arcelonious on 09 June 2013
The reason why I enjoyed Ico is that it is one of the few games that tries to use the medium (gameplay) to incite emotions within a player. The game is designed to make you care about the two characters (particularly for the well-being of Yorda), and the language barrier puts the emphasis on actions, whether its guiding Yorda hand-in-hand across the castle, pulling her up across obstacles, or defending her from the shadows, rather than relying solely on dialogue.
Overall, I would say the game requires a certain amount of internal participation (for lack of a better description), since the game is very minimalistic in its approach, and not everyone necessarily wants that from a game (nothing wrong about that).
