Shadow of the Colossus - Defeated the fifteenth colossus

I actually managed this feat on Tuesday night, but was tired and have been too busy to blog about it.

This is one of those games that gives you so much enjoyment that you can totally overlook its few flaws. I encountered one of them while fighting the fifteenth (and so second-to-last) colossus. I figured out how to defeat him long before I could actually pull it off.

Defeating each colossus, when properly done, is like a combination of action and puzzle solving. You have to figure out what you need to do to get to its week spot (or to even get it to reveal its weak spot). Once you have that figured out, you have to perform the correct actions needed to do this. Usually, it is not that difficult to perform to actions. It requires skill and reflex, but if you mess up, you can usually get it the next time. Some collosi are more action-oriented, but that has generally worked well; the sandworm colossus was largely about getting the timing of shooting him right while running away fast enough and that worked extremely well.

The fifteenth colossus had a decent puzzle solving aspect of figuring out how to get high enough so that you could jump onto him and be able to hold on. And it had a nice twist of having a second weak spot you had to find and hit to finish him. The problem is that getting to that second weak spot was so tedious. You needed to seemingly jump and move at the right time, but it wasn't at all obvious what the right time was. And then once you finally made it close enough, being able to grab on to stab the weak spot was frustrating because you could just jump and grab on. If you made any mistake while doing this, you feel to the ground and had to climb all the way up to the top of the building again.

Oh well, two (or maybe three) negative experiences out of fifteen so far isn't a bad ratio. Next time: The final colossus and the end of the game.