ICO is a game that I have mixed feelings about. I thought that it did many things incredibly well, from its world design to its art style and more. The only thing I disliked was actually playing it.

Artistically this game is amazing! I’m not going to say much about the positives of ICO, but I loved the art-style used. Another thing that I liked was exploring the castle, it felt gigantic and almost endless at times. From an artistic point of view the flaws with the gameplay helped with immersion, but even with that lens I just did not enjoy playing the game.

I disliked ICO's gameplay a lot. The movement is pretty bad, I can’t really describe it, but it just feels clunky and hinders more things about the game, like the platforming. Platforming in the game was good, other than the movement but something I personally disliked was how everything blends with each other (I NEED yellow tape to guide me).

But the main gripes I had with the gameplay were the combat and the camera. The combat was genuinely terrible. It’s tedious, doesn’t evolve throughout the game and made me not want to continue playing. The camera is also terrible but for external reasons. I hate it because it gave me a headache.

Even with the gripes I had with ICO, I still respect this game a lot for all of the unique ideas and concepts it introduced.