Shadow of the Colossus/YMMV

It's very tempting to say "everything", but...

Beware unmarked spoilers.

Wander and his motives

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is he The Hero, the Villain Protagonist, or something in between? The ambiguity of the story means he can be any of these things.
• Designated Hero: For the fans who find his quest less-than-noble.
• The Woobie: With the amount of things the guy goes through for love, a few players just wanted to give him a hug.

The Colossi

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Are they all just mindless beasts? Or are they aware of Wander's motives and actively attempting to stop him from releasing Dormin? Or are they, perhaps, attacking out of fear? (Celosia's behavior suggests that the Colossi are capable of feeling fear, as he backs away from a lit torch and may even sound a bit like he's whimpering.)
• Anticlimax Boss: Malus can feel like this to some players expecting a more action-oriented finale. For one thing, Malus cannot harm you once you've passed the Death Course, almost qualifying as a Zero Effort Boss at this stage were it not for the fact that he can shake you off like any other colossus can. Malus can shoot you, somehow, through his armor, but only when you're around his feet, and only sometimes after you try something pointless like shooting his ankle (as the arrows will just bounce off). There will also be the occasssional run where he'll put up one hell of a fight for his life to throw you off.
• Breather Boss:
  • From a gameplay standpoint, Phalanx is far easier than the three bosses that came before it. It can only deal damage indirectly, and the fight is pretty fun to boot. From an emotional standpoint, though, it's likely to be the first boss that'll make you reconsider Wander's actions, thanks to it's rather majestic death animation.
  • Argus, the 15th Colossus, is quite a bit simpler and less tense a fight compared to Cenobia, the Colossus that came before it. That said, figuring out how to get up on it can be a bit of a Guide Dang It moment, but it's still a step down in difficulty when compared to Cenobia.
  • Kuromori can be this when you realize that the higher up it is when it falls, the longer it stays down. Lure it up to the highest level of the arena, shoot it down, then immediately jump after it and there's a good chance you'll be able to kill it without it managing to get up again (at the expense of a little health lost in your own fall).
• Catharsis Factor: From a game play perspective, the game's hardest challenge is completing all of the Time Trials on both Normal and Hard. Not only does that feel like a major accomplishment, but using Flash Arrows to blow up those slippery silver-tailed lizards and delivering a One-Hit KO to any Colossus with a single sigil with the Queen's Sword just feels so good after all the pain experienced to get them.
• Epileptic Trees: Malus' face is potentially a Double Meaning: their carved stone grimace can be interpreted as fury towards your actions, or horror towards them.
• Goddamned Boss: Considering that there are sixteen wildly variable boss battles to choose from, it's inevitable that some of them will end up as this. Occasionally, a Colossus is not tricky to defeat but it is a Marathon Boss and takes a long time to complete the strategy (Cenobia is a big offender here). The most notable ones though are:
  • Pelagia. One of the trickier Puzzle Boss battles, since getting it to expose its weak point requires a complicated bit of planning and experiment. This is also while said boss is shooting balls of lightning at you every now and then, and you're swimming awkwardly through the water with it. Doesn't really help that it looks rather creepy.
  • Dirge. Even if you realize quickly that you can shoot it in the eyes, doing it while sitting backwards, galloping on horseback is tricky. The target also might not appear before Dirge makes an aggressive dive, or Agro might have to make a turn and throw your aim off. Even worse if you're still struggling with Agro's controls by this stage.
  • Basaran, (though see That One Boss below if you found it really hard). Unlike most other Colossi, the Colossus Climb is the easy bit. The really annoying bit is getting it to stand above a geyser in time to get thrown over. Even if you get it in the right position, the geyser may stop just before you have time to shoot its ankles, and by the time the geyser fires again, Basaran has usually moved on. It doesn't help that Basaran would rather shoot you than move closer. Oh, and the geyser has to be in just the right place or it won't work, even when logically it should have an effect.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: "Sucks" is a strong word, but for some players who have a large focus on boss fights vs story/setting, they will complain that after you figure out how to climb every Colossi, actually killing them takes little effort as all you've left to do is just stab it till it's dead, and that once you've beaten the game once, there is no challenge to a replay. Rather astonishingly, one skilled player uploaded a video of him defeating all 16 Colossi in Hard time mode in less than an hour.
• Paranoia Fuel
• That One Boss: Basaran (if not Goddamned Boss), for the same reasons as stated there. For extra fun, try fighting it in Time Attack Mode, wherein Agro starts out standing a good ten feet away. See also Luck-Based Mission and Goddamned Boss.
• Uncanny Valley: Part of what makes Pelagia so... different... from the other Colossi is the fact that the movements of him is so very slightly off, which combined with the rest of the Colossus, falls straight into this.

Everything else

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The game gives you only the barest hints of story and leaves the vast majority up to the player.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: In September 2010, Team ICO announced that they would be remaking Shadow of the Colossus, along with Ico, for Play Station 3 with the same gameplay but improved graphics, as the two original God of War games were; something that they had previously stated they would like to do but was unlikely due to resources.
  • Video Game Movies Suck, right? Well, usually they do... until Josh Trank was announced to direct.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Pretty much every song in the game, but in particular the one first heard when climbing Valus.
  • And Avion's theme is gorgeous.
  • "Revived Power" and "Prologue: To the Ancient Land".
• Cult Classic: The Team Ico Series games as a whole are this, but even in regards to Ico and The Last Guardian, Shadow of the Colossus is still regarded as the best game in the series and has a massive surprisingly active fanbase to this day, alongside a series of dedicated hackers trying to find "the last big thing" hidden in the game's code.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Agro, no pun intended. Almost every gamer can agree that the biggest Player Punch in the game is the Disney Death Agro receives right before facing the sixteenth Colossus. There's also the fact that, as a horse, Agro is the lone character who isn't subject to Alternative Character Interpretation: she's just a loyal mare doing as her master directs her.
• Good Bad Bugs: Jumping upwards diagonally costs almost no grip meter, allowing you to reach the secret garden much earlier than intended, although jumping up the whole temple that way is quite a physical challenge in its own right. Was fixed in the remake, to many fans' dismay.
• It Was His Sled: It's nigh impossible to not know how the story ends, even passively.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The moral ambiguity of the plot fascinates some, but others just play the game to battle the Colossi.
• Narm: The Controllable Helplessness of the final section where Wander fights against falling into the supposedly inevitable can last pretty much as long as the player is stubborn. This quickly becomes hilarious as the music just keeps repeating and repeating while Wander strains, falls, and sometimes even stumbles end over end, but does not succumb.
• Player Punch: The death scene of each colossus is accompanied by the same melancholy tune, which more than once leaves players questioning whether all this killing is really worth it. A more unexpected one comes near the end when Agro falls into a ravine while throwing you to safety. Even though she survived, on a first playthrough, no one could say for certain and for all any player knew, she could've been.
• Sacred Cow: Due to the clear Doing It for the Art nature of the game. When the developers from BluePoint discussed the PS4 remake, they made it clear they knew they wouldn't be able to please everyone.
• That One Sidequest: Well, this is pretty much the only one, but still, reaching the secret garden will take you a long time. The climbing course isn't particularly difficult in itself, but you will have to make your grip gauge grow out of the screen if you don't want to fall to your death midway up. Be prepared to make two or three playthroughs and hunt down a lot of lizards for that.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Most players assume Agro to be a stallion, perhaps for how heavily built the horse is, but Word of God is that the designers consider her a mare.
• Vindicated by History: While initial reviews were never bad, it was not the star game of the year, with multiple GOTY awards going instead to games like God of War and Resident Evil 4. Shadow of the Colossus was not so much overlooked as it was just overshadowed (no pun intended), having the misfortune of coming out in a year that saw the release of several excellent games. However, years later, it has been rated by various publications as the best game of the decade, second best game ever, fourth greatest moment in gaming (for its ending), and in addition is frequently held up as a - if not the - prime example of Video Games As Art. It's on the shortlist of Yahtzee's favorite games ever, if that means anything to you.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The vast open backdrop, through which you can make your lonely way; the soft lighting effects, as if you were looking at this world through a permanent Dulcinea Effect; the fluid animations of Agro and Wander, and of the colossi themselves. Pretty much the entirety of the visuals count. It's so awesome that others have attempted to replicate some effects to various degrees. The Colossi in particular are simply breathtaking in their detail and sheer scale.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: White doves and black shadow-like figures are shown to gather around Mono and Wander respectively, one of each for every Colossus killed.