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/svidya/ is a strict /v/ alternative for moderated vidya discussion. This Board wasn't intended to replace /v/ but to aid Anon's in having vidya discussions with zero shitposters. Thanks for adding /svidya/ to /v/'s recommended boards, Mark.

File: 1427470757413.jpg (44.14 KB, 351x500, 351:500, Ico_cover_-_EU JP.jpg)

8a1994 No.8036

I was playing this, but honestly it seems like it's incredibly overrated. I dropped it after about two hours because I was bored to tears with some of it's gameplay. Can someone tell me if I'm just playing it wrong, or argue for this? I'm sure someone can since Ico has always been called a great game or a masterpiece.

I don't have any complaint about the graphics or the environment, save that it felt like the rooms were too empty and were huge for the sake of being huge. This makes combat even worse, which is the real meant of my complaint later on. The music is fine, but nothing to write home about outside of some genuinely weird choices for the saving and loading screen. It sounds like something from a bitgen song you'd hear while installing a pirated game. Though I was playing the HD remaster, so maybe that's it? Story is virtually nonexistant. I assume it fleshes it out at the end, but as it stands I'm given really nothing to care about other than getting Ico out of the castle. But that's just how team ico games play, and I enjoyed Colossus when I played it years ago, so whatever it is what it is. The AI for Yorda is all over the place. She stays still when I call for her sometimes, and when I want her to stay put she'll follow me. Considering Ico is a handholding simulator, that's an annoying problem.

My real complaint is combat. At first I thought it was something meant to be avoided. You weren't supposed to fight these shadow-demon things. It made sense, because it's godawful. Hit a demon that gets close to Yorda about three times, and try to avoid getting hit from behind by another one. If you do get hit, watch Ico roll around on the ground for 3-5 seconds, run to the other side of the huge room, keep Yorda from dying, rinse and repeat for what feels like an eternity because you do absolutely no damage to these things. So all that given, I felt like combat was meant to be avoided. Until the game proved me wrong in the Graveyard. You have to clear out the demons so Yorda can stand on a platform, letting you into the next room. So you fight the demons (and the terrible camera controls) for several minutes, and then fight with Yorda's AI to get her to stay on the block so you can get through the door. Then after solving an easy puzzle (another complaint of mine is that all the puzzles are easy), bring Yorda into the room and… fight more demons that you can't run past. At that point I dropped the game.

So /svidya/, please tell me why this game is supposed to be a classic? Am I doing something wrong here? As it stands, I'm only going to come away from this experience with thinking Ico is overrated as all hell.

b7c854 No.8041

>A little boy with a stick with no fighting experience doesn't know how to fucking fight

>A puzzle game isn't fast paced and action based

>Wah wah this vidya doesn't appeal to me like DmC did.

b09627 No.8042

It is a good game, but it's not -great-. It's more about the atmosphere and setting than anything else. Gameplay is pretty meh though as you've no doubt realized. A lot of its points were a result of pretentiousness. It's 7/10 at best, 8/10 if you can appreciate this kind of game.

Go give Shadow of the Colossus a play instead, it's much more entertaining than Ico.

8a1994 No.8062

>>8041
Did you actually read what I wrote? Because you seem like you don't understand my actual complaints about the gameplay.

>>8042
I did play SotC when it first released, and loved the hell out of it. Felt like it did everything Ico attempts at but much better, even puzzles when you consider that every Colossi were a puzzle themselves on how to get to their weak points and stay there. But glad to see I wasn't wildly off-base.

44ae10 No.8085

>>8036
Ico's gameplay is pretty mediocre in itself.
The animations were impressive at the time and for being on the PS2 and the atmosphere was enjoyed by many.

It's not really overrated, though. Most people, who actually played it, would agree that it's alltogether mediocre at best, save for the atmosphere maybe.

Pretty much nobody gave a toss about Ico when it came out, as can be seen from the low sale numbers, despite generally favourable reviews.
Graphics and enviroment were nice but it's still a giant escort mission with mostly nothing happening with basic platforming and terrible combat.

It's cult status was archieved only after the big success Shadow of the Colossus had.
Suddenly, hipsters smelled the newest opportunity to be extra pretentious by pretending to have loved the previous, oh so mistaken masterpiece by the studio, scoffing at those who didn't play it before SotC.

The tiny minority who actually loved Ico for what it was got quickly drowned out by the hipster drones, who often haven't even played Ico themselves, that would proclaim Ico to be an absolute masterpiece and any who didn't agree as a CoD-kiddie - or DmC-kiddie, as displayed by that faggot higher above.

It's one of those games everyone claimes to love, yet nobody actually played, like Psychonauts or Beyond Good & Evil.
That's exaggerated but you get the point.

5470f2 No.8093

>>8085
Perhaps it's because I don't pay attention to those sort of hipsters you mentioned but I usually find most people give a huge amount of praise on SotC and view Ico as the devs on the road to making the perfection that is SotC (which they like to wank over as video games are art, and so on).

I liked Ico more than SotC - even though SotC has a lot more going for it, I just prefer Ico - but it's no masterpiece. Like I said, I've never seen anybody who has claimed it is (not saying those sort don't exist but I can't imagine their arguments - it's a flawed but charming game imo).

44ae10 No.8123

>>8093
> I usually find most people give a huge amount of praise on SotC and view Ico as the devs on the road to making the perfection that is SotC

That's why I said Ico isn't actually overrated by people who actually played it and that SotC brought along a large wave of people praising Ico in hindsight as a master piece.
Seeing how OP states that
>Ico has always been called a great game or a masterpiece
I'm apparently not the only one having heard such claims multiple times.

> I've never seen anybody who has claimed it is (not saying those sort don't exist but I can't imagine their arguments

There are usually no arguments being made. It's mostly just dumb stuff like stating how combat being bad would be OK because you play as "a little boy with a stick with no fighting experience" when Link could be called the same.
Or implying one must be a moron with a short attention span to dislike the game or just don't love it.
Or implying puzzle games can't be fast and action based when Tetris proves that wrong.

60df2d No.8146

You've convinced me, OP. Although I still love Ico, the first time I played it I ended up tossing it on the shelf shortly in out of boredom, the combat does suck, I don't know if the puzzles are easy or not, I just can't remember. But the story and atmosphere are both great, although the story is what you're doing in the game and not anything that's being told to you.

And in that sense, I think Ico is great. At least for me, that was the first game that ever just made me the happening that I had played. But yeah, reduced to it's game parts, none of them are anything all that great.

9ee167 No.8489

How crazy is it that this thread is made a day after I finished this game. >>8146 described it best that it's not really that great when you reduce it's parts, but it's decent put together.

I think most people praise it for it's lack of story. As in it's up to the player to interpret the story on his own.

I also want to take this moment to mention how creepy it was to see all those horned kids dancing around a petrified Yorda. For some reason, that, of all things, spooked me the hell out.

60df2d No.8526

>>8489
Shit, I totally don't remember that. I'm gonna have to play through it soon.

5470f2 No.8583

>>8123
>There are usually no arguments being made.
Oh, it's one of those things.

I can see their arguments for the combat being bad because of Ico not being a fighter, but having the MC being a poor fighter doesn't mean the combat itself has to be bad (I didn't think the combat was bad, but I never thought about it).

>>8489
>As in it's up to the player to interpret the story on his own.
Most of it's clear cut though - only a few 'why is X' unleft. The non-canon book has explanations for a lot of things.

b12e07 No.8706

YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>8036
>it felt like the rooms were too empty and were huge for the sake of being huge
That's the point. You're in an abandoned castle where the villagers leave sacrifices. The scale and emptiness of the rooms are meant to re-enforce the idea of isolation and a big, scary world.
>The music is fine, but nothing to write home about outside of some genuinely weird choices for the saving and loading screen. It sounds like something from a bitgen song you'd hear while installing a pirated game
Never noticed any problem with the music, and it's intentionally minimal.
>Story is virtually nonexistant
That's the point.
>as it stands I'm given really nothing to care about other than getting Ico out of the castle
That's the point.
>The AI for Yorda is all over the place. She stays still when I call for her sometimes, and when I want her to stay put she'll follow me
I never encountered any problems with Yorda's AI. She was slow to pathfind her way to some places, but that was it. I believe that if you want her to stay someplace, you hold her hand to guide her and if you want her to follow you, you call her, but I may be misremembering it.
>the combat's godawful
That's the point. The combat is not the focus of the game, the monsters are much stronger than Ico, and he's a kid. You beat the monsters through perseverance, not strength, which ties in with the story. You also get a sword later, which you would have known if you had kept playing.
>If you do get hit, watch Ico roll around on the ground for 3-5 seconds
>So you fight the demons (and the terrible camera controls) for several minutes
>fight with Yorda's AI to get her to stay on the block
Vid related. None of these statements seem to be true. And if the combat sequences were less difficult (not that they are very difficult, from my memory), then you wouldn't feel as though Yorda or Ico were actually in danger. The demon attacks also become less frequent, if memory serves - there are a lot of demons after you meet Yorda's mother, but then they need to rest before coming after you again.
>another complaint of mine is that all the puzzles are easy
They get tougher later on. You would have seen that if you had kept playing.Sorry to give you a hard time, I just don't understand why people don't finish games in situations like these. It makes you sound impatient. Surely you would want to see everything a game has to offer before dismissing it, right? The only games I haven't finished were AC: Revelations (carbon copy of Brotherhood but worse) and Catherine (I was too bad at puzzles when I first played it, and the writing was bad).

>Am I doing something wrong here?
From your description, it seems like you went into it with the attitude of WELL ALRIGHT PERFECT VIDEO GAME, YOU'D BETTER IMPRESS ME and then got upset when it didn't control like silk. If I had to give you suggestions to improve your experience:
>Appreciate the environments more. Ico has a great sense of empty beauty to it.
>Put some effort into playing like you're in Ico's shoes (checking on Yorda when you leave her alone, for instance). I never had any trouble getting immersed, but you sound like you may need to try at it more.
>Give the game more of a chance, since it is quite long.
>Appreciate the hand-animated animations and lighting (this was released in 2001, remember).

Does that help?

e90621 No.8729

>>8706
>Surely you would want to see everything a game has to offer before dismissing it, right?

That is not neccessary to determine wether one likes a game or not.

>the combat's godawful
>That's the point. The combat is not the focus of the game, the monsters are much stronger than Ico, and he's a kid. You beat the monsters through perseverance, not strength, which ties in with the story.

Unless you want to discourage the player to engage in combat it should never be terrible.
You can not avoid combat and due to the enemies being almost completely harmless combat feels like a chore that you just have to deal with sometimes.

I know that there are story reasons for both of my complaints but that just means that gameplay was intentionally bad for story telling purposes or bad gameplay is being explained away 'cuz reasons.
That's really the root of my dislike of the game: It's style over substance game-making.

If you happen to love that style I can see you liking that game. For me, the atmosphere and story alone aren't enoug to elevate Ico from it's mediocre gameplay.

8edd60 No.8737

>>8729

I feel the same way. I don't really care if something is "meant" to be terrible because of story reasons, it's still no excuse.

5470f2 No.8751

>>8706
>You also get a sword later
There's also the mace which always felt rather silly to me.

718399 No.8753

>>8737
>story reasons

You mean gameplay reasons? In Thief, Garrett is purposefully a sack of shit and can't fight to save his life. You're discouraged from fighting.

With Ico, I don't know. I like that game cause everything feels like a struggle, but sometimes even trying to climb somewhere is a hassle in and of itself.

SotC did it better cause it made the struggle more appropriate. You would get your ass knocked down and lay there for a while cause you're getting your shit kicked in by things much more powerful than you, Agro was a cunt to control cause he/she is an animal, the Colossi would do the jitterbug and make it a pain in the ass to stab their faggoty faces in, etc.

Some people don't like SotC cause of the similar problems that people are saying they have with Ico. Ico's combat makes sense cause Ico is a child. Likewise, Wander falls down every five fucking seconds cause the Colossi are strong and powerful. You'll either love it or hate it.

Though since Ico is a kid, why isn't there a hiding type mechanic or something? I don't know. Unless you get into story speculation, I can't think of any reason why you're forced to fight. Only thing I can think of is Ico's need to protect Yorda, but that doesn't answer as to why they couldn't have just both hid in a closet or something.

And yes, the camera is awful.

5470f2 No.8772

>>8753
The monsters know where Yorda is. So they'd just find her.

9ee167 No.8785

>>8526
Once you get the Queen's Blade and go back to the room where Ico was going to be sacrificed, adjust the shitty camera towards the shadows before getting too close to them. I'm not really sure what they were doing, but it looked like dancing to me.

>>8583
Where can I find said book?

2517ef No.8792

>>8085
good review

5470f2 No.8870

>>8785
>Where can I find said book?
A place that sells books - Amazon will have it. It got localised.

bfaf21 No.13954

I still need to play this game. I enjoyed MathewMatosis's video on it.

1f9c35 No.14004

>>13954
>watching matt's videos before playing the games yourself
But why, anon?

9435a7 No.16030

File: 1430508434892.webm (323.57 KB, 480x360, 4:3, Sonic Boom.webm)

Oh boy. Take everything I say with a grain of salt because I beat my first run last night with an 8 hour time and I missed the secret weapon

>I was bored to tears

Puzzle games are not for you then.

>I don't have any complaint about the graphics and the environment

As well you shouldn't; this is graphically better than most games made today I feel.

>save that it felt like the rooms were too empty

>and were huge for the sake of being huge

The large area was to fit as many pieces of a puzzle as they could into a small area; those areas felt really small to me because of how well they fit everything into the big space. The courtyard leading to the main gate area was a bit long and the room before that with those big stairs and the graves felt a bit large to walk all the way around just to get from A to B, but the really big areas are designed with enemies in mind; if the room was too small rescuing yorda would be a breeze and if the room was a bit larger rescuing her would be a trial; I feel like every room managed to pull of a size that felt just as long as it should.

>the music is fine

Music is one of the most subjective artforms so music being good or bad is just a matter of tastes

>story is virtually nonexistant

I'm not a fan of big stories where you have to think a lot to find the underlying themes, but how can you not understand how much of a story there is? 98% of the story is up to interpretation and the 2% you have is, "horned boys are taken from the village to go into these stone vessels, this girl is trapped in this place obviously, and she is the daughter of this queen lady who wants to stay immortal by using yorda to be reincarnated." I tried really hard to leave out all the the interpretation stuff because the interpretation comes in when you start thinking. "Yorda is trapped here because she doesn't want to be the incarnation of this queen, the queen was using the horned boys' souls to fuse to yorda to transfer the queen's soul over to yorda's body to become the new queen, or she was just corrupting yorda into the new queen in order to make yorda the soul successor, kind of like king piccolo and piccolo jr. and how piccolo jr. was clearly a new person but had retained king piccolo's memories and abilities." And that's just interpretation over the whole yorda and the queen shit.

>it fleshes out near the end

no, you still need to interpret a great deal if we're talking about shit that is directly told to you through spoken word.

>I'm given really nothing to care about other than getting ico out

Yes, that's literally the whole point; get out of the castle. Do you want a fucking cookie too?

>the ai for yorda is all over the place

I didn't have this problem because I always held yorda's hand and when she needed to come to me she came to me. I noticed as the game went on yorda was more willing to make jumps on her own if you were right across the way rather than having to hold your hand out for her any more. I still did of course because my waifu but still

>my real complaint is combat

>I thought it was something to be avoided

well you were wrong.

>you do absolutely no damage to these things

I think that was the point but being a brutal murderer like me I just kept beating them until they didn't get back up, which was more tedious when I had to redo a part because I fell down too far from making a jump with my poor keyboard key aim than annoying with how they were spaced out. When you get the sword it becomes even easier but the battles also become less frequent because the devs thought, "Well at this point the player is going to understand what to do about enemies and we don't want to give the player too much or too little, so just have a wave come after every puzzle is completed instead and maybe a few big battles when they're in key areas."

also I mashed every button when I was down so I got back up in like 2 seconds every time after the 5th time I was knocked down.

Cont.


9435a7 No.16031

>>16030

cont.

>so you fight demons and terrible camera controls

the camera is perfect where it is, if you move the camera it's to look around at the area for a puzzle. If you tried spinning the camera during combat you're just wrong for trying that more than once.

>fight with yorda's ai to make her stay on the platform

>hold her hand

>walk onto the platform until it is completely pressed in

>let go of her hand

>walk out

she will not follow you now

>after solving another easy puzzle

the puzzles are really just all "How do I make a path for yorda from here to there." The game becomes a lot harder when you lose yorda because you are forced to just get around an area, and because they can just make a platforming section that's as hard as they like at that point, they do not hesitate with it.

>am I doing something wrong

You don't enjoy the game, it's just not for you I guess. I enjoy it thoroughly and I can see the flaws in the game, but I will still say it's a masterpiece with how great a game was made of so little. It's the only escort quest that is actually fun and I didn't have to fight with the AI at all except for one time when yorda was climbing a ladder and she refused to come all the way down, so I walked out of the room, let her get caught and taken down, and beat away enemies that had come for her to get back on my way. The enemies can be understandably frustrating, but once you force them to bring the fight to you, you make it a lot easier since hitting them stuns them a bit, and doing a third strike on a combo or jump slashing knocks them down for you to take advantage of it.

All in all, I had no problems with the actual game but maybe I need to take a step back after a week to see the cracks. Some of the puzzles are really unclear, but most of them are simple enough that it took me very little time to work through them.

I'll give you a flood post, you piece of shit



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