This is definitely the first Team Ico game... This is a great game, don't get me wrong, but consistently feels like it stands in the shadow of (no pun intended) it's successors. Team Ico being named after this game fits nicely, their next two games feel very much like evolutions of the two main mechanics of this game.
Shadow of the colossus takes the basic three-hit-combo combat from this game and fleshes it out with traversal to make an entire experience based around that.
The Last Guardian takes the follower mechanic of Yorda from this game and evolves it from just being someone to pull along with you 90% of the time, to being the primary way of solving most puzzles in the game.
But the origins for both of those start here. Does this feel like a good midpoint between the two? I'd say no, with the hindsight of those two games the individual mechanics of this game feel half-baked.
The story of this game is like other TI games, has some lore to it but is pretty empty story-wise (on the surface level), yet despite that it creates a genuine emotional connection over it's run time. Again, this is something that they improve at in later installments.
The thing is, everything I could say about this game I immediately want to counter with 'but this is something they do better in later games', but this isn't a bad game, this is a great game, and definitely doesn't feel like the first game of a studio. The art design, audio ideology, animation and environment quality, story, world and characters already feel so evolved here, this feels like this studio's fifth game, not their first.
As much as it doesn't read like it, so far I've had nothing but good to say about this game, so what don't I like?
Well, besides the combat being way too simple, my main issue is the difficulty. When starting the game there's no difficulty options, and I breezed through the puzzles for the first two thirds (about four hours) of this game, never getting stuck for more than a moment. The combat, likewise, is just a case of hitting a room full of enemies with your one attack until they stop moving, and pulling Yorda out of a hole if she gets caught. It was a shame but never really took away from my enjoyment of the game.
This is the worst Team Ico game, and like most of this review that will sound like a criticism, but I'll be damned if that isn't a pretty high compliment.
Shadow of the colossus takes the basic three-hit-combo combat from this game and fleshes it out with traversal to make an entire experience based around that.
The Last Guardian takes the follower mechanic of Yorda from this game and evolves it from just being someone to pull along with you 90% of the time, to being the primary way of solving most puzzles in the game.
But the origins for both of those start here. Does this feel like a good midpoint between the two? I'd say no, with the hindsight of those two games the individual mechanics of this game feel half-baked.
The story of this game is like other TI games, has some lore to it but is pretty empty story-wise (on the surface level), yet despite that it creates a genuine emotional connection over it's run time. Again, this is something that they improve at in later installments.
The thing is, everything I could say about this game I immediately want to counter with 'but this is something they do better in later games', but this isn't a bad game, this is a great game, and definitely doesn't feel like the first game of a studio. The art design, audio ideology, animation and environment quality, story, world and characters already feel so evolved here, this feels like this studio's fifth game, not their first.
As much as it doesn't read like it, so far I've had nothing but good to say about this game, so what don't I like?
Well, besides the combat being way too simple, my main issue is the difficulty. When starting the game there's no difficulty options, and I breezed through the puzzles for the first two thirds (about four hours) of this game, never getting stuck for more than a moment. The combat, likewise, is just a case of hitting a room full of enemies with your one attack until they stop moving, and pulling Yorda out of a hole if she gets caught. It was a shame but never really took away from my enjoyment of the game.
This is the worst Team Ico game, and like most of this review that will sound like a criticism, but I'll be damned if that isn't a pretty high compliment.