Board 8 > beat The Last Guardian, and it's one of my most conflicting game experiences

(+) Yeah! (+)

it is startling how a game can simultaneously manage to be that incredible and that bad at the same time

(also I know I'm like 3 years late to it but still)

Story-wise, it's everything I wanted it to be. On the same level I expected from it after playing Shadow of the Colossus, possibly even higher. Uses few words to tell a tragic and beautiful story, while forming a powerful bond between the main protagonist and Trico. Beautiful world that's interesting to explore and mostly interesting puzzles to fully explore it.

But the gameplay is terrible. Trico is completely unresponsive to commands about 80% of the time. I can't count the number of times I either had to spend a frustrating amount of time yelling at him to get him to move to where he needed to be. Even worse, half the time he would go in the wrong direction. The camera would constantly get stuck (especially when going in buildings) completely blocking off my view of the screen.
There was exactly one enemy type in the entire game and it just continually comes at you, and more often than not all you can do is run away and then mash buttons if it grabs you, hoping/waiting as Trico eventually takes them out. It's extremely repetitive and feels like it's meant to pad the runtime of a game that, while short, already feels like it's taking forever because of how long it takes to do anything.
On top of that, half the time the basic mechanics of the game just don't work. One of the recurring actions is having the boy jump from a height, trusting that Trico will catch you as you fall. It's supposed to reinforce the bond between them and how much faith the boy puts in Trico, but it kind of ruins that message when Trico misses 50% of all catches and lets you fall to your death, and there's nothing you can do about it.

It did give me the most hilarious moment I've experienced in a game in a long time though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V351kmhfJDA" data-time="

Again, I know this is old news, but I just had to rant a bit because I've only just beaten the game and I'm just startled by how little playtesting seems to have been done in the like 12 years this game was in production. An almost-broken game with a fantastic story and interesting lore.

Still better than Ico though
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I loved it so much. There were occasional gameplay frustrations, though I don't think I had anything like as many as you had, and the game had incredible highs. The moment where you climb the tail but IT'S NOT TRICO was horrifying and fantastic. And a fantastic ending. I was so pleased with it.

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I also have crazy mixed feelings about it but it's my favorite Team Ico game by a good bit.

The controls are objectively abysmal but somehow it works really well. As you learn to use the jank controls and manipulate Trico's super questionable AI you end up actually feeling like you're growing closer to Trico since stuff that was once super frustrating becomes natural.

Combine that with the superb animations and how easy it is to fall in love with Trico and the game ended up landing way better than I expected it to. (I've already said it's my favorite Team Ico game, but if you asked me during my first 4 hours with it I would've told you it was one of the most disappointing games I'd ever played.)
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see that's the thing. Animations are great, the highs are great, but even toward the end of the game I was still having frustrations

In particular climbing the two towers before the citadel took forever because Trico's AI constantly tried climbing back down and the camera got stuck any time Trico went into either tower

and true, fantastic ending. I'm even usually willing to put up with gameplay flaws for the sake of a great story (Papo & Yo is one of my favorite indie games for it's incredible story and surreal enviroment, even if gameplay isn't super impressive comparitively) but at some point it kind of reached it's limit here.

It's simultaneously like an A+ and a C- game
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Oh yeah the towers right near the end there got a bit tedious, I have to say.

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Like all of their games, they have lofty ideas that far exceed their actual capabilities as developers. You can play Haunting Ground from almost 15 years ago and experience more responsive AI with Hewie, so it's a little inexcusable. The story is good, but that's all there really is to it, and I prefer a bit more cohesion between gameplay and story halves.

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honestly the AI in Ico is a big part of why I didn't like that game. Yorda was terrible and a pain to have to babysit

I'm more forgiving of The Last Guardian because I like the setting and Trico a lot more than I did Yorda, but the fact that they haven't figured out how to make NPC AI work in 15 years is insane
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that video is amazing
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