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I'm working towards the Castle Guide trophy in the HD version of ICO for the PS3, which requires you to complete the game under 2 hours.

One point that takes a considerable amount of time to pass is the piston/water wheel section, the first requires you to jump to the ledge of the piston, I've found out pressing the jump button just as the piston goes down slightly before popping up works most of the time, I can clear the piston jump on my 2nd try, 3rd tops.

However the water wheel jump gives me a lot of trouble, and it seems to me like I'm doing something wrong. I was wondering if I'm doing it right. Here's my method:

  1. Climb to the brown platform left of the wheel, stand facing the wheel's side
  2. Wait for the wheel's platform to move past me
  3. Jump as the top platform is completely horizontal (jumping earlier never seems to work)
  4. If I managed to grab the platform, climb up
  5. Try jumping towards the lever.

I mostly fail at step 3, I can grab the platform maybe once every 4-5 tries. Even when I do, it seems sometimes to be too late because I don't manage to jump towards the lever in time, 80% of the time the moment I manage to stand up I immediately fall off the wheel because the platform I'm standing on will be facing downwards by now.

I can see several places where I might be doing something wrong:

  1. I may be jumping from a position too far or too close to the wheel. Since grabbing ledges from different distances/heights results in longer grab animation, I might be wasting time before climbing up.
  2. I only jump straight at the wheel. I've tried jumping diagonally towards the platform before it's right in front of me but like I said this never worked.

Bottom line: What can make me make this jump more often? It can take me up to 5 mins to clear this section and as anyone who tried clearing the game under 2 hours, you don't have too much spare time...

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Hmmm. I haven't played ICO in forever and I definitely didn't recall a waterwheel puzzle (not that I can claim to recall every puzzle) so I looked it up and in the original release, it was only in the PAL version. Who knew? Apparently they've decided it to be a challenge worthy of inclusion in the HD collection.

You're doing it how it has to be done. It would seem that key things to keep in mind are do not run or jump at an angle and everything else it seems is a matter of skill/timing/luck and maybe "twitching the control stick so that he's facing it" before you jump. One recommendation is to perform the second jump without verifying that you made the first. In this video the poster manages to do it in 3 tries, taking about a minute or so at the trouble part and even wasting some time goofing off - maybe watching it will give you some hints.

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  • I only played the PAL version and the HD version, I had no idea this was never in the NTSC version in the first place. Thanks for the tips, one thing I've noticed is he made a few steps "upwards" before jumping back, maybe I'll try that...
    – JohnoBoy
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 13:08

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