There are bosses and then the are bosses.  The final colossus is the size of a small town, and will make short work of you before you even reach his feet.  First, getting to him.

SotC uses a neat mechanism to find the colossus.  Hold up your sword (when there’s sunshine) and it will point in a general direction towards the boss.  This works for 1-14.  15 and 16 are in the same line as previous colossi, entirely possible to take the wrong turn.

Getting to 16 requires finding a door, shining light, and then taking Agro along the path.  *spoiler* Things don’t go very well and Agro falls into the water *spolier*.  This was my first time dying in the PS4 version, and I recall the finicky controls of yesterday causing many a death in earlier games.  Following that, you need to climb up a small cliff to finally reach the boss.

Let’s be honest for a moment.  This guy gives goosebumps.  He takes up the entire screen and he’s a mile away.  It’s still something to see how large he his, likely could fit all the other 15 colossi under his armor.

The fight is in 3 stages.

First stage is more about not getting killed by fireballs.  You need to stand behind protection, run and dodge-roll to cover.  The last part of this is the hardest, as he’s quite close and the things come in screeching for your head.

The second stage is the climb.  He’s a tower and it takes a few seconds to make your way to his midsection.  This part is pretty darn cool.  It’s in the middle of a storm, and the rain/cloud effects are something to behold.  Feels like the sky is crying.

The final stage is the bugger of them all, and is burned into my psyche from all those years ago.  It requires a lot of precision and patience.  First, a prick on his back to make his hand come behind.  Then you reverse jump onto the hand.  He’ll bring it up, allowing you to run up his arm and then stab his shoulder.  This causes his other arm to come towards you, and another reverse jump.  So far, pretty obvious if not somewhat challenging.

Now the tricky part.  You need to stab that hand in order to make him lay it flat, then use your bow to attack the opposite shoulder.  He’ll then cringe in pain, bring that hand over, and you need to jump to the shoulder on the way to the head.  This is the frustrating part, as for some reason jumping doesn’t always work here.  It could take 10 minutes to get to this part from the start, and you’d fail and fall to your death.  I didn’t die (thankfully) but it did take a dozen or so tries to get the jump to work.

After that, the soft spot is on the head and it’s game over.

Ending

The game flows directly into the ending after that final strike.  You learn who Dormin is, what the sacrifice cost and the future of the world around you.  It leads well into ICO (the horned-kids and all).  I won’t go into it much, but it’s one of the better game endings out there.  And it looks amazing.

Replay

There’s a new game+, which allows you to do it all over again and stack more HP/stamina for each playthrough (that gets ridiculous after a while).  There’s mirror mode where everything is swapped vertically (your character is left handed).  This is more of a hard mode.

Finally, time trials – normal and hard.  This puts you against the clock on each colossi.  Beat enough, unlock items.  These items can improve power, stamina, change the way fights work out, or add markers to the maps for extra mini-collection quests.  I’ll spend some time here I think.

Overall

The game went by quickly, more so because I remembered the answers to all the puzzles.  For anyone who has never played the game, it is an amazing ride and worth every penny.  For those that have, the PS4 remake looks amazing.  Right up there with Horizon and MHW, but it tends to evoke more emotional response due to the efforts in music/lighting.  It’s a near masterpiece in what gaming can offer.