You see, I can do that for many, many things though. I can't think of any right now (haha) but I completely understand it.
But I just can't do it for those games. Where people see amazing atmosphere and great story telling, I see a boring, sparse world with a story that is so vague and 'open to interpretation' because they couldn't think of anything decent. Where people see innovate gameplay, I see amazingly dud mechanics.
It could very well be that I only played both games this year. I played Ico, and didn't like it. The combat was really frustrating, and I didn't make any connection to the characters or story. I was really disappointed. I had no preconceptions going into these games, so it's not like I wanted to hate them. People told me to play SoTC, because it's much more accessible, whatever. I was really excited for it. I loved the big bosses in TP, SMG, and so on.
But once again, I got a boring, sparse world with such little content. The game wasn't hard, it was just frustrating. I was disappointed with the size of the colossi. I was disapointed with how straight forward it was, despite people saying how it was essentially a puzzle game. Being thrown around whilst trying to hold on was cool for the first couple of bosses, but became incredibly irritating further on. Having to ride between them was just boring. The world wasn't interesting to look out. It was brown and washed out.
Like I said though, it might be that I played these games well after their time. That's perfectly understandable. But people hold them up as some timeless works of art, and I'll just never understand it.