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All Secret of Shadow of the Colossus

SotC for Advanced Players

This chapter collects all the not so obvious but helpful tips and tricks that don't fit anywhere else in this Walkthrough. If you want to know even more, take a look at the Links to other Shadow of the Colossus pages on the internet. There are a lot of very interesting things to be found. But for now and here, more secret facts about the gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus will come along.

Reminiscence Mode

If you come back to the places where you fought against a colossus you see his left over ruins on the ground. Stand on the ruins of the colossus and pray. Do so by pressing the button. Now you fight against the colossus again in reminiscence mode.
And just for your interest, if you visit the area a colossus is supposed to be at before you are supposed to be fighting this colossus and wonder what happens, well, the colossus just won't be there.

Jump Sting

It is quite easy to do the jump sting and of you do it right it is also very effective against the colossi.

To perform the jump sting you just have to jump towards a weak point of a colossus by pressing the button to jump and press and together while you are in the air. When done correctly Wander lands a fully charged blow onto the weakpoint without you having to charge up his powers first. This is great to land a powerful first strike especially in time attack. Colossus 11 is a good example where it is extremely useful.

climb up Agro differently

So you don't have to slowly stand next to Agro and finally climb up on your horse really slow with the button. You can do this different, just jump towards Agro's saddle and while you are in the right height press . Wander will now climb up on Agro out of the jump and land in the saddle in no time.

A different Intro

You know the Intro where an eagle flies towards Wander and Wander takes the long and hard way to the forbidden lands on him. If you let the game idle for a while, while you are on the startscreen (this means, just do nothing at all) you can see Wander sleep at the saveshrine where you last saved the game and Agro runs all over the depth of the land. The camera follows Agro while he runs.
If you just completed the game, say defeated the 16th colossus and you saved this then just turn off the PS2 and restart the game and idle again on the startscreen. This time the camera doesn't follow Agro but it follows an eagle that flies over the forbidden lands.

ICO References

Shadow of the Colossus is already the 2nd game made by Fumito Ueda. Before he created the also really lovely ICO. And there is a small reference to ICO in Shadow of the Colossus. Normally Agro has a small diamondshape on the fur on his forehead. But if you have a savefile from ICO on the memory card of your PS2 this diamond shape turns into the I from the ICO logo. Small, subtle but nice.
(There is something similar with Silent Hill. There is something different within the 3rd part if you have a savefile from Silent Hill 2 on your MC. Something weird and disgusting with a toliet... well Silent Hill is way more slimey and gruesome than SotC. But also really recommended.)

Once you defeated all the 16 colossi in hard time attack you get a very special Item that is also know from Ico, the Queen's Sword.

At the end of ICO you are at a beach that you can also find in the forbidden lands of SotC. Maybe you are already in the world of SotC at the end of ICO.
If you want to ride to the ICO beach in SotC, you can find it far in the west of field B5.

More colors for Agro

And while we are at changes for Agro...
Once you made it through the game and defeated all 16 colossi and even made it through Time Attack Mode and defeated all colossi there in time try pressing while you are on the startscreen and Agro is replaced with a horse that has brown fur within the game.
Once you completed the game on hard and also completely completed the Hard Time Attack Mode then press while on the start screen and you will have a white Agro within the game.

The 17th Colossus

Well, well, well, the 17th colossus, is it in the game or is it not? To make it short, there is no official 17th colossus in shadow of the colossus. No really, there isn't. This is an internet rumor that still lasts. But of course you can come up with a lot of theories if or if not Wander is the 17th colossus or maybe Dormin and so on...

Colossus Sizes

Which is the biggest, most colossal Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus, which one is the smallest Colossus? These questions just arise while playing the game so this diagram should give you all answers you need!


Click the image for a bigger size image
Taken from the Shadow of the Colossus Artbook This looks interesting already, but if you want more info then please visit the longer article from Nomad about Colossus sizes! This article is a lot longer and more indepth and more interesting than this short paragraph with an image.

A lot more about Shadow of the Colossus

You can find a lot of interesting articles, screenshots, images, fanart and more stuff about and around this nice game in the the very huge Linkcollection for Shadow of the Colossus

Fruits and Lizards

Fruits

Everywhere in the forbidden lands where Shadow of the Colossus takes place you can find trees. Some of the trees have fruits on them. Get close to a tree with fruits on it, chose bow and arrow as your weapon and look up while aiming. Some trees have 3 fruits at once, some just one and other trees have no fruits on them at all.

So if you found a tree with fruits on it shoot the fruits with bow and arrow. Then pick up and eat the fruits with the button.

The fruits increase the maximum value that your healthbar can have, so you can take more damage. The more fruits you eat the longer your healthbar grows. But the fruits you have already eaten don't regrow on the trees.


click on the map to view it in a bigger, readable and interactive version.
Just red in the next chapter what you get for defeating 10 colossi in time attack ;)

Lizards

Everywhere in the forbidden lands where Shadow of the Colossus takes place you can find small lizards. Most of the lizards you will find along your journey have a black tail and are rather useless. On the save shrines though you can find lizards that have a glowing white tail. These are the important lizards. Sometimes you can find these lizards with the white tails in the wild, but this is rather unusual if you don't know where to find them.

So once you found one of the lizards with the white tail kill it with your bow and arrow and pick up the tail that is left over with the button.

Wander seems to eat these tails and this increases your round grip gauge. The more white lizard tails you eat the longer you can hold onto a colossus are keep climbing.
This value also increases with every colossus you defeated..

So if you find a white tailed lizard shoot its tail. The lizard will wiggle and then drop off the tail, just like a real lizard. Now you can eat the tail and power up your grip gauge and come back later. The wizard lizard will have regrown the tail. If you are after an achievement for the PS3 version you have to kill all the lizards to make it count though.



click on the map to view it in a bigger, readable and interactive version.
Just red in the next chapter what you get for defeating 8 colossi in time attack ;)

Time Attack

As soon as you made it through the game once, which means you have defeated all 16 colossi you can play the time attack mode in Shadow of the Colossus.

To play the time attack mode you have to save after you won over the 16th colossus and then load the savefile that has the 2 next to it.

Once you are in the hall with all the colossi position yourself in front of the statue of the colossus you want to fight against in time attack mode and pray by pressing the button.

Now you have to win against the colossus you chose in the set time. The times for the colossi in time attack are as follows:

Colossus 01	02:30
Colossus 02	04:00
Colossus 03	06:00
Colossus 04	05:30
Colossus 05	05:30
Colossus 06	03:30
Colossus 07	12:00
Colossus 08	08:00
Colossus 09	07:30
Colossus 10	06:00
Colossus 11	05:30
Colossus 12	09:30
Colossus 13	12:00
Colossus 14	09:00
Colossus 15	10:00
Colossus 16	09:30

Every 2 defeated colossi you get a nice bonus item which are:

2 Colossi defeated Whistling Arrow
distract the Colossi

4 Colossi defeated Cloak of Force
gives you more strength

6 Colossi defeated Mask of Strength
gives you more strength

8 Colossi defeated Lizard Detection Stone
helps you find the lizards

10 Colossi defeated Fruit Tree Map
helps you find the fruit trees

12 Colossi defeated Mask of Power
gives you more strength

14 Colossi defeated Cloak of Deception
makes you invisible for the colossi

16 Colossi defeated Flash Arrow
explode as soon as you hit a colossus.


Once you made it and unlocked all these bonusitems there is another surprise:
When you keep pressing the button while on the start screen you get a brown Agro within the game.

The bonus items from the normal mode time attack cannot be used while in time attack and also not in a new game with hard difficulty.

Hard Mode

You unlock the hard mode by completing the game once on normal (default) difficulty. In hard mode nearly all colossi have an additional weak point or something else is harder. I will just give general pointers here and not be as elaborate as in the complete FAQ for the normal mode, but it is more fun to find this out by yourself, don't you think. So do this and just read on here once you are completely stuck!

Hard Time Attack

And after you completed the hard mode of the main game you unlock another time attack mode, the hard time attack mode of course. So beat all 16 colossi listed above and you can play hard time attack.

To play the hard time attack mode you have to save after you won over the 16th colossus and then load the savefile that has the 2 AND THE 'S' next to it.

Once you are in the hall with all the colossi position yourself in front of the statue of the colossus you want to fight against in hard time attack mode and pray by pressing the button.

Now you have to win against the colossus you chose in the set time. The times for the colossi in hard time attack are as follows:

Colossus 01	02:50
Colossus 02	04:30
Colossus 03	05:00
Colossus 04	05:00
Colossus 05	05:30
Colossus 06	06:30
Colossus 07	08:00
Colossus 08	07:30
Colossus 09	05:30
Colossus 10	05:00
Colossus 11	05:30
Colossus 12	10:00
Colossus 13	13:00
Colossus 14	09:00
Colossus 15	11:30
Colossus 16	13:00

Every 2 defeated colossi you get another nice bonus item which are:

2 Colossi defeated Harpoon of Thunder
a mighty long range weapon

4 Colossi defeated Sword of the Sun
reflects light from the sword even in darkness

6 Colossi defeated Fruit Tree Map
Shows you all the fruittrees on the map

8 Colossi defeated Shaman's Cloak
decreases the damage you take

10 Colossi defeated Lizard Detection Stone
Shows you all the lizards on the map

12 Colossi defeated Shaman's Mask
decreases the damage you take

14 Colossi defeated Cloth of Desperation
use it as a parachute

16 Colossi defeated Queen's Sword
from Ico


Once you made it and unlocked all these bonusitems there is another surprise:
When you keep pressing the button while on the start screen you get a white Agro within the game.
The bonus items from the hard mode time attack cannot be used while in hard time attack and also not in a new game with normal difficulty.

Climb onto the shrine of worship temple to reach the Secret Garden

So, you SotC freak, you want the final secret, the heart and soul of this game? Then get ready to read a lot and play even more and be absolutely happy once you reached the secret garden..

As already mentioned in the lizards and fruits section on this page you can gain more grabbing power and duration by eating the white tails of some of the lizards that have these white tails. Killing colossi also makes this power of yours grow. To get more info on this read on in the according chapter.

To even think about maybe getting up to the secret garden you should at least have played through the game twice, better would be 4 times, and having all of this saved on the same savefile of course so that your duration from the other playthroughs accumulates.

So this means you should have defeated 60 or even better 64 colossi and have eaten a lot of white lizards tails on all these playthroughs and from that you should have gained a lot of grabbing power. In case you have got what it takes and what it demands then read on my friend and find out how to reach the secret garden in Shadow of the colossus!

The secret garden is hidden in the highest place of the whole forbidden lands in which Shadow of the colossus takes place. So where is this highest place you are talking about you might ask? It's on top of the highest building in the whole land. Which one could that be? Alright it's the temple where Mono is hanging around being dead and waiting for you to revive her.

And you want to climb on this huge thing now? Well, there is nothing easier than this! Get Agro and ride out of the temple hall. Ride along the temple on the eastern side towards the back of the temple.

At the northeastern corner of the temple there is some green ivy like stuff on the eastern wall. You can climb up on this. But now the question is... how?

Already the start is important. Ride towards the wall with the ivy on it then stand up on Agro. You do this by pressing and holding and pushing the analogstick forward. Standing on your horse like this you ride towards the wall, then jump onto the wall from Agro's back. This will save you some meters.

Now climb up pretty straight on the green stuff. You will notice that the way up will part to two and that the way on the right is a bit more elevated than the way on the left.

So chose the right way, after some time a huge part sticks out on the right of you, pass this until you reach a small ledge to your right. If this way real this ledge would be no bigger than 20cm high and it is grey. Climb around the corner to the right and hang onto this small ledge.

If you are lucky you make it up on the ledge and can sit on it and regain some health on it. This is for 99% only possible in the NTSC version of Shadow of the Colossus. PS2 that is, dunno about PS3. Then back to the ledge and climb to right of it until you can't go any further.

Here you will find more green stuff, climb on it, this time to the right and a bit down. You will reach another ledge there where you climb farther to the right until you reach even more plant material to hang on and climb on.

Climb over this green stuff even farther to the right and a bit up to another ledge. Here you have to climb around the corner. If you can't make it without losing your grip, jump a little bit, don't drop down and hang on to the ledge to climb on hanging from the ledge around the rounding to the right.

While you are on the ledge of this rounding there is a huge and fat pillar behind you. Jump from your ledge to the pillar. Grab onto more plants on the pillar.

Now it is quite easy to climb up to the stairs on the front side of the pillar. And voila you are now on your way to the secret garden.




In case this is all too hard to understand for you and you want to see the final secret in this supreme game played by someone else and not you then just watch this informative video documenting the way up to the secret garden. Sadly not the best videoquality.

Video of the way up

What to do in the Secret Garden

After you finally landed in the secret garden you might ask yourself what the hell do you here? Well, the best and most interesting thing is to find out yourself but here are some ideas for you:

There isn't that much to do up here at all. This is sad but true.

You can shoot the fruits up here and eat them, but beware these fruits are rather mean than helpful, the fruits in the secret garden are called the forbidden fruits by many. How come? In case you already ate some fruits from the normal fruit trees found all over the land you healthbar is grown with every fruit you ate. So with every eaten forbidden fruit from the secret garden your healthbar decreases a bit.
Once your healthbar reached the level it had when you started the game it won't shrink anymore. But getting down from the secret garden without dying is the problem now...

And you can go for a long journey. You can travel to the end of the long bridge that spans across half of the land. But this will take a while until you reach the end of the bridge travelling by foot...

You can call Agro while you are on the bridge and jump down and try to land on his back. Good luck with that!

You can jump into the hole and find out you land in the pool once you are down.

That's probably all there is to do up here, but you can still enjoy the wide view and be proud that you did something not everybody playing this ingenious game achieves.

Names of the Colossi and according latin Names

Number	Normal Name	Latin Name
1	"Valus"	Minotaurus Colossus
2	"Quadratus"	Taurus Magnus
3	"Gaius"	Terrestris Veritas
4	"Phaedra"	Equus Bellator Apex
5	"Avion"	Avis Praeda
6	"Barba"	Belua Maximus
7	"Hydrus"	Draco Marinus
8	"Kuromori"	Parietinae Umbra
9	"Basaran"	Nimbus Recanto
10	"Dirge"	Harena Tigris
11	"Celosia"	Ignis Excubitor
12	"Pelagia"	Permagnus Pistrix
13	"Phalanx"	Aeris Velivolus
14	"Cenobia"	Clades Candor
15	"Argus"	Praesidium Vigilo
16	"Malus"	Grandis Supernus

Animals

You can find a lot of animals in the game Shadow of the Colossus. Some of them are useful (see white tailed lizards), others are just there and with some others you can have some fun.

Lizards

As you can read in the first chapter of this secrets page you can get more grip power by collecting the white tails of some of the lizards.

Doves

The doves are flying around the altar on which Mono is lying. They fly away once you are coming too close to them. But if you are fast enough you can grab a dove and fly around with the dove.

Eagle

The eagles can be found all over the world (and in the Hotel California), they are flying over the wide plains and scream their signature cries.
You can jump towards them and if you are lucky enough to catch one Use to hold onto the eagle. Use the Button to make them, fly a bit higher. Once Wander has no more grabbing powers he will just let go and fall down.

Turtles

On some water spots you can find the turtles. You can't do anything with them except watching them slowly walk around. The climb into their shell once you come too close to them.

Fish

In some of the deeper waters you can find fish. You can shoot them and once they drown you can grab onto them and sink towards the ground with them. Well, as long as you have air.
If you are fast and skilled enough you can grab onto them while they are still alive and let them drag you under water and swim with them.

Eel

These work the same way like fish with the only difference that they drag you under water towards the ground all the time if you hang onto them while they are still alive. You can find a lot of fish and eels in G6.

Bats

You will find the bats on the way into the cave of the 10th colossus. Besides looking cool they can not do much more.

!!! Spoilers !!!

Deer

You can see a deer in the outro that you won't see within the game otherwise.

Squirrel

In the outro of the PAL version of Shadow of the Colossus you can even see a squirrel. You can not see it on the NTSC version of the game. Well, this is not really rewarding for having to wait half a year longer for a release of the game than the NTSC gamers. Well, the 4 cards from the game are really cool though.

Nico

The game Shadow of the Colossus was supposed to be called Nico. This is a clever japanese play on words, as the first game by Fumito Ueda is called ICO. And 'Ni' is japanese for two. Got it? Good!

Also interesting is the fact that Dormin red backwards reads nimrod. Read on wikipedia what a nimrod is and what he did in case you don't know, I won't elaborate on this now. But you will be even more mindblown if you read it up yourself...
Well, but what I write is, that Sony registered the trademark of Nimrod Colossus shortly before the release of Shadow of the Colossus. So it is intended that Dormin is called Dormin and the playing with words continues as you can shorten Nimrod Colossus to NiCo. Interesting?!

VIRAL MARKETING Campaign from Sony

In October of the year 2005 of our counting of the years Sony started a page with the address::

http://giantology.typepad.com/

On this page the fake siteowner reported about colossi that came out of the earth and linked to the following pages with even more reports:


http://paleoshilling.nl/
http://divethedeepscuba.com.au/
http://arkadysimkin.pl/
http://www.familysayre.net/
http://giantology.typepad.com/giantology/2005/10/tsunami_giant_c.html
http://www.stop-polarneft.com/


On this pages you can find fake reports about colossal statues that came out of the earth and "scientists" that found these. And a lot of comments from people all over the world that claim that all of this is fake and they get angry about it. Some others think it is quite interesting and the videos are good. I think so tooo btw. ;)

The Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Shadow of the Colossus was only released in Japan (Release Date was 2005/12/07) under the name 'DAICHI NO HOKOU', (what translate to 'Roar of the Earth' in English) and it looks like it will not be released in the rest of the world. Sad but true.
The following track are found on the official soundtrack for Shadow of the colossus:

• 1. Prologue *To the Ancient Land*
• 2. Prohibited Art
• 3. Commandment
• 4. Black Blood
• 5. Resurrection
• 6. Sign of the Colossus
• 7. Grotesque Figures *Battle Theme*
• 8. The Opened Way *Battle Theme*
• 9. The End of the Battle
• 10. Idol Collapse
• 11. Green Hills
• 12. A Violent Encounter *Battle Theme*
• 13. Revived Power *Battle Theme*
• 14. Lakeside
• 15. Silence *Battle Theme*
• 16. In Awe of the Power *Battle Theme*
• 17. Wander's Death
• 18. The Farthest Land
• 19. Creeping Shadow *Battle Theme*
• 20. A Messenger From Behind *Battle Theme*
• 21. Counterattack *Battle Theme*
• 22. Sky Burial
• 23. A Closed-off City
• 24. Liberated Guardian *Battle Theme*
• 25. A Despair-filled Farewell *Battle Theme*
• 26. Prayer
• 27. Swift Horse
• 28. Gate Watcher of the Castle Ruins *Battle Theme*
• 29. Sanctuary
• 30. Demise of the Ritual *Battle Theme*
• 31. A Pursuer
• 32. Premonition of Revival
• 33. Epilogue *Those Who Remain*
• 34. Hope
• 35. The Sunlit Earth
• 36. Memories
• 37. Wilderness
• 38. Voice of the Earth
• 39. Marshlands
• 40. Anger
• 41. Final Battle
• 42. The Farthest Land (Reprise)

Making of

There is an interesting article about the technology and the people behind Shadow of the colossus on the internet, you can find it under the following link:

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20051207/3dwa.htm
and the english translation:
Making of

Navigation

	Colossus 01	Colossus 02	Colossus 03	Colossus 04
	Colossus 05	Colossus 06	Colossus 07	Colossus 08
	Colossus 09	Colossus 10	Colossus 11	Colossus 12
	Colossus 13	Colossus 14	Colossus 15	Colossus 16

Secrets

Making of

Links

Fruit Tree Map

Lizard Map

Colossus Map

Save Shrines

Back to the mainpage of SotC

  

Reader comments, opinions, alternate solutions and more:

1) V-FS  (ich@duuch.de) wrote on: Am Ende von ICO ist man am Strand von SotC. Ist was für ICO Referenz. In SotC kann man ganz links auf der Karte zu diesem Strand reiten und dort gibt es sogar noch das Boot wo ICO drin war. VOn hier sieht man auch noch ein Teil der Burg aus ICO.	2) selmiak  (mail hidden) wrote on: Danke für den Tipp. Ich hab das mal ein wenig umformuliert und in den Text auf dieser Seite übernommen =)	3) enzo  (mail hidden) wrote on: am schluß hebt das mädchen noch den säugling auf der hörner hat
4) hatschiii  (mail hidden) wrote on: Ich will ja nix sagen aber am angeblichen Strand von ICO ist absolut gar nichts und sieht aus wie jeder Strand. Da ist auch kein Boot wie behauptet. Ich bin da ne halbe Stunde auf und abgeritten. DA ist absolut nix, nicht mal grün so wie im ICO Abspann, sorry wenn dir da wer einen Bären aufgebunden hat.	5) selmiak  (mail hidden) wrote on: Gesundheit! Aber, ... aber, wenn's im Internet steht, dann stimmt es doch! Oder nicht? Dieses mal eher nicht, danke für diesen hilfreichen Beitrag, ich habs nun mal selber nachgeprüft, bestätigt und im Text auf der Seite ausgebessert, keine Ahnung warum ich das vorher einfach so, ohne nachzuprüfen übernommen habe...	6) hatschiii  (mail hidden) wrote on: man kann sich im übrigen auch nicht an der Kante festhalten weil das schon damals in der EU Version als Bug gefixt worden ist.
7) hatschiii  (mail hidden) wrote on: Ich kann dir gerne Screenshots machen, da unten ist nichts am Strand.	8) hatschiii  (mail hidden) wrote on: So ich hab dir ein paar Fotos gemacht nur falls du sie sehen willst. ich hatte mich eigentlich gefreut als ich das gelesen habe und bin sofort hingeritten um nachzusehen und leider ist da nichts. Also woran liegt das?	9) hatschiii  (mail hidden) wrote on: sry habe jetzt erst deinen Beitrag gelesen ;) und hatte mich verlesen sry alles klaro dann brauchst du ja keine Beweise mehr. Ich muss deine gute Map für die Eidechsen loben. mir fehlen glaub ich zwei aber ich komme leider nicht drauf wo mehr.
10) PKMN  (mail hidden) wrote on: This Was Really Helpful, The Lizard Map! I Can't Believe I Missed So Many. I Knew Most of The Things On Here but I Still Learned A Thing or Two! Also Thanks For Naming Which Soundtrack Was A Battle Theme

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