Colossus Fourteen - Destruction Luster

The fourteenth colossus on your hit list is located in square C2. To reach it, head west from the Shrine, cross the bridge into the large plain there, then head north on the border between C3 and D3 until you reach the valley there. Follow it northwest to the northern edge of C2, then wrap to the southwest along the path with the pillars on either side until you reach a cave. Walk through the cave to reach the colossus; you'll need to poke around a bit in the ruins before he appears.

Attacks

The Destruction Luster is almost identical in form to the Flame Guardian. As such, its primary attack involves charging at you and hitting you dead-on with its head. It is a bit better at nabbing you when you try to dodge out of the way, though, so your best bet to avoid this attack is simply to not be on the same surface as the Luster.

Killing It

If the last colossus made you feel like Indiana Jones, then the Luster is going to make you feel like the Prince of Persia; this is about as close as you're going to get to classical platforming in Shadow of the Colossus.

For the first section of this fight, you're not going to be able to hurt the colossus; you can only aggravate it with your arrows. Since you can't actually wound it, you'll need to figure out how to do so. As with the Flame Guardian, you need to find a way to expose its vital spot to your swordplay. To begin with, hop on the overturned pillar near where you begin the fight, and jump from there to the nearby platform; thus begins the platforming.

Video Walk-through

Killing the Luster here requires a bit of platforming.

Watch It »

This sequence of jumps isn't overly difficult. There's only one path that you can follow, and you can't be knocked back to the beginning of the area like you can in some game's jumping puzzles. What you basically need to do is jump onto the standing pillars, climb to the top of them (by repeating jumps), then fire arrows at the beast to get its attention when you're standing at the summit. That'll cause it to ram the pillars, which will tip them over onto their sides. If you then run along the sides of the pillars, you should be able to jump onto another pillar, and so on and so forth. If you follow the path that's available to you, you'll come to a larger structure with handholds set into it. You won't be able to jump all the way up to the top of this structure; you'll need to shimmer around the side of the structure and jump from there to avoid the platforms.

When you reach the platform near the suspiciously weak-looking wall, you'll have to break it by goading the beast to ramming your pillar. When the wall's smashed, you'll enter another little courtyard area, underneath where you first entered this little abattoir. There's a faux brown ladder on one side of this area, so jump up and climb to the upper platform here. There's a pillar that sticks up through the ground and pierces the platform; if you stand on top of it and fire an arrow at the beast, it'll ram the pillar, destroying it and causing the platform to fall on the colossus' back, thus exposing its vital spot.

After this point, it's all gravy. Return to one of the overturned pillars from before, such as the one that smashed through the wall, hop on top, fire an arrow at the beast, then use the R1 button to hang on while the Luster comes along and rams the pillar. It'll be temporarily stunned by the impact, allowing you to stand up and jump over to its back and stab its vitals. A few repetitions of this will finish the beast off for good.