I write this from the perspective of someone who has never played much of the original game. Generally wherever you look this remake is regarded as one of the best remakes of all time. So I never would've considered this to be me shooting myself in the foot rather than playing the original game instead.

I have many gripes with the visuals, but so do many others. Something that I haven't seen anyone else mention is how this remake holds up for new players. Much of the design language has been lost in this remake, the introduced visual clutter has resulted in many bosses becoming extremely frustrating sequences of trial and error. While the original game spared its detail and defined texture work to guide the player.

I want to briefly throw in my thoughts about the visual update even though it's kind of been talked about to death. This remake includes a gallery with concept art, screenshots, etc. You can unlock comparison shots that show the same locations between the original and the remake. I find this feature to be very ironic because I found a majority of the original screenshots to be far more visually captivating. The original game has a very distinct style with it's over exaggerated bloom and blurry landscapes. It looks and feels like a dream, where as the remake loses nearly all of that in translation. Everything is clearly defined and looks photoreal, but I'm not sure if this was the intended vision and it can feel quite boring to play through.

If my only issue were visuals then I would've had a great time but nearly all of my issues with this game are in its design and awkward controls.
This game may hold crown to one of the worst cameras I've ever dealt with in a game. Many games with poor cameras have issues purely with controls and it can be easy to grow accustomed to them. The issue with SotC is that its camera is constantly adjusting itself to present some vista or object of interest. So alright, take your hands off and just control the player right? No, then you have the issue of your camera running up against walls and being obscured by geometry. So the camera is constantly adjusting to show you something pretty, but it's also sabotaging the game play and you end up fighting with it constantly. This essentially ruins nearly all cinematic intent and only led to frustration from me. It would've been much better if the player could control the camera at all times and was trusted to enjoy the games art at their own pace instead of having it shoved down their throat in a very jank fashion.

Nearly every colossus fight is tedium. They are presented as puzzles although I generally knew the solution within a minute of examining each boss. The bosses fall into two categories of tedium, either the solution is obvious but is tedious to achieve, or the solution is extremely obtuse and you will have to run around trying to find something that is intractable.
Bosses being tedious to defeat is already something present in the original game and I'm not sure if anything is better or worse. Generally you have to wait for the AI to do an action and then climb onto it, the waiting or baiting process can take a very long time as you tap fingers waiting for the game to give you an opening. Awkward hit boxes are usually the culprit for making the grabbing part far more obnoxious than it should be. An iconic example is when you are required to grab onto the inside of a colossus hand although you will usually fail and be slid away by some invisible collision. Resulting in you having to wait for the hand to come down again and again and again.

Something that is new to this remake however are the visual updates making already obtuse bosses far more difficult than they should be. In some fights you are tasked with climbing geometry although it can be impossible to tell what is climbable and what isn't. You are unable to climb everything in this game and only specific ledges can be grabbed onto but there is no visual indication to show the difference. This results in many times when you are completely lost as to where to go and you just slam your head into everything trying to figure out what you can grab onto. The original game did not have this issue because the ps2 lacked the video memory to allow so many unique textures and assets to be loaded at once. The only objects you can grab onto were usually the only objects that looked like they could be grabbed onto, it was easy to learn and easy for the player to understand where they should be going. The visual clutter issue comes up in other cases as well not related to climbing. For example during the third colossi fight you are tasked with baiting the colossi into slamming its weapon onto metal. This can be easy to understand in the original game as the metal platform stands out against the single dirt texture that extends across the arena. In the remake the arena is covered in rocks, grass, and stone platforms. The metal platform blends into this and doesn't stand out at all. This led to me being lost and having to run circles around the colossi until I figured out what I had to do and it didn't feel satisfying at all, I always end up wondering how I was supposed to even figure out the solution.

A frustrating camera, bosses that are obtuse to figure out and aren't enjoyable to defeat, controls that I have to fight with, and uninspired visuals lead to there being little for me to enjoy with this game. The story however is still intact and I did enjoy the ending sequence a lot. But I would've much rather experienced it all in its original presentation.

The best way I can sum up this remake is that it felt like a team of 3D artists were hired but they never bothered to review the new assets with a designer. Just, yea that looks like real life lets put it in!

Patient zero for dogshit genre of games where you walk down corridors for 7 hours and shoot the same guys over and over and over again because you are stupid and we cant trust you to use ur brain or anything we have to jingle keys in your face every 30 minutes to keep you engaged and theres no room for an interesting narrative or gameplay or anything just shoot the guys dude just go shoot more guys it's ok you get health and ammo for shooting the guys so you don't have to do anything else but shoot the guys