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[DMONKUMA]

It was ok.

 

[topplehat]

This is a game I really really wanted to like but just couldn't. I can totally relate.

 

[Kid Ying]

I also hated the controls and the camera was infuriating, but i liked the game for its atmosphere. I only played in short busts cause the game usually pissed the hell out of me due to the controls, but in the end, It was a good ride mostly because trico is really adorable. Without him i wouldnt play the game for more than an hour.

 

[chillybright]

It's a chore for beginning to finish. Don't waste more time.

 

[victreeb3l]

The game is definitely frustrating but its worth playing through. The bond with Trico is unlike anything I've experienced in a video game. It was my GOTY for 2016.

 

[XandBosch]

As someone who loved Shadow of the Colossus to bits, liked Ico enough to finish it, Last Guardian really disappointed me. Not because of what it turned out to be, but because I just couldn't bring myself to beat it. I became bored, frustrated, annoyed, etc. maybe halfway through. There were moments when I was in complete awe, but overall the game itself was just a damn mess, and it didn't have what Shadow of the Colossus did, an awesome gameplay draw. Nothing was cooler than playing as a tiny dude, climbing up this giant and finding out how to kill him, and doing it. Last Guardian was cool in concept in that you WEREN'T the hero (as far as I know), and you didn't do any of the fighting, but the truth is I got bored. Turns out, I like being the guy doing the fighting.

 

[Tabasco]

I didn't play very much of it before other games distracted me, but I plan to go back to it.

What bothered me the most were the controls and frame rate, equally.

It seemed like it dipped below 30 frames constantly. That made me feel kind of sick.

 

[gfxtwin]

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.

Your guess is as good as mine lol. As I mentioned earlier, maybe its the fact that no other game puts so much effort into making an NPC animal such a believable pet character. It's understandable that a lot of players are confused w/ the interacting with Trico aspect of the gameplay since almost no other game makes it such a focus of the experience. In that sense, a lot of the complaints sound reasonable to me simply because no other game has TLG's particular "train a giant, lifelike dogcatbird" mechanics and the dev team are very subtle with showing you what those mechanics are.

And of course it's not necessarily a "fun" game, it's got some camera issues and glitches, the poor framerate, a handful of tedious puzzles, etc. So there was bound to be some divisiveness among those who played it. But the negative reaction to the interacting with Trico part of the gameplay has got to be overexaggerated after seeing that Reddit post.

 

[KORNdoggy]

i absolutely loved it. technical issues aside i liked it more than uncharted 4, the only game i enjoyed even remotely as much last year. it was just too charming.

 

[Randy Monk]

That sentence made me do a triple take lol

I know it may seem funny in hindsight but regret can change the nature of a game

 

[Briarios]

Totally relate to the OPs position, I felt exactly the same - loved the others, was bored and frustrated by this. Not a big deal, not every game is for every person ... But it made me a little sad, because I was looking forward to it for so long.

 

[Vostranoid]

The game is definitely frustrating but its worth playing through. The bond with Trico is unlike anything I've experienced in a video game. It was my GOTY for 2016.

This for me too.

I also didn't think it was THAT frustrating.

 

[OldMan]

Game really tests your patience like no other for sure. Truck through it, well worth it for the ending...

 

[SweetJohnnyCage]

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.

What I'm talking about is when you issue a command, Trico does nothing a lot of the time, unless you're standing in the perfect spot. There is no indication that it might take a few seconds for him to respond, or that you're doing something wrong. In puzzle areas of the game that involved more than just calling him to catch up to me, there was never once a point where I felt like I was doing it right. One area that stands out to me is near the beginning of the game when you have to get him to go up on his hind legs and boost you up to a chain. I would call him over, he'd stand up, I'd start climbing, and he'd get down for no reason. This would happen multiple times until suddenly it didn't. There were other places where something like this would happen, most notably when you first run into the mist that he goes nuts over.

There was an alcove that when you walked through the archway, Trico would jump up to the top of the structure. The obvious solution to this would be to climb his tail when he's up there. But again, this took multiple tries to complete because when I'd go back through the archway to his tail's side, he would jump off to the water pool. I had to try multiple times until it suddenly worked for whatever reason.

The controls are simple, but the AI defies logic. If there was some sort of affinity meter to getting him to always obey your commands, fine, but there's not, so there's no excuse for stuff like that. It's frustrating and not fun to play. A lot of people didn't have these problems, but a lot of people did.

 

[To Far Away Times]

I was super dissapionted with The Last Guardian. And Shadow of the Colossus was a Top 3 game of the DC/PS2/Xbox/GCN generation for me.

It's just not fun. After two of the puzzles broke on me and didn't function as intended, I started using a guide. Not because I couldn't figure out the solutions, but because I didn't trust the game to function correctly. The game lost me, and at that point I was just playing to see the ending.

Sign posting is also awful, causing needless frustration. Levers are hidden in shadowy corners or sometimes under water without indication. That's the only real "challenge" with the game.

I also needed to restart the ending sequence because something didn't trigger as it should.

The game gets a little bit of a boost from atmosphere and world building, but I'd still say as a whole package it's no better than average, and even that feels a bit generous.

 

[Gravy Boat]

You call Trico (don't call him many times consecutively or he will be confused making weird noises), he moves his ears as soon as you call him then he moves his face towards you, it means he listened and ready to hear your order. Give orders mostly using analog stick in the direction you want Trico to look.

No need to repeat orders if you are patient enough and don't spam order button.

That all sounds fine in theory but from my experience it's not what happens. If I'd played it recently I'd upload vids to show what I mean but Trico spent more time ignoring me than doing what I asked. Many people see that as charming and realistic but I find it frustrating and tedious.

 

[TemplaerDude]

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.

It's a video game. You don't need half-baked controls to go along with the environment to give it "credibility" (what does that even mean).

 

[Lionel Richie]

I absolutely loved the game and it was my GOTY last year, but I'm a sucker for the atmosphere and sparse storytelling in Ueda's games. I recently saw this very good video about some of the shortcomings this game has and even though none of it affected my enjoyment, I can see how this stuff would turn some people off.

 

[televator]

I still think it's safe to say SOTC > TLG > Ico. The story, production values and concept alone make it a more enjoyable game than Ico, but it never reaches or maintains heights remotely close to SOTC's. And it did feel like a step backwards in game design. Like how Breath of the Wild's team learned art direction from Team Ico to improve its immersion, I hope Ueda's team learns from BOTW's gameplay going into their next game. And hopefully it will be a progression of the open world design of SOTC and not a return ton the more dated Ico style.

So far (I've been soldiering on with TLG), it is SotC > ICO >>>> TLG. ICO still heald my interest. It had an air of intrigue and a magic quality that isn't as strong in TLG. Which is weird to say considering there's a giant cat bird at your side. lol

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

I gave him the barrel and lighting the torch is part of solving the whole thing and getting there anyway. So yeah... I was talking about the ledge that leads out. It's at the end of the sequence. Trico turned around and became entranced by the pot permanently. Thankfully restarting from a checkpoint solved it without taking me back.