I don't care for Shadow of the Colossus.
For a while my opinion of it was "foaming at the mouth hatred" but only because I'd been pushed there by people who wouldn't hear an unkind word about the game and told me to go back to Halo if SotC's depth scared me so bad (except I don't like Halo either). But after some time away from people like that, plus playing a game so godawful I don't even want to name it making me look back on several other game's I'd slagged off, including SotC, and think "I was being way too hard on that game" I look at it as an ambitious idea that just didn't work.
For starters, I think it looks like shit. Granted, I can see how the game could have been pretty if they'd spent more time and system resources getting the grids off everything instead of seeing how high they could crank the bloom. Also, I felt like most of my conflict in the game was not with the colossi, but the camera that prioritizes epic angles that look great in screenshots over letting you tell what the fuck you're doing.
As for the game itself, I spent the entire time playing it feeling like it was trying to manipulate me. First it dumps this "our hero is sad and trying to revive his dead girlfriend who was non-specifically sacrificed, FEEL FOR HIM AND HIS LOVE!" Why? The kid has all the personality of a dial tone and the colossi are nonthreatening, so why should I give a crap about him or his plight?
Wait, did I just call the colossi "nonthreatening"? Why yes! First, the game has regenerating health. Why should I feel at all threatened by these things when if I ever take damage from one, I can park the wanderer in an area where it can't get to him so he can suck his thumb while I leaf through the manual of another game? Except for that second lion boss that'll pin you in a corner, tackle you to the ground, then tackle you again just as soon as you stand up. He can kiss my ass.
Second, only two displayed any intelligence beyond a robot programmed to either piddle around and maybe take a swipe at the punk trying to climb it, or "DESTROY! DESTROY!", and they were both killed by something out of a Tom and Jerry sketch.
And third, huge bosses are a staple of video games, so meh. And even on the scale of some of these things, the biggest boss I've seen in a video game is the first boss of MDK2, and as a bonus it doesn't choke the PS2's framerate in the Armageddon version.
"Well, maybe they weren't intended to be intimidating so you'd feel like you were stabbing animals that were minding their own business". Again, far as I was concerned I was stabbing robots. Real animals wouldn't try to shake the wanderer off in such rhythmic intervals, and would take more drastic measures to get rid of him such as staying underwater or scraping him off on a cliff. But on top of being a ***** to program, if they had any preservation instinct they'd be unkillable, screwing over the whole "video game" aspect.
So, okay, let's look at the colossi strictly as video game boss battles; they're irritating. Granted, most of my aggro fighting these things was coming from the camera constantly ripping control from me. But most of the fights felt like they were testing not my intelligence or skill, but my patience. The sea serpent that circles around a lake occasionally skimming the surface, but the depth perception is so screwy I could never quite tell where it was surfacing and you have to avoid its lightning spikes, so it takes forever to finally get on the damn thing (and once you finally get on, stab out its lightning spikes, and reach the head it'll submerge, forcing you to do this all over again. Then, funnily enough, it lets you kill it the second time). The salamander in the colosseum, where you have to shoot it off the wall and run down some stairs five times to finally deplete its health (though I guess if you just jump down you can take it out in three, since the regenerating health negates the fall damage). Or the sky dragon that tunnels underground every time you stab out one of its three weak points, so you have to bring it down three times for no reason. Another game would make it harder to bring it down the second and third time, but no, just shoot it down the same way three times, because wasting the player's time is the same as challenging them.
tldr: The game's intentions were getting in each other's way.
And the best thing about being told "You just don't get it" is people then coming out to say "It's deliberately vague because you're supposed to take the elements and come up with your own story." Okay, how the hell can anyone "not get it" if you're supposed to interpret it however you want.
