There are some games that are more popular and well-known now than when they first released. These games were completely overlooked by the general gaming public, and years of word-of-mouth from gamers and even "Hidden Gems" articles would finally bring these games into the spotlight they justly deserved. In my Jak and Daxter review, I went over how insane a year for gaming 2001 was. Ico did get some good coverage by some magazines prior to its release, and I do remember playing and liking the demo of the game before I ever played it, but for whatever reason, when this game first released, it flew completely under the radar. Reviewers loved the game, but the general North American gaming public at the time of its release completely overlooked it despite it reviewing well in every outlet, with EGM even giving it game-of-the-month honors. In a later issue of EGM, I can't remember which one, they would run a Hidden Gems article where they featured Ico in their list which help get the game more notoriety among mainstream gamers.
Ico would eventually become the most well-known hidden gem on the PS2, and the later release and success of Shadow of the Colossus has seen both of them rise in the ranks as two of the most beloved PS2 classics. It took a lot longer than expected, but the game has now become a beloved PS2 classic among gamers with a visual aesthetic that blurred the line between being a video game or a piece of artwork, an amazing atmosphere, and unique hybrid puzzle game meets adventure game gameplay. While the combat and exploration elements are a far cry from, say, Zelda, which Ico bears likeness to at first glance, its unique blending of puzzle-game with adventure game, on top of escort-gameplay, really makes for a unique game that doesn't fit the mold of any particular genre of game.
The story centers around Ico, a boy born with horns, a once-in-a-generation curse upon his village. As the cursed child, the village blames any and every misfortune that befalls them on the child until the day of the sacrifice. On his twelfth birthday, Ico is dragged off to an ancient, crumbling fortress ruin where he is locked away in a stone crypt as a sacrifice to appease the spirits and lift the curse off his village. Luckily for Ico, the decayed state of the fortress allows him free himslef from the eternal bondage crypt dumping him out onto the castle floor where a vision of Yorda comes to him, and find her. Upon rescuing Yorda, their perilous journey to escape the ancient castle and the evil queen that controls it begins.
I haven't played through Ico since 2007 or 2008, so my memory of the game is a bit hazy. I remember that I loved the game, but I only vaguely recalled parts of it. For this review, I was going to record a full playthrough of the PS3's remastered version—the one that also came with Shadow of the Colossus—and play the PS2 version, recording some footage. However, I noticed some interesting changes in the PS3 remaster compared to the PS2 version of the game which prompted me to record a full playthrough of the PS2 version as well.
There were two big, significant differences. The first noticeable one is a change in the combat. In the PS3 version, enemies dodge more and feel easier to fight, whereas in the PS2 version, they are much more aggressive—even pinballing Ico around on the ground when he is trying to get back up after being knocked down. Additionally, there are two completely different puzzles in the waterfall area of the game.
I didn’t realize the changes to the game until I played the PS2 version, but it turns out the PS3 version of the game follows the changes made to the PAL version of Ico. The PAL version added some extra content, altered the combat, and modified the controls so that you had to continually hold the R1 button to stay attached to Yorda—as opposed to tapping it to attach and tapping it again to let go in the NTSC version. (You can change it to the latter in the options menu.) At first, I thought Bluepoint had made these changes, but one of the FAQs on GameFAQs explained the differences to me.
Pal gamers won't notice a difference in the level designs and combat of the PS3 Remaster, but diehard NTSC fans might be a little taken aback by the changes. It's still mostly identical to the NTSC PS2 version, but the differences are noticeable.
Ico is a game where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, it's a visual work of art in motion; it's also an incredibly well-designed puzzle game, a giant escort mission—where you guide Yorda throughout varied game environments, and has Zelda-esque exploration and combat elements. The game's story also doesn't overwhelm the player with a lot of text and explanation; yet, it still manages to offer two of the most intriguing characters in gaming history. What it lacks in direct storytelling, it conveys visually through both Yorda's and Ico's animations and actions. Both characters possess a sense of childhood innocence, and you find yourself growing fond of them despite not being able to understand them.
There
are some cut-scenes to tell the story, but the bulk of the experience
and fondness for the characters comes through their visual pantomime,
where the characters Yorda and Ico are given more depth through their
actions and reactions than any dialogue spoken throughout the
game.
At first, the most striking feature of the game is its
incredible art direction. Reviews at the time compared the visuals to
an impressionist painting. Even in the PS2 version—where I am
upscaling 240p to 720p with the Hyperkin cable—Ico is still a
beautiful game. On the PS1 and N64, there were some games that used
interesting visual aesthetics; however, it wasn't until the sixth
generation, with more powerful consoles, that art direction in games
really started to have a large impact. Ico's large, open, and empty
castle environments, mixed with its great use of lighting and
shadows, come together to give the game an amazing atmosphere. Add in
a sound design that mostly uses ambient sounds while sparingly using
music, and you have a game that gives an overwhelming feeling of
loneliness. You really do feel like you're exploring an abandoned,
decaying ruin of a castle.
The audio and visual design really do create a tremendous atmosphere. There is music in the game on occasion; the ending theme is amazing, and I'm not good at describing music, but the save screen music sounds like happy childhood memories. When the save screen music plays, you feel a reassuring air of safety as the music plays. The game wouldn't be the same without so many small touches in its audio and visual designs. The developers' meticulous small but hugely impactful artistic touches in both areas adds so much extra depth to the player's experience while playing the game.
The core gameplay in Ico centers around guiding Yorda by the hand while exploring the ancient castle—solving brain-teasing puzzles along the way, fighting against a variety of dark spirits who try to kidnap Yorda and shove her into a portal, upon which time is limited to pull her out before it's game over—which gives the combat a sense of urgency, all while traversing multiple areas of the castle and trying to open the main castle gates to make your escape.
When it comes to the puzzles, Ico is from the era when developers didn't hold your hand. It's cut from the same cloth as a game like Tomb Raider or Primal. It actually gives fewer hints about what to do next than the previously mentioned Tomb Raider. Does this mean that sometimes the solution to a puzzle can be quite obscure? Absolutely. This might turn off some modern gamers who are so used to the hand-holding elements that have been implemented in gaming since Ico's time. Hand-holding elements, like cutscenes that play upon entering a room that give the solution to a puzzle away, or having important objects shine to show the player they are important, such mechanics do not exist in Ico. The only hand-holding that occurs is between Ico and Yorda themselves.
I guess to modify what I said in my Tomb Raider review to fit Ico is to say: the bad thing about the puzzle elements in Ico is that the game doesn't hold your hand, but the great thing about the puzzle elements in Ico is that the game doesn't hold your hand. This is a game that will use quite a bit more of your problem-solving skills than most others, even for the time. There is, however, a huge sense of accomplishment when you figure out the solution to a puzzle on your own. It's a hard-fought sense of satisfaction you rarely see in gaming anymore.
It had been so long since I last played through the game that I had forgotten all the solutions to the puzzles. This was like playing through the game for the first time again. I did get stumped on a couple of puzzles, but managed to figure them out eventually. That is, all except one, and that would be one of the puzzles I mentioned. I caved in and finally decided to go to GameFAQs because I was close to figuring it out, but not quite there. However, it was going to GameFAQs that helped me discover the differences between the NTSC and PAL versions, and also led me to finding the secret Mace weapon in the game.
In this room here, most FAQs said just follow the pipes on the ceiling and exit the room; however, in the PS3 version, the pipes don't lead to the platform. Instead, there is a switch on one of the platforms that activates a moving block. I got that far but couldn't figure out what to do on the moving block. I tried jumping off the block when it was moving, but it did nothing. I got so annoyed racking my brain over this puzzle that I took Yorda back to the beginning of the game, put her back in the cage, and gave up. Well, it turns out I was just jumping at the wrong time. You have to jump near the bottom when the block first starts to move. I guess I would have figured it out by dumb luck eventually, but the FAQs confirmed that I was close to figuring it out. It also enlightened me on how to get the mace in the game.
While the castle is huge, there isn't a lot of extra exploration in the game, but there are still some hidden rooms here and there. Generally, the game keeps it simple, with the main focus being the puzzles. This is a puzzle game above all else. Defending Yorda through combat is a secondary focus, while the exploration elements revolve around the puzzle elements. There aren't any arbitrary things to collect in the game, like coins or gold Skulltulas. Ico is beautifully simplistic and without a lot of bloat that many other developers would be tempted to add to the game. It's a game that knows what it wants to achieve and sticks to it. This is a puzzle game above all else. The entire castle is a giant puzzle that is solved by solving a series of smaller puzzles.
Outside of the puzzles, there is quite a bit of platforming—especially near the end of the game. The last section of the game is a platforming puzzle in itself, where players must traverse from platform to platform, solving some environmental puzzles to figure out where to go next. Ico makes good use of environmental puzzles throughout the game, with the ending section being the culmination of all the platforming skills you learned.
For the platforming elements, I took to the controls pretty well. I don't know what the learning curve might be for those with modern sensibilities, however. Generally, games with fixed camera angles make for overly frustrating platforming elements, as it feels like the developers purposely choose the worst camera angles for each jump, but this is not so for Ico. While I did, occasionally, find myself missing a simple jump and plummeting to my death thanks to the camera shifting mid-jump, the devs did a great job of giving players the best camera angles possible to make jumps over pits or to chains dangling over those pits. It's not perfect, but it works great most of the time.
The wall climbing elements in the game are also done really well and really smoothly. The jump up in technology from the PS1 to the PS2 helped remove the clunkiness of similar scenes in PS1 games. Similarly, the climbing elements—scaling, descending, and swinging on chains—are also incredibly smooth. While I won't say I never plummeted to my death on accident, there are a lot of protections in the control scheme to prevent such incidents, mitigating a lot of frustrating deaths that occurred in similar games in the previous generation.
The combat in the game is pretty simplistic. It's the added element of the shadowy figures trying to kidnap Yorda and stuff her into a portal, mixed with the limited amount of time you have to pull her back out of that portal, that gives the combat much of its intensity. Ico has a simple three-button combo to dispatch his enemies, and there aren't any deep moves like a dodge feature. To dodge enemy attacks, just move out of the way. I've seen people say that the combat in the PAL version is more challenging than the NTSC version because enemies dodge and evade more, but I find the more aggressive enemies in the NTSC version to be tougher and more intense to fight against. They attack more often and even hit Ico when he is on the ground. I think I like the more aggressive enemies in the NTSC version. Yes, they are easier to hit, but they also hit Ico more often, meaning the player either has to move or jump out of the way more. I found it to be way more challenging.
The Bottom Line: Ico was that “hidden gem” game that is now, rightfully, taking its place in the minds of PS2 gamers as a tried-and-true classic. You really don't need this review to tell you this, as even if you have never played the game yourself, you've, no doubt, heard about it. Even the most cynical, contrarian type of gamers should at least play it once. Beyond being a piece of artwork in motion, it's an excellent puzzle/adventure game hybrid that would still be a timeless classic, even without its unique art direction. That's just the icing on the cake as far as Ico is concerned. Really, the only big complaint that can be waged about this game is its short length, where your first run might take you 7 or 8 hours to play through, but every subsequent run will take you four hours or less. There's even a trophy on the PS3 version for beating it in under 2 hours. Ico is a defining achievement of PS2 game development, and it has stood the test of time as one of the best games on the system. It's one of those essential PS2 experiences that I think every gamer should experience. It's seen as a PS2 classic for a reason.
Now, as far as playing the game in physical form, the PS3 version is the cheapest way to play it, and it comes with Shadow of the Colossus in the HD remastered collection. The PS2 version is sitting around $25–$30 as of making this video, whereas the PS3 version is around $15–$20. For PS4 and PS5 owners, I looked it up, and if you have a PS Plus Premium subscription, you can play the game for free, but there hasn't been a physical re-release of Ico since the PS3.
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