Ico was a fun puzzle / adventure game, but just way too short.
----------Battle System----------
Ico is an action / adventure game. There's a ton of similarities to this game and the modern Zelda games, except there's more meat to a Zelda game. Ico only has 2 moves, hack and slash. He won't learn anything else in the game. There's only 4 weapons in the game, one is hidden (I didn't even find it) and the other you use at the last 15 minutes of the game. So basically you use a stick and a sword through out most of the game, and you'll mostly be using them for puzzles. There's no inventory, there's no items, there's no armor, there's no special attacks to learn, there's no experience points or levels.
Ico is sort of a babysitting game, since Ico has to yank Yorda around the entire game. Ico has to protect her at all times, and if you stray away from her for to long then a monster will come up and snatch her. The regular monsters are pretty similar to defeat, but sometimes you'll get swarmed with them and they'll snatch Yorda away from you, then fly across the screen to their warp zone and you won't have enough time to save her. If Yorda or Ico dies then you can continue from the last time you opened a door or your last save point, so it's not to much trouble at all.
Puzzle solving and platforming is the backbone to Ico. You'll be pushing blocks, climbing chains, walking across ledges, hitting switches, jumping platforms, basically everything you do in a Zelda game. Puzzle solving was extremely fun and rewarding when you figure this stuff out, but platforming can be a bit frustrating. The analog sticks are a bit sensitive, so if you're walking across a small ledge then one bad twitch can send Ico to the end. Luckily this game will stop Ico if he gets near the edge, and if he does fall then he'll catch himself. Even with that much protection I still felt a little nervous jumping platformers.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Ico, a boy with horns. He is sent to this decrepit castle to be sacrificed since kids that form horns are bad omens to their village. Ico set's himself free inside the castle from his tomb, and then wonders around trying to figure his way out of this castle. He eventually meets up with a ghostly looking girl captured inside of a cage. He sets her free, but once that happens a bunch of black monster's come out of the floor and try to kidnap her. Ico saves her, and they go on their jouney to escape from the castle.
There wasn't much story to the game, that last paragraph pretty much sums up the first 10 minutes of the game, but after that it might take 3 hours to get to the next scene with dialog. There's really none after that point until the 5th hour of the game, then finally some more at the end of it. I loved the concept for the game, and it certainly had a ton of charm, but there just wasn't enough of it. The characters were great and full of personality, even though they're almost silent throughout, but there's only 3 main characters in the entire game.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics have a great style to them, but the game doesn't show off to much. The area's are freaking huge, the character designs are great, and the in-game cutscenes are pretty awesome. The washed out color scheme was great.
Other than that, the game is kinda weak in graphics. Most of the areas look the same, you'll fight the same monsters over and over again. There's only one boss, there's 4 weapons, and only a few variations of puzzles. The game was also very short, with maybe 5 or 6 cutscenes.
----------Sound----------
There's only a few times in the game where there's music, and that's what I love about this game the most. The game relies alot on the ambience of the flames flickering, the wind blowing, or the water crashing. There's a full song at the end during the credits, which is very good, and some battle music when you fight the final boss, but that's pretty much it. The rest of the game has no music and it puts out a great atmosphere.
The characters speak in Japanese or gibberish. There are subtitles for the Japanese spoken lines of dialog, and even made up symbols for the gibberish. Ico will yell out to Yorda during the game, but I have no idea what he's saying. I can't imagine what this game would be like with English speaking voice actors, so I'm glad they left it how it is. There's not a whole lot of dialog in the game though.
----------World Map----------
The game takes place entirely inside and around a gigantic castle. That's basically it, there's no sub-maps or menus to look at, you just have to remember everything. The game is fairly linear, so it shouldn't be trouble figuring your way around the castle.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
5:01:58
That was my last save before the final (and only) boss, but there was a ton of stuff after that, possibly an hours worth. This game probably took me 6 hours to beat.