FIRST COLOSSUS

We are thrust right into battle immediately, but the Colossus doesn't really notice you. You're free to run around without much happening, but the instant he does notice you, some pumping battle music begins and that is when it truly gets dangerous. We should go over a couple things before that however. First of all this is your first battle, so it's important to know exactly what you're trying to do. At your disposal is a sword and a bow, both will come in handy but not necessarily for this battle. Colossi have weak points which are displayed as weird glowing symbols on their body, but they aren't always easy to find. To find them you must hold up your sword and see where the light converges, that will show you the location of the weak point (and usually there are more than one.) Killing a Colossus is a matter of hitting those weak points with your weapons, or something along those lines which damages the boss (its health meter is shown at the top.) Mostly you cannot hit these points without first climbing up the gigantic beast and locating them yourself.

Remember that the L1 button centres your camera on the Colossus, that will really come in handy. Begin by holding up your sword and aiming it at the boss. From far away it doesn't really give an accurate reading but using it closer will reveal one weak point on its head, and one on the back of its left leg, down near the foot (or hoof). Climbing a Colossi is like climbing a wall. You can't just grab skin, but any hairy section is climbable, as well as accessories (like a bracelet maybe) and basically any surface that looks like it could pass as a ledge. Remember that most of the time there is a pretty predetermined way to climb on top of these beasts, all you have to do is find it. When you're ready to begin fighting this boss, then run up to him, and all hell breaks loose.

As I said there are two weak points on this boss, one on the back of the left leg and one on the head. Obviously the leg is easier to get to so we'll aim for that, but let's take a moment to look at the bosses attacks. For the most part he just walks around, this sounds harmless but it's actually quite dangerous. If you get near his foot when he stomps (or worse yet, under the foot) then you are going to take damage. His actual attack involves the enormous club he is carrying, he raises it into the air and slams it down. If this lands on top of you then you can pretty much say goodbye to your life (this sounds like a good time to let people know that when you die, you can retry right from the beginning of battle.)

Your goal in this fight is to get around behind the Colossus and jump at the back of his left leg. Notice that it is hairy, meaning you can grab onto it if you're holding the R1 button. Once you have grabbed hold of it, begin climbing up using the left analog stick. A few arm lengths up there is a small symbol you will see, when you are holding the fur on top of the symbol, tap the square button one to stab, and then again to stab a second time. Note that while you are doing this the Colossus will be trying to shake you off, as long as you are holding the R1 button while he is shaking (and not trying to jump) then you will hang on, but it will do a number on your grip. After the second stab, there will be a short cutscene where the enormous giant monster falls forward. At this point there are two ways that I know of to get up to his head, the hard way and the easy way (the hard way is what I used when I first fought this boss, before I found the much easier way to do it.) Which you use is up to you.

The easy way to do it starts right here. While the boss is kneeling down after you have stabbed him, jump up and grab hold of the ledge just below the fur on his ass, then grab the fur on his ass and climb. Above you should be a reasonably large platform, climb over to the left to get around it, and then up. While holding the side of this platform, press the triangle button to jump up onto it. You're relatively safe while standing on this platform. You shouldn't be grabbing anything (to restore your grip strength) but you should be holding R1. Holding R1 when not near a wall makes you duck down, and while ducking you are much less susceptible to the shaking of the beast. Once you grip strength has restored, then it's time to jump up again and limb to the higher platform.

From here it's just a matter of climbing the rest of the fur until you reach the head. Note that it's pretty safe to run around on the Collossus' upper back without falling so you can restore grip strength. While on the actually head he has a tendency to shake, so make sure that you are holding on (you have to be holding on anyway to do the stab.) The symbol here on his head is much larger, grab hold of the fur around it, wait until he isn't shaking and then press and hold square. When the white charge meter that appears on the pink circle reaches its maximum, tap square to perform a powerful stab that should deal damage equal to about 35% of his total health and cause a blast of black blood to spew. All you have to do now is keep using powerful stabs, just three of them should be enough to finally take down the monster and win the battle.

The hard method I described before works as follows. After you have stabbed the mini symbol on the leg, jump off the creature and run around to the front (be careful of be stomped on here.) When he lands, he puts the climb down and on the front of the club are some ledges you can climb. Climb on top of the club (be careful because he swings it a lot) and jump from the club to the bracelet on his arm. From here you have to shimmy around back and climb up the fur on the back of his arm, there is a small platform near his shoulder you can rest on, but it's very difficult to actually reach it before you run out of grip strength, be warned. From that small platform you have access to the fur on the upper back.