Shadow of the Colossus is a remake of the original game from the PlayStation 2. It is done by Bluepoint Games, who has done wonderful remasters up until this game. It is a faithful remake of the game, although this is also a bad thing in that it has kept a lot of the frustrations and annoyances of the original. The story is simple, you play as Wander, who enters the Forbidden Lands in the hopes of resurrecting his love. Dormin, the sealed entity in this empty land, can retrieve her soul but in exchange, they require Wander to defeat the 16 colossi roaming the land. Wander sets out with his trust horse, Agro, and his sword.
The remake has added a ton of detail, and this can make the story cutscenes seem like they are revealing more. The bulk of the story cutscenes happen at the beginning and the end of the game. Despite that, the game and its world have a very mysterious charm to it that sucks you in. The mystique of each colossus when you find it, and the sadness that comes of killing such large and majestic creatures, despite no dialogue and limited exposure, is one of the most impressive parts of the game. You constantly wonder what the nature of the colossi are, and how these Forbidden Lands came to be. It’s left up to your imagination though since the game’s story is not intended to reveal everything.
The controls are improved compared to the original game, but you can still play with the original’s control scheme. Even though it is improved, there are still many elements to it that feels clunky and archaic. Wander can feel a bit slippery to control. He knows all the moves that are required to defeat each colossus from the very beginning. Wander carries a sword and a bow for offense. The bow is mapped to the shoulder button rather than the trigger. Climbing requires you to hold down the trigger button, which can take a bit of getting used to given most games nowadays has the character automatically grabbing onto things.
Riding Agro is probably the worst aspect of the controls thanks to the handling. You don’t control Agro, rather, you control Wander holding the reins. Basically, you use the analogue stick to move the reins rather than Agro itself, and you need to keep tapping or holding the triangle button to speed Agro up. Agro has her own pathfinding too, and the game doesn’t properly explain a lot of this. Horse riding was intentionally implemented in this specific way, but it just lends to a frustrating experience when Agro randomly heads towards an obstacle and instantly slows down. Or the way that there are several sections where Agro is forced to walk at an agonizingly slow pace.
However, the most frustrating aspect of the game is the camera. It will automatically pan and move. In theory, it is supposed to give an epic and cinematic feel to the game. In actuality, you will be constantly fighting the camera. This is because you might want to focus or keep something in frame, such as part of the environment when trying to the fruits that extends your health bar, but it will force itself to move behind Wander to face the direction he’s in. This is a terrible thing to endure through the whole game with. The only slight saving grace is that you can hold down the trigger button to force the camera to face the colossus, but this is not a preferred solution.
The gameplay loop consists only of Wander heading to the lair of the next colossus and then facing it. Each colossus is more of a puzzle, where you need to figure out how to climb onto its, find its weak points, and then stab those weak points. The climbing mechanic is important here. Once you’re on the colossus, it will move and shake itself to try and get rid of Wander. This is where the epic moments are, with Wander climbing on top of a giant colossus, the rousing orchestral music playing, and the colossus trying its hardest to shake Wander off.
It’s not all positive though given that many of the original game’s faults are still here. There are the aforementioned camera issues. The other issue is the colossus AI. The puzzle aspect of figuring out how to defeat each colossus is good, what is not good is that even if you’ve figured it out on how to defeat it, triggering those specific moments can be difficult. You might want the colossus to swing its weapon down or crouch down, but it won’t do that for minutes at a time and you’re left running about trying to trigger that movement. It’s not fun when this happens. The controls are slippery, like the original, so running and jumping can seem off and sloppy. Wander is a clumsy fellow as he easily trips and falls over anything and everything.
There are a scant few extra things to do apart from finding and defeating colossus. The Forbidden lands are nearly devoid of life, only some small wildlife remains. It is a vast empty space and that’s the whole point. There are shrines that are scattered across the lands, these used to be places to save in the original game, but since the remake now has autosaving and manual save anywhere, these shrines only act as collectables. You can try to find fruit and lizards to increase your stamina and health. Stamina is required to be able to climb and hold onto things for longer, so it is beneficial.
It is a short game even if you are a newcomer. It’ll take around five to six hours to complete and a lot of that is getting lost on the map trying to find the entrance to the next colossus. Your sword only points in the general direction of the next colossus, but you might need to find a specific path to get there. This is yet another annoyance of the game’s minimalistic design. The game isn’t bad, it’s just that it hasn’t aged as gracefully as it could and feels like it is stuck in a bygone era. The interesting thing are that the massively improved graphics removed some of the mysterious atmosphere of the original.
Given that each colossus is a puzzle in and of itself, the game doesn’t have much replay value. It tends to force you to repeat the same things to get the colossus to reveal its weak point so that you can attack it again. Once you’ve finished the game, you are forced to restart on a new game or new game plus, so if you didn’t already have a manual save before the last colossus, then you cannot explore the world at your leisure afterwards. The game has a few things for you to do but as the whole game is just fighting the colossus, that’s what all the extra content involves. You have three difficulties, and then you have time trials. The major sidequest, if it can be called that, is to max out Wander’s stamina so that he can climb to the top of the large shrine. The game has some nice bonus unlockable artworks though.
Overall, Shadow of the Colossus, for better or worse, is an extremely faithful remake of the original game. It basically just upgraded the graphics so that it looks phenomenal but retained everything else. Unfortunately, this also means that it is stuck with controls that are over a decade old and thus feels extremely clunky at this point. The colossi are still impressive, but there are some that are implemented well, and others that are not. It feels that there is artificial difficulty as you end up fighting the controls as much as you are fighting the colossus. It is still an impressive game but perhaps one that has a lot of baggage and expectations to live up to, and as games have progressed astronomically since its original release, it is not as impressive as it once was. It’s still worth experiencing but be prepared for some flaws.
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