First Colossus - The Ogre

You can use your sword to find the weak spots on colossi.

When you reach the first Colossus, you're obviously going to be in for a bit of shellshock; these suckers are big. This guy's not the biggest one, but he's definitely a sight bigger than most of the foes you've fought in any other video game of late. There's not much to do here get busy!

First off, from long distance, you can use your sword and the O button to focus light on the enemy, revealing its "vitals." Since you're going to need to use your sword to kill the beast anyway, you're probably going to be able to spot the monster's weakspots when you're crawling around on it, but seeing the vitals now will at least give you a vague idea on where to go.

Attacks

Feel free to walk around the colossus a bit to get an idea of how it'll try to damage you. It has three primary methods of dishing out the hurt. The first two involve its feet. Obviously enough, if you get stepped on, you're going to take damage, but the force of the colossus' footsteps are enough to damage you slightly if you're even nearby the area where its feet hit the ground. The damage from these little earthquakes is minor, however. It can also raise its foot up into the air and pound the ground with a larger shockwave blast that'll cause you to stumble. Again, minor damage.

The third, and most devastating attack, involves the massive club that the colossus wields. If you stand still for too long, you'll see the colossus rear back with its club and bring it down onto your head, causing a severe amount of damage. Luckily, though, this attack is extremely slow, so you should be able to avoid it fairly easily just by running to either side and using an R1+triangle dash jump at the last second.

Killing It

Video Walk-through

The first colossus is also the simplest.

Watch It »

Taking down the colossus is actually a bit easier than you might think, at least when you know how to proceed. The key thing is getting at its vitals and hitting them with your sword. You can do a minor amount of damage to the beast by hitting it with your arrows in the face, but actually killing it in that manner is probably impossible, or at least impractical; it's much better to just climb the thing and pop it in the head with your sword.

Yeah, you heard us; you're going to need to climb all the way up to the top of the colossus and stab it. Stab it hard. Its primary weak spot is directly on top of the beast's head, so you're going to have a bit of climbing to do. To begin with, try to circle around the colossus until you reach its rear side; you should be able to see tufts of hair just above its left hoof. When the hoof is level with the ground, dash up to it and jump + grab to hang on.

From here, climbing is just like climbing a cliff, albeit a cliff that moves. As the colossus strides about, you won't be able to move your hero, and in fact might be reoriented a bit due to all the swinging about. Just hang on with your R1 button until things settle down a bit; when the foot is firmly planted on the ground, you'll be able to move as you like.

Now, there is a small dark spot on the leg of the colossus; this is its first weak spot. Technically you can probably stab anywhere in the fur to wound the beast, but you might as well go for the good shot here. When you reach the spot, tap your square button, then tap it again after a second to stab the beast and hamstring it a bit. This won't do much damage to it, but that's not the goal; what really happens is that the leg will drop for a second and the monster will almost let its knee hit the ground, making the calf a horizontal platform for a moment or two. During this time, you have to let go of your hold, stand up, then quickly jump up above the armor on the thigh of the beast and grab a hold of the fur near its...well, near its butt.

The Ascent

'And up from the ground came a bubblin' crude...oil, that is. Black gold! Texas tea!

When you're above the thigh, you'll have to quickly reach the platforms on the colossus' back before your grip meter runs out and you fall off. Climbing is going to be difficult to do with the movement of the monster, so just use jumps to move up and to the left until you reach one of the ledges that connects to the platform. When you're on a ledge, scooch your way over to the right until you reach the platform, then jump onto that and let your grip meter replenish before moving on. It's difficult to get knocked off of the platform here due to the guardrail on its edge, but keep your finger on the R1 button just in case.

From the platform, you should have a straight shot up the colossus' spine, and from there, to its head. On top of the head, you'll see a small symbol, indicating the beast's primary weak spot, and it's here that you want to slam your sword in over and over until the colossus dies. If all goes well, this will only take a few stabs, but the colossus will usually try to flip you off of its head by doing a bit of headbanging. Although this looks like a pretty severe motion, you can hang on if you just keep holding that R1 button. If your grip meter starts to deflate, then you might need to let go while the beast is standing still; you can stand upright on its head to let your meter restore itself, but you'll need to be gripping the fur to stab the weakspot.

After four or five good, solid blows, the colossus will keel over dead, and you'll shortly find yourself back in the Shrine, being told about your next foe.