to knock down towers, isn’t entirely intuitive so the first few rounds will be the player backed in a corner getting hit and not being able to escape until you die. However, the trenches are nice to back the enemy off and once you do figure it out, no thanks to the cryptic hint telling you climb a tower which is inconceivable at first, it’s pretty much a breeze. It just doesn’t really make a lot of sense until the final tower falls and while I think the use of environmental objects to defeat him is awesome, the presentation of these objects aren’t too clear at first. After you take a ton of time to get through that by always hitting with the bow the second time, which is stupid because it already knows you’re up there, all that’s left to do is to hit the exposed stab point after it knocks into a fallen pillar. All in all this is what 11 should have been and its almost questionable that out of the other scrapped 16 collosi that they thought 11 and 12 were the best choices. But hey, this was an alright boss and at least there’s nothing very bad about it once you know what to do.
15. This boss is very tedious. He’s cool yes and very functional in most regards. At first it was even a lot of mechanics of previous bosses and the whole lifting the panel with his foot and hitting a forward path is fine but then if you fall at any point all these steps become incredibly tedious after a while. Not only that but waiting for him to slowly trudge over to you, lift the panel, and getting back to the bridge that currently works (he seems to be partial to certain ones regarding how many hits you’ve gotten) is incredibly tedious. He shakes around a lot too once you finally jump off, making sure he’s close enough or you’ll have to DO IT ALL AGAIN, and reach his head but it’s a lot better than 11 who never stopped shaking. At least this boss gives you an occasional chance. The second part is very tricky and requires a lot of more tedium to accomplish unless you’re a master. Basically repeat everything above but then stab a point on his arm to make him drop his weapon. Alright, then continue to trek downward to his palm. At this point your very close to the ground so make one mistake and there’s no coming back, you start from the ground and need to go all the way back up and around again. If you manage to grab his furry palm then stabbing it isn’t too hard and that’s it. I don’t really hate this boss but the gimmick utterly ruins any chance this boss had to shine. The waiting and climbing destroy all sense of hype about this giant penultimate beast. In concept its good but the punishment is just too steep.
16. The final colossus and the mood is set dim from the start. Rain starts immediately and the music is a somber piece for the events that unfolded moments before. As you approach what is the largest colossus yet, what can only be described as a giant tower creature, the best sense of scale wafts over you for all of a cutscene and then an onslaught of energy shots, this boss’s only attack, fire down at you. This first third of the fight is simply getting to him but with that knock down function and the mashing to get up this part is challenging. There are barriers set up to allow you cover and rolling between them at just the right time will lead you to a hole which leads to a tunnel. A few more of these (the last one is a bit of a struggle) and you’ll make it to the base. At this point the enemy stops attacking and all you have to do is climb. During this second part, the climbing section, falling will result in some frusturation but really very minimal as this time the boss isn’t what is dictating your forward progression like 15 and so many tedious times before rather YOU are in control thus your punishments are severe yet not tedious which a good thing and is good game design. Eventually at the middle you’ll reach a stab point on its back which does a set amount of minimal damage and is rather used to lure its hand back so you can grab it. Once it’s swung back around, the arm climbing isn’t too hard once you’ve got a clear angle at which to get it but waiting for this can be a bit agonizing as he twists his hands constantly. Once you’ve made it mid arm, a second minimal damage stab point is there. The opposite arm will swing in once it’s stabbed leading to an arm you cannot climb thanks to energy pulses surrounding it. If you can make the tricky jump to the chest plate in front of his face, that’s it you’ve made it to the final part. All that’s left is to climb the small path to the head and stab until he’s gone. He’s a bit shaky sure but at least there’s obvious intervals by which to stab. While climbing I thought to myself, “Man, this is a fitting conclusion to all the mechanics, the climbing, the bits of platforming with the hands, locating the stab point, it’s all the natural progression and perfect refinement of near all the problems and mechanics of the other fights.” And it’s true. The final boss is easy and is only hard if you fall or fail to jump a section. Admittedly it will happen on a few occasions thanks to a few minor flaws in this game such as the semi awkward jumps at times or not truly meaning to jump as far as you did but hey, Uncharted had the same problems and this was a lot earlier than that. Given it was namely only on a few occasions it wasn’t truly my fault, this fight is a good one, referring to and refining mechanics from many previous fights and putting the player to one last test.
Just as a final note I want to mention the game’s atheistic presentation once more as the world and graphics are very beautiful and all the various areas feel very distinct. It’s almost a big, expansive open world you can explore at your leisure in between bosses and the shrines and trees were always exciting and rewarding to seek out. Some would say its barren but that immersive quality is sort of the point. Most of the colossi also look very unique.
The music and use of mostly during boss fights and how it generally shifted when you were on point to the weak spot was a brilliant touch. Also the piercing stab was a great sound effect to compliment the very physical stab which the player really feels. In the overworld music is not abundant and is nearly nonexistent which is fine and adds to the ambience of the world.
The story isn’t much of one at all, it’s mostly left to interpretation. Aside from wanting to resurrect your girl by killing the 16 bosses not much else is established except at the end there’s a little more to make things even more confusing. Certain moments can touch unsuspecting gamers but the lack of emphasis on it helps immerse the player so they can make their own loose context much like Zelda 1 on NES.
If it wasn’t completely obvious at this point it’s the gameplay and its mechanics where this game shines ultimately. The puzzle like bosses where you need to use all your preestablished notions (sometimes even bullshit that’s unclear) to make it through. Overall 11/16 are good to excellent in my opinion leaving only 5 that I really didn’t care for mostly due to those fights being extremely slow.
All in all the experience this game is is certainly a very unique one and for the most part is excellent. While some bosses are slow, the rest are unique and interesting tests of different game design elements. Hell even the failure often had some decent ides behind them that were just executed poorly. I think the sparingly used music is awesome as well and the world feels vibrant, dense, like a place you just love to explore. Undeniably Shadow of the Colossus is a true classic and stands well in its spotlight. Despite the minor to major flaws in some combat, I really enjoyed myself for the most part. My final rating for this game is an 8.6/10.i
