If you're looking for a game full of endless puzzles and stories grandeur, this is not for you.
This is a work of art, and should be viewed more as an interactive movie. Which I don't see as a bad thing, but I'm sure a lot of people would be turned off by it.
This story focuses on the boy and the mystery bordering his growing friendship between the chimera beast, "Trico".
Fumito Ueda's style is clear on this product as it has an extremely similar environment and likeness to ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Not much is said, and nothing is blatantly explained throughout the game. There are only comments by the boy (well, man) as he is telling bits of his story with Trico.
I grew to love Trico, but he can be a bit stubborn. People are convinced that it is merely the game telling you the script isn't right in certain circumstances. That is another way of Trico not being able to figure out what you're saying. If Trico could do anything that the player wanted without fail, he would seem more robotic and less realistic. In a lot of ways I find his behavior to be preferable for the immersion. To be honest, the boy is harder to control a lot of the time than Trico.
It's a shame that it's not optimized, and the "camera reset" where it fades to black is really annoying and hurts the immersion. At a certain point I had been stuck and confused on what to do as Trico had frozen and would not calm down. I realized an enemy was still present but had not been pulled so in order to get him going it had to be done. I agree that some points could be less frustrating, but that could be said for most games.
It's clear this game was not given enough time, ironically enough. But everyone seems to forget that finishing this game had been tough due to Sony trying to cripple Fumito Ueda's vision, which he wanted nothing of. So he had left Sony for a while and the game was at a stand still. It is admirable he risked never finishing the game, so Sony couldn't just get a quick buck for something that lost some meaning to the director. Despite the wants of his fan base, a lot of time that could have been used to work on this game was in turn wasted due to this. So not everything is perfect frame rate wise or mechanically.
Despite it all, I love this game and story. Just as I loved Shadow of the Colossus. It's more of an experience than anything, and I feel the same sadness that it's over. But at least I can play or watch it again online.
If you love companion games in an immersive and beautiful world, this game is for you. Just keep in mind a lot of what you will see is ruins. Just as The Last Guardian's predecessors.