Support NeoGAF

[Gbraga]

You would think, awful controls being the generally accepted major gripe with the first two games, the team would refine that aspect the most within a decade's time. I guess Ueda simply isn't that good of a developer/director for videogames. ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

Yeah, nailed it.

Shit game designer confirmed.

 

[gfxtwin]

To anyone who experienced a frustrating lack of responsiveness regarding interacting with Trico, this reddit post proves that it's not an issue with the game itself and shows how you can read Trico's responses to get him to do things consistently:
.

 

[Chao]

It is so slow and so, so boring for the majority of the playthrough that it's barely worth it for the story.

Have no desire to play it again in the future.

Not the best way to end the Ueda's trilogy to be honest.

 

[HStallion]

Its quite possibly my Game of the Year last year. A truly magical experience that is one of the best examples of telling a story in only a way gaming can. That and its basically the exact opposite of ludo narrative dissonance. An absolute masterpiece.

 

[gfxtwin]

It is so slow and so, so boring for the majority of the playthrough that it's barely worth it for the story.

Have no desire to play it again in the future.

Not the best way to end the Ueda's trilogy to be honest.

Is it confirmed that it's part of a trilogy? Ueda says he will continue making games...

 

[lvl99 Pixel]

To anyone who experienced a frustrating lack of responsiveness regarding interacting with Trico, this reddit post proves that it's not an issue with the game itself and shows how you can read Trico's responses to get him to do things consistently:
.

starting with "So after playing through multiple times" is kind a sign that the game doesn't do a good job of making its mechanics evident

 

[Gbraga]

starting with "So after playing through multiple times" is kind a sign that the game doesn't do a good job of making its mechanics evident

Not necessarily. A lot of people had a similar experience in their first playthrough, but with other people saying they had a completely different one, the only way to know if it's consistent is reproducing it across multiple playthroughs.

 

[Kyuur]

Can't say I agree. The game's only real problems are occasional control issues when climbing Trico (and only Trico, environment is fine) and occasional camera issues (usually when climbing on Trico). Complaints about Trico AI feel like complaints about games like Monster Hunter's slower, deliberate controls compared to fast action games. The lack of quick and decisive control is part of the game, if you go in expecting to play it like other games you're going to have a bad time. It's unlike anything else I've played and better for it.

This from someone who hasn't played ICO or SotC by the way.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I got frustrated with the controls once you start

Spoiler

giving Trico commands while riding

. The game just got cumbersome and boring at that point and I never got back to it. Maybe I'll give it another shot at some point, but I don't feel like I'm missing out.

 

[Shari]

Not necessarily. A lot of people had a similar experience in their first playthrough, but with other people saying they had a completely different one, the only way to know if it's consistent is reproducing it across multiple playthroughs.

That doesn't make any sense, no second playthrough is going to feel like the first ones and two first playthroughs by two different persons are not comparable to two playthroughs from the same person.

Apples and oranges.

 

[Bloodporne]

To anyone who experienced a frustrating lack of responsiveness regarding interacting with Trico, this reddit post proves that it's not an issue with the game itself and shows how you can read Trico's responses to get him to do things consistently:
.

That's nice and all but makes it more glaring that they dropped the ball off a cliff regarding properly explaining basic things to move the game forward for quite a large number of players and also implemented their ideas in an overly finicky and obtuse fashion.

I love games with complex systems but I never got the feeling there was anything complex or deep lying below the surface gameplay-wise for me to discover and make everything work on its own terms. The game seemed to mainly stonewall me by making puzzles I knew the solution to a patience test with its unwieldy and miserable handling of player to Trico interaction.

Like I said, I get the overall appeal and I'd love to be into it but the flaws are an abyss deep and they're baffling after all this time.

 

[Septic360]

Overrated game imo. A gen too late

 

[Android18a]

It truly is a love it or loathe it type of game. I don't think either is correct or incorrect, it's just whether it clicks for you.

I didn't like Ico or Shadow much, so I won't give my own thoughts on this one!

 

[Gbraga]

That doesn't make any sense, no second playthrough is going to feel like the first ones and two first playthroughs by two different persons are not comparable to two playthroughs from the same person.

Apples and oranges.

Of course it does. If it's just RNG and the animal is just stubborn, with no mechanical consistency, repeating the same actions will lead to different results.

 

[Patch13]

Then I get to where you have to get Trico to pull the chain while you put a metal object under the gate that is controlled by the chain. I had to put a bucket of bait for Trico to become interested in it. I succeeded, and all that was left was to leave the area by way of higher ground. So I got on top of Trico and pointed toward the exit... Trico responds by going back under the gate and into the previous area. Thing is, he's not even playing with the baited chain anymore and he's just sitting there staring at it like he's in a trance. He won't respond to calling or pushing or anything.

There's a reason that Trico isn't enthusiastic about jumping on the ledge. And that reason will help you out if the pot o' good smelling stuff is too tempting.

Spoiler

IIRC, there's a barrel of food hidden in the room, before the ledge. Show that to Trico, and you'll wind up with a man eating eagle thing who is much happier about jumping up onto the ledge. (Not completely happy because of the eye thingies that are waiting up there, but still pretty happy nonetheless.)

The trick with Trico is that it's really more like Nintendogs than it is like Portal: it's more a pet simulator than a puzzle game. And you're either on board with suspending your disbelief and having a fun time figuring out how to make friends with the AI, or you're not. Beyond that, the puzzles are pretty simple, and the controls are more concerned with dealing in the least bad way with a giant griffin moving in narrow corridors than with giving you precise control over everything you do.

You don't have to like it, or even to finish it. I loved it, and finished it, and will probably play it again. But there are plenty of games, popular on these forums, that I didn't like and didn't finish. Play what makes you happy

 

[GinoFelino]

Terrible controls, AI and technical issues persist throughout the entire game. Totally half baked and extremely frustrating. It feels like a bloodborne situation where the game is pushed out a few months early but knowing the history of this game it just shows that it is deeply flawed to the core.

Wait what

You said what about Bloodborne

 

[Shari]

Of course it does. If it's just RNG and the animal is just stubborn, with no mechanical consistency, repeating the same actions will lead to different results.

Sorry I didn't understand the point was to repeat the same actions on subsequent playthroughs. I thought we were speaking on measuring the understanding on how trico's mechanics work by the player.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

I enjoyed it despite those annoyances, and did get frustrated and scream at Trico many times.

If the atmosphere and relationship development between the boy and Trico isn't enough for you to enjoy the game despite the flaws, just abandon it. It never gets better and is a niche game that isn't for everyone. I'm surprised I like it, so I'm glad I tried it, but I was sucked in by the atmosphere and character very early on.

 

[Lothar]

It didn't do anything for me. I played it for 2 hours. It was mostly frustrating. I'm going to sell it the next chance I get. Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games.

I also buy games without knowing anything about them because I like everything to be new. That's the way I've handled buying new games forever including SotC when it came out and blew me away. So I was thinking "How long is this dumb tutorial going to last?" Then I looked it up. "Oh, that's the game."

 

[paragonpro]

The game has a shit ton of jank and flaws, but for me the high's were enough to let me look past the very low low's.

 

[MikeHaggar]

I gave up on it after 4 hours or so. I loved Ico, but also gave up on SOTC. I generally don't give up on games.

 

[gfxtwin]

starting with "So after playing through multiple times" is kind a sign that the game doesn't do a good job of making its mechanics evident

Correct, it doesn't hold your hand and trusts that you recognize the care put into bringing Trico to life and that you react with him in a way that asks more of you compared to interacting with, say, Dogmeat or Epona.

 

[SweetJohnnyCage]

Correct, it doesn't hold your hand and trusts that you recognize the care put into bringing Trico to life and that you react with him in a way that asks more of you compared to interacting with, say, Dogmeat or Epona.

Souls games don't hold your hand. Breath of the Wild doesn't hold your hand. TLG doesn't do anything to even remotely explain why things work they way they do.

 

[gfxtwin]

That's nice and all but makes it more glaring that they dropped the ball off a cliff regarding properly explaining basic things to move the game forward for quite a large number of players and also implemented their ideas in an overly finicky and obtuse fashion.

I love games with complex systems but I never got the feeling there was anything complex or deep lying below the surface gameplay-wise for me to discover and make everything work on its own terms. The game seemed to mainly stonewall me by making puzzles I knew the solution to a patience test with its unwieldy and miserable handling of player to Trico interaction.

Like I said, I get the overall appeal and I'd love to be into it but the flaws are an abyss deep and they're baffling after all this time.

It never felt abstruse to me personally, I just kinda saw what they were going for early on in my first playthrough. Not trying to be too contrarian, but the strong reaction online and in some reviews about Trico being unresponsive and/or "broken" really surprised my balls off. It seemed pretty straightforward to me once you get a feel of Trico as a character.

 

[butman]

Terrible controls, AI and technical issues persist throughout the entire game. Totally half baked and extremely frustrating. It feels like a bloodborne situation where the game is pushed out a few months early but knowing the history of this game it just shows that it is deeply flawed to the core.

On topic i loved the game.
The jankiness and unresponsiveness make the game more credible. Your surroundings are ruins and you deal with a posttraumatic beast. It's not a robot which instantly reacts to your demands.

 

[lvl99 Pixel]

Correct, it doesn't hold your hand and trusts that you recognize the care put into bringing Trico to life and that you react with him in a way that asks more of you compared to interacting with, say, Dogmeat or Epona.

dogmeat and epona arent the focus of the entire game. They could have just introduced the interactions in a more effective way.

 

[HStallion]

Souls games don't hold your hand. Breath of the Wild doesn't hold your hand. TLG doesn't do anything to even remotely explain why things work they way they do.

The gameplay is so basic and intuitive it confuses me why others get so confused. It's a linear puzzle adventure game with only a couple of major gameplay systems that overlap and are used through out and often building on what came before. You don't get any major upgrades, there aren't skill trees,no multiple paths, no stats and so on.

It doesn't tell you everything but it gives you enough that you can figure out the rest with about a minute of experimenting. Then again I had no issues with Trico or the boy and even liked things like the dreaded barrel tossing puzzle.

 

[gfxtwin]

Souls games don't hold your hand. Breath of the Wild doesn't hold your hand. TLG doesn't do anything to even remotely explain why things work they way they do.

dogmeat and epona arent the focus of the entire game.

When I played it my curiosity of the characters and setting just kinda led to me to figuring out how to interact with Trico. There's nothing at all unreasonable in that reddit post. Maybe part of the reason so many had trouble learning how to interact with Trico is the fact that no other game offers such a level of believability in regards to bringing an NPC animal buddy to life and making a relationship between it and the player such a pivotal part of the experience, I dunno. I guess I can see why there's some frustration since it's not a game that is immediately intuitive like a Zelda or Mario, but the complaints seem way over the top to me, as though figuring out how to interact with Trico was like finding an obscure easter egg in a game or on a blu ray menu or something which definitely isn't the case.

 

[mkvl]

Cool and emotional experience​ but not a very good game in some very important aspects. I bought it but I think it was one of those games that I should have waited for the price drop. I can't really justify spending 60€ on it.

 

[Asriel]

The gameplay is so basic and intuitive it confuses me why others get so confused. It's a linear puzzle adventure game with only a couple of major gameplay systems that overlap and are used through out and often building on what came before. You don't get any major upgrades, there aren't skill trees,no multiple paths, no stats and so on.

It doesn't tell you everything but it gives you enough that you can figure out the rest with about a minute of experimenting. Then again I had no issues with Trico or the boy and even liked things like the dreaded barrel tossing puzzle.

The Last Guardian gameplay intuitive? Really?

 

[Asriel]

When I played it my curiosity of the characters and setting just kinda led to me to figuring out how to interact with Trico. There's nothing at all unreasonable in that reddit post. Maybe part of the reason so many had trouble learning how to interact with Trico is the fact that no other game offers such a level of believability in regards to bringing an NPC animal buddy to life and making a relationship between it and the player such a pivotal part of the gameplay, I dunno.

Even after that reddit explanation, it still seems so arbitrary. I mean he had to play through a few times to get to that conclusion, which has yet to actually have been corroborated.

There is little believability for me that this was intended. If the relationship mechanics in this game were meant to be, then it's really poor implementation. There is a stark difference between handholding and guidance.

 

[HStallion]

The Last Guardian gameplay intuitive? Really?

Yeah its controls and gameplay are as straight to the point as it gets. I'm not sure what's confusing about the gameplay as there are a couple basic actions the boy and Trico can make. I also found the body language and vocals used by Trico so amazingly on point I could almost always tell what was going on by it alone.

 

[Randy Monk]

I can't answer you directly OP but I traded The Last Guardian for Horizon and after 15 hours of Horizon I am regretting my decision.

The Last Guardian frustrated me so much but every time I overcame an obstacle I felt an elation that Horizon has yet to bestow upon me.

I think frustration with the game and controls is what gives you an emotional bond with the game. The lack of dialogue and quests means a lot of the story you make up or imagine as you go. I found the Horizon story very generic and skipped most of the dialogue. I never once wished to skip the monologue of the little boy.

I'm just counting down the days till I can trade in Horizon for Persona 5 but I ordered the Last Guardian collectors and can't wait to play it again knowing that I will want to smash the controller a few times during my next play through.

 

[Drey1082]

I agree with this. I am probably a little over halfway and haven't gone back to it in months. This coming from someone who loved Shadow of the Colossus. I feel the main frustration was having an idea on how to execute something in the game, and battling the controls and Trico in order to do it, even when it was the right idea. That lead to the reward for solving problems being diminished from feeling smart and a sense of accomplishment, to a feeling of "f-ing finally!".

I was really looking forward to it, and will probably finish it eventually, but the frustration levels were off the charts.

 

[Asriel]

Yeah its controls and gameplay are as straight to the point as it gets. I'm not sure what's confusing about the gameplay as there are a couple basic actions the boy and Trico can make. I also found the body language and vocals used by Trico so amazingly on point I could almost always tell what was going on by it alone.

Simple controls != intuitive gaming. The controls were simple, yes, but the overall gameplay was frustrating as hell.

 

[Little Mons†er]

Best 2016 game and better than SOTC.

If you didn't play any other game in 2016 then I guess your opinion has grounds for plausibility

 

[HStallion]

Simple controls != intuitive gaming. The controls were simple, yes, but the overall gameplay was frustrating as hell.

For some perhaps but it was a A to B game with puzzles in between that use the physics and gameplay systems in logical ways. Nothing ever felt obtuse or overtly confusing except perhaps one puzzle. I found Trico a breeze to deal with and understand and even found the boy rather easy to control.

 

[HueyFreeman]

The game has mechanical issues, no doubt about it - and the trend I've noticed is that people without the patience to enjoy Trico as an animal will enter a positive feedback loop of frustrating gameplay, as Ueda has said Trico learns from your inputs, and no two players playthroughs will be the same. So frustration will lead to frustration - overlapping input spamming will mean he/she/it will never learn and will never improve over the course of the game - while patience and guidance will lead to enjoyment and a much smoother experience. It's no word of a lie that I have played the game 3 times and never been stuck for more than 1-2 minutes. But I think that's why you're not hearing a lot of experiences in the middle - Trico's learning or failure to learn creates two dichotomous experiences.

But.. any posters pretending this is objectively a shitty game need to check that at the door. The game won 15 GOTY awards last year - that's the 5th highest of all released games on GOTYpicks, and includes a GOTY award from fucking EDGE magazine. The game is a flawed masterpiece - those flaws will be bigger barriers to some than to others but the tragedy is they seem to prevent some people from realizing what the game really is.

 

[HStallion]

If you didn't play any other game in 2016 then I guess your opinion has grounds for plausibility

I played most of the big releases last year and its most likely my Game of the Year

 

[gfxtwin]

Even after that reddit explanation, it still seems so arbitrary. I mean he had to play through a few times to get to that conclusion, which has yet to actually have been corroborated.

There is little believability for me that this was intended. If the relationship mechanics in this game were meant to be, then it's really poor implementation. There is a stark difference between handholding and guidance.

There was some guidance, though? That's what the section in the game where you learn about commands and bonding was for.

And in the reddit user's post they mention straight up that Trico was responsive in their first playthrough, they cemented why in their next playthrough, and then beat the game several more times to confirm. There's also an unedited clip linked showing them breezing through the two scenes that everyone complained the most about regarding Trico's unresponsiveness. How is that NOT putting theory into science on this matter?

 

[ghibli99]

One of my favorite games of last year. LOL I got a lot out of it, even though I struggled with it from time to time. I tried playing ICO again after beating TLG... I actually found it to be harder to control, play, and where to go was sometimes even less intuitive. Curious what I'd think of SOTC now too... that's a top 5 PS2 game for me. Anyway, I just chalk it up to this being a team that prioritizes different things in their creative process. Once I get into that mindset, everything else tends to settle right in.

 

[gfxtwin]

I can't answer you directly OP but I traded The Last Guardian for Horizon and after 15 hours of Horizon I am regretting my decision.

That sentence made me do a triple take lol

 

[Kaiser Swayze]

I thought The Last Guardian was a unique experience and totally worth seeing through to the end, but I would never begrudge anyone for calling it quits before then. There were a handful of times I wanted to incinerate the game due to control/input bullshittery.

 

[Reverend Funk]

An incredible game is an incredible game no matter when it comes out. I understand that the controls feel dated but the game resonated with me so heavily that it didn't bother me one bit, if it came out 20 years from now on playstation 69 It would still be worth my 60 bucks, truly timeless.

 

[Asriel]

There was some guidance, though? That's what the section in the game where you learn about commands and bonding was for.

And in the reddit user's post they mention straight up that Trico was responsive in their first playthrough, they cemented why in their next playthrough, and then beat the game several more times to confirm. There's also an unedited clip linked showing them breezing through the two scenes that everyone complained the most about regarding Trico's unresponsiveness. How is that NOT putting theory into science on this matter?

OK, so in that case why are so many other users having issues with the gameplay? I mean, sure, you can just dismiss it and say we're playing it wrong, or you might want to understand why users are having issues with.

The gameplay mechanics are obtuse at an almost mythical level.

 

[lvl99 Pixel]

I mean I cant deny they wanted Trico to evoke a real creature with that gruesome anus texture they used. Must have been an interesting conversation when someone requested that from the artist.

 

[Gbraga]

Souls games don't hold your hand. Breath of the Wild doesn't hold your hand. TLG doesn't do anything to even remotely explain why things work they way they do.

Of course it does, one of the things it gets most of its criticism from is the constant prompts telling you basic shit all the time.

It's just that, instead of having even more prompts telling you which command to give Trico at any time, they just explain it vaguely once, on purpose, because figuring out how to interact with Trico is pretty much the core of the game.

The gameplay is so basic and intuitive it confuses me why others get so confused. It's a linear puzzle adventure game with only a couple of major gameplay systems that overlap and are used through out and often building on what came before. You don't get any major upgrades, there aren't skill trees,no multiple paths, no stats and so on.

It doesn't tell you everything but it gives you enough that you can figure out the rest with about a minute of experimenting. Then again I had no issues with Trico or the boy and even liked things like the dreaded barrel tossing puzzle.

The barril throwing thingies were fun as hell.

The only part I straight up think it's terrible is the one where you need Trico to put his tail in a hole for you to climb. I'm convinced that one is just random.

 

[Gaz_RB]

One of the greatest games of all time, and probably my GOTY for 2016.


But if you're not enjoying it, it doesn't really change things up in a way that matters to someone not into it.

 

[Generate]

Only got frustrated once (diving section where I had to kind of trick the game) but I fully understand you losing patience with it. Its a very unique concept, and not executed the best way. Still, it was more about the bond between boy and beast, and had a lot of heart and charm so I was lenient.

 

[klier]

The game has a shit ton of jank and flaws, but for me the high's were enough to let me look past the very low low's.

For me too, but if these flaws weren't present, it would have been contender for game of the year.