A simple game that reminds me of the good ol' days...
You only get a bow and a sword. To find your bearings, you'll use your sword to reflect the light. As it concentrates to a single beam, that's the way you should go to find the next challenge. You can sidetrack from your way to find fruits and lizards to gain more power: health power and grip power, at this order. Grip power is what you'll be using to hold to your dear life as you climb the colossus to get to its weak points. The health power is the obvious. As you take damage, the health decreases. Fall long heights and you'll loose health. Fall from too high and you'll die, so be careful.
Each colossus has unique characteristics, and you'll need to think to get to its weakpoints. Think of a puzzle the way you'll figure out how to climb it. In some cases, you'll need to change the environment around the monster to suit your needs, like in one of the cases where you'll need to break the tough armor that protects the colossus.
The game is simple, as I said before. You'll only chase the colossi and kill them in it. But it is in this fact that the game shines, it is just like the old games - no messy story to get in the way, just go out there and do it. There are no real voice acting, all talk is in a different language, all subtitled, of course.
The graphical presentation is done really well and all menus and interfaces are easy to figure out. The game itself is really pleasing to the eye. Your horse, Abro, will be your companion for the entire game, and it does its job very well. The horse behaves just like a real one would, not like a car like most games portray (Gun is one that tries to stray from this path, but SotC goes the extra mile to get it right).
For me it's very easy to recommend this game. No, I didn't get a chance to play ICO, but I can safely say that no experience in the past game is needed to enjoy this. Just go ahead and see for yourself. You won't regret it.