In the distant past, there was once a young man who went on an adventure to the very edge of the world, where it was said that no one was allowed to set foot. He is carrying the body of a young woman who perished as a result of a dreadful curse. He is on the lookout for the Dormin, a peculiar person who inhabits that location and resembles God. The Dormin is taken aback by the fact that the man wields an ancient and magical blade, and he initiates a conversation with the man. The mortal law states that a deceased person’s soul cannot be brought back to life, thus the being responds by telling the man that he cannot assist him in resurrecting the soul of the woman who was cursed. However, he does mention that there may be a method to bring her back to life—but only if the man is willing to suffer a great deal as a price for doing so. However, this will not be a simple task.
The hero is obligated to set out on a mission to eliminate sixteen colossi, which are monstrous beings that soar several hundred feet above the surface of the planet. In order to save the woman he loves, he will need to go across the vast landscape with his old sword and on the back of his horse Agro in search of the colossi. These colossi are strong and dangerous, taking the form of a variety of animals or bipedal creatures that resemble humans. Their skin is even more resilient than leather, and the armor that they wear is made of real rock. The man, however, is able to slay the towering entities and save the soul of the woman he loves by penetrating their vulnerable point with his antique sword and destroying it.
ICO takes place in the same universe as Shadow of the Colossus, which means that it is a precursor to ICO. The entirety of the game is devoted to tracking down and engaging in combat with the game’s sixteen colossi, each of which must be confronted and vanquished in a specific order. The hero must saddle his horse and travel around the world’s enormous landscapes, utilizing his luminous sword as an indicator of the colossus’ closeness while he searches for the giant monsters. This is not always a simple task. Outside of the colossi fights, there are no foes or dangers to be found anywhere in the game world. After the discovery of a colossus, a fight of massive proportions breaks out. The majority of the colossi are quite large, and a significant portion of the difficulty in the encounters comes from the fact that the player character must climb on top of these monsters and remain there as they attempt to knock them off. In a sense, the colossi serve the purpose of being enemy platform stages that move around.
Reaching the colossus’s vulnerable spot and continuously stabbing it with the sword until it is killed is the overarching objective of each and every fight. As a result of the colossi’s wide range in form, size, speed, intelligence, and attitude toward the hero, the player will need to learn to adjust their combat technique to a variety of guises and apply a variety of strategies in order to defeat them. The majority of the fights consist of drawn-out platform action scenes, with the protagonist attempting to scale the colossus in order to locate its vulnerable place. Getting a firm grip on the creature’s fur, perfectly timing your jumps, and positioning yourself in such a way that you can effectively utilize the sword are frequently required. Other strategies include engaging the colossus in combat while mounted on a horse, employing long-range strikes with a bow, luring it into certain spots so that you can utilize the environment against it, taking advantage of the terrain, and so on. The settings of the combat themselves are just as diverse, taking place in a wide variety of locations, such as mountains, deserts, lakes, and even ancient ruins.
