I was always curious about Team Ico and Fumito Ueda's highly praised trilogy, but truthfully what finally did it was hearing that my favourite creative director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, played Ico and was inspired to give up his day job to pursue games after it.

Ico is a platform adventure game in which you play the titular young Ico, who is left to rot in a castle for being born with horns. Instead of rotting away, you find a weird magic girl (Yorda) and go off on a quest to escape the wretched castle you're in, with evil forces attempting to stop you.

Reading up on it, it's fascinating to see what things this game revolutionised, light functions that didn't exist before Ico, the team's creative 'subtracting design' to keep the player's path focused, and the incredibly clever level designs & area puzzles. This game has inspired almost every major and minor game that came after it, and it's so easy to see why. It feels like there's a clear historical divide of pre-Ico games and post-Ico games, shaped by its world-changing innovations and creativity.

The game is incredibly charming in spite of its minimal narrative and dialogue. The feeling that courses through you when you discover a new path or solve a puzzle is like no other, and the castle's world feels incredibly vast and complex for a game that's 23 years old.

Ofc the game is imperfect (which feels like mostly part of an inevitable obstacle in hardware limitations that the developers had to deal with). There are moments where the jankiness leads you astray from obvious solutions for needless amounts of time, or enemy fights get very repetitive. But for a <10 hour game it's not only forgivable, but a contributing factor to its raw charm and underdog spirit.

Ico has fully got me on board for its successors. On to Shadow of the Colossus and the Last Guardian!

imagina jogar isso aqui em 2001 pqp

Ico é uma pedrada atemporal, msm com os controles meio estranhos e a câmera extremamente duvidosa, esse jogo ainda é um absurdo e provavelmente sempre será

a ambientação, as músicas (PQP AS MÚSICAS SAO UM ABSURDO), os personagens, juntos compõem uma peça muito única, o que é padrão nós jogos do Ueda, assim como SOTC, não existe nada como isso aqui

esse jogo é especial, um jogo que, apesar de não ser super desconhecido e underground, nem de longe recebe o reconhecimento que merece

os cara tavam pensando muito na frente fazendo isso aqui, criaram um marco pra épocas deles e uma referência para o que veio depois, simplesmente incrível

PS: o que fizeram com a capa estadunidense disso é passível de prisão perpétua

I was so excited to try this one after playing Shadow of the Colossus. The art is amazing and the cover of this game is one of the most beautiful that I've seen for the PS2 (the surrealist one).

There's not much to do or to explore and the battles are extremely repetitive and boring. In terms of combat, it was similar to The Last Guardian and that was one of the things that I didn't like in the latter.

The game is short and the plot gives you this magical sensation, although it's not explained. It's not a bad game but I didn't find it good either. Like I said, it felt very repetitive (both in terms of playability and physical areas)

Finally got around to fully finishing the game for myself and its still the masterpiece i remember it being years ago.
I think its pretty easy to compare games like Ico to newer games but considering the time it came out and its influence on gaming as a whole i think forgetting about how much games have changed should be taken into consideration while playing something like this
Its not often i cry at a game but damn


wish they used the other game cover for this site though

The North American cover-art is the visual antithesis to the sheer quality I precieve of this particular game.

It's a simple, haunting story about a cursed boy, whom is controlled by the player, that is forced to be a sacrificial lamb, only to free himself and later free a glowing girl that speaks an entirely different language from him.

It's a simple, haunting game where the two travel through the ruins and structures, navigating treacherous and perilous environments, solving ancient puzzles that lock their exits, and fight back against shadow beings that seek to spirit away the girl the player character freed.

It's a simple, haunting theme about a growing bond of friendship beyond language, and the power of trust and determination against nigh insurmountable odds.

It's a simple, haunting journey where boy meets girl, boy saves girl, and boy frees girl, with nothing but a stick and little else left to lose.

Is this review pretentious? A tad. Am I biased? Very likely. That said, this game isn't for everyone, and its simplicity alone might turn most away from it, but power and respect to those that give it an honest try.

Handholding has never been this good.

In all seriousness Ico is truly one of a kind game with it's unique and ambient atmosphere backed up by it's environments that still looks good thanks to it's beatiful art direction,even the puzzles knows how to take advantage of these environments and play it in very interesting way that does makes me think out of the box couple times,it is a shame that the three to last level is an underwhelming compared to previous ones as its just the same level but reversed with some new tweaks.

Some might say the combat and the movement is too loose or a bit basic but i think it's still bearable just take some time to get used to it's movement and positioning ICO then ur good for the rest of the game and despite it's minimalistic and subtle nature of the story it's still an pretty story that the game succeed at implementing this through gameplay,world,and soundtrack.

Truth be told going into ICO i'm a bit afraid that it will ended up be somewhat an shallow experience but thankfully that's not the case and i am glad to finally experience this amazing gem 2 decades later.

Much more tense that I had anticipated, but a great experience nonetheless. Ico explores its themes of bonding and persistence through the lense of a child trapped in this decaying castle, searching a way out amidst the ruins of a world that's seemingly hostile to that which he cares the most. To me the serene beauty of the enviroment is arguably the star of the show, but is permanently muddled by the constant threat of danger; you cannot leave Ico's companion Yorda alone for more than a couple of minutes without feeling worried, and calculating the distance between them in terms of seconds becomes a neccessity. The player is never quite free in their mind to meander around the castle and fully appreciate the artistry of its design. This is deliberate, of course, and its purpose gives your actions a weight that they would've otherwise lacked, perhaps. But here's my thing with Ico; I always had conceived it as a rather different experience, one more contemplative and calmer, one which just left you be in this magnificent place for the most part, one when you weren't rushed to solve anything by the ever present enemies lurking at every corner, and that's not the case. Sure, there's some momments here and there, but that's not the main thing the game's looking for, in my opinion, and this contrast became problematic to the mind of a person that had been wanting to play it for a good fifteen years.

Ultimately, even if I would've loved the game Ico was in my mind a lot more, it's hard to deny the merits the actual game has. It's almost like a horror game, the player's always on their toes, and while the combat is bad, intrusive and unceasing, it does gave a deeper meaning to the relationship between these two characters, makes the bond more solid. Anyway, the game's great and the sound design and the score are top notch, that alone makes it an obligatory play for everybody.

Kind of a perfect game to come back to after a long kind of absence from the medium. It was so easy to find myself getting lost in the atmosphere of Ico. Even when I would personally get frustrated while playing I was to compose myself right away because everything else just felt so serene. Some of my favorite moments in the game were just jumping around and climbing the castle. With detailed sound design and beautiful visual direction to pair alongside each other.

However what I think what ultimately makes Ico so incredible is its narrative. Its interesting to play this after playing Shadow of the Colossus a while ago because I feel as though their stories are sort of different takes on a central theme. That being the "boy tries to save girl" found in a lot of video games and just stories in general. In Shadow of the Colossus Mono is already under her deep sleep and needs Wander to revive her. Resulting in a journey that he embarks on alone to save her. Whereas here in Ico Yorda is apart of our journey every step of the way. We have to fend off the shadow creatures in order to protect her. Even if these two aren't able to understand each other the simple gesture of holding onto each other is something far more powerful. Ico the boy who was destined to be scarified and Yorda the girl who was destined to be possessed by her evil mother. Coming together like that? How could I not tear up by the end?

incredible!! more games need a literal hand holding mechanic.

the game just felt incredibly magical, the whole time i was just stricken by awe & wonder, then the end tore me apart. there's something so special about games with very limited dialogue & music but still telling a powerful story. i loved that the puzzles were completely up to you, except a very few amount of times where yorda pointed something out to help me after many minutes of wondering around. sobbed my eyes out, now i'm ready for SotC ♥

I've noticed that games like Ico - games that commit their entire being to presenting a particular feeling or mood - are harmed even more by the slightest annoyances, since once the immersion is broken there's a good chance it has no more legs to stand on. At its best, Ico was a beautifully-woven fairytale world portraying the struggle and necessity of absolute trust between two complete strangers. At its worst? It couldn't make me feel anything.

There's a lot about this game that feels intentionally awkward in service of that mood - the difficult part is that the things that felt intentional are the bits I like the best! As an example, the combat isn't exactly "fun", and that seems to be a pretty major sticking point for a lot of others who dropped off the game - but my first few combat encounters were absolutely mesmerising. The weightless swings and the tendency of the shades to dodge and outmaneuver rather than overwhelm gave this delicate feel to the combat that perfectly complemented the aesthetic. But it's the little things I picked up on that *didn't* feel intentional - or specifically not in service of anything - that started to get to me. To use the same example, after a while I started noticing that some combat encounters took a wearily long time; as I later realised, shades that successfully 'capture' Yorda disappear into the same portal and seem to take a long time to reappear. You're bound to get knocked about and have her get dragged down at some point, but the feeling it gave off quickly changed - I'm not feeling tension for Yorda, I'm feeling annoyed because I have to wait around for the shade to come back. Parts of the game also felt like they had a *lot* of combat encounters - combine with the intentionally awkward combat and the previously-mentioned issue and I just groaned whenever I heard the cue.

I do want to make it clear that the combat is far from my only issue, and it was a pretty wide spread of minor annoyances that snapped me out of the experience it tried to convey. I just don't want to come off like I'm bashing this game. I have a lot of respect for it, despite my ultimate decision to drop it - I just wanted to express this feeling I've had welling ever since I tried Rain World last year, and Ico was just a much better vessel for doing so.