Colossus Sixteen - The Final Colossus

The final colossus is also the most deadly of the bunch.

To reach the last colossus, head down to the tip of the world in square F8. You'll need to follow the canyon to the southwest of the Shrine of Worship, then proceed south across the plains until you find the entrance to another canyon. You'll find that it's blocked by a huge set of doors with a beam of light coming out of them; stand on the platform nearby and focus the light back into the porthole to open the doors. There's a save spot inside the canyon here, near the set of stairs leading up; be sure to save your game before moving on.

Take the horse up to the top of the stairs. There's a platform leading across to the central structure here. It'll collapse as soon as you jump to it, leading to an instant death if you do it alone; if you stay on your horse, though, and make the jump while riding it, you'll be able to clear the gap. Unfortunately there's no way to avoid the events that ensue. Is the girl really worth this?

You'll need to start making your ascent of the structure now. There are four ridges that run along the wall here; climb up them, then walk along until you spot a likely-looking stone to climb and get busy. You'll come to a dead end eventually, when you hit a platform where it starts raining. You'll notice a pair of pillars on either side of the platform, though. Climb them to come face to face with your final foe.

Attacks

You'll discover as soon as you walk towards the colossus here that, well, daddy's angry, and he's not going to spare the rod. The primary attack of this colossus involves a massive energy projectile that deals significant damage and knocks you down if you're caught in the blast. The projectile moves exceedingly quickly, so your only real chance to avoid it is to stay behind cover. You can also dash-dodge behind barricades to avoid the effect.

Killing It

This colossus is one big climbing puzzle.

Luckily for you, there are barricades set up at the top of the first ramp; you can dash + dodge from barricade to barricade and avoid the ill effects of the fire. Even if you take a bunch of damage, you're going to be able to rest in the various tunnels. To reach from area to area, you'll need to dive into the holes in the ground; the tunnels beyond will connect you to the next little platforming area. There's an area of barricades, one of jumping and hanging, and then another barricades area before you finally reach the bottom of the colossus and are able to begin your ascent. If you took any damage during the approach, you can rest here and regain it, but you shouldn't really need to, as the bulk of your job from now on is pure climbing.

There are a number of different valid paths up the colossus; you can go up the front, or up the back, or one of the sides. None of these are particularly difficult to figure out; if you can't head straight up, find a platform that'll let you walk around a bit until you find another handhold and head up via that.

When you reach the creature's waist, you'll have to circle around to the small of its back to find the large weak spot there. After latching on and stabbing the weak spot, the colossus will reach around and try to scratch the itch, so to speak; at this point, you'll need to hold down your jump button and press down on your left analog stick to line up a jump from the back to the hand of the arm that's coming your way.

Shortly after jumping to the hand, the arm will start to retract up to the creature's front side, where it'll look at you as if you were a vaguely interesting insect. When the hand levels out, you need to quickly get onto its topside and run up the arm to the next patch of fur there, where you'll find another weak spot. Hitting this one will cause the other arm to wrap around and get close to you; another backwards jump and you'll attach to the second hand.

Video Walk-through

Be sure to check the text for this boss to find an even better way to get to his head!

Watch It »

You're almost up top at this point. You need to do two things at this point. One is to stab the hand that you're attached to. Doing so won't harm the beast, but it will cause it to level out the hand for a moment. At this point, you can get on top of the hand, whip out your bow, and quickly fire an arrow at the almost invisible weak spot on the creature's shoulder. Doing so will bring you around to the shoulder, and from there, you can jump to the neck area of the colossus.

Climb onto the head and get stabby! Of course, for the game's final boss, and a creature with only one vital spot to boot, you can expect the colossus here to really give you a struggle, and you'll definitely have a hard time holding on for stabbing. After each good blow, the creature will whip its head around for a good 20 or 30 seconds, and there'll be little you can do but hold on. This makes the fight more tedious than really adding any severe difficulty to it, so if you have a few minutes to hang on, you should eventually be able to finish the guy off.

The Endgame

We’re not going to spoil any spoilericious surprises of the endgame, save to say that the two sequences here, while allowing you to control yourself, apparently aren't "winnable." There's not much you can do to affect the outcome of the game, so if something seems really hard to avoid, it probably is.

After beating the game for the first time, and watching through to the end of the credits, you'll be rewarded with two new game modes: Hard mode and Time Attack mode. Completing either of these will allow you to unlock new items and weapons for your character.