As a kid, I remember watching a lot of the fights from this game. They thrilled me for the sense of scale they had; the same reason the Morpheel fight in Twilight Princess mesmerized me. The idea of stabbing the shit out of some behemoth as you cling to its body is so raw to a 12 year old. Well, I’m 22 now, and finally played the game. Barring some ai being wonky (looking at you 4th colossus) and the fucking horse that I hate sometimes, everything here rules. The world is desolate, a forbidden, once-holy land that you are desecrating, and are complicit in. Yet there’s this sense of wondering what happens next that drives you to do this. Something is clearly WRONG about what you’re doing here. The colossi are, mostly, passive creatures who only really fight when you provoke them. Them exploding into this dark cloud that consumes you, or watching Wander’s body progressively get paler and lifeless as you kill more colossi serves as another sign. And yet, we are complicit. As much as he wants to save his lover, we want to know what the hell is happening. And so we proceed. Flipping the script by making the tutorial voices a malevolent entity is an extremely unique idea. Each fight feels like this desperate struggle to cling on as the dramatic score bellows alongside you. The beautiful landscapes and texturing here capture a sense of life in the colossi too. Whether it’s their fur flowing in the wind or their glowing eyes, they feel alive. Of course, killing them feels fucking awesome. I don’t ever want to deny that. But the charm also comes from recognizing these creatures aren’t really the monsters most fantasy stories are wracked with. The minimalism is excellent. This game absolutely ruled. Again, the biggest vice is the horse sometimes feels finnicky and the 4th colossus’s AI slowed the pace of the fight to a halt. That’s worth a mention if there are only 16 fights. Just one stinker is dampening, imo. The rest fuck.