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Ico Hints

How can I protect Yorda from the spirits?

  • 1 of 8: As a general rule, stay as close to her as you can. 
  • 2 of 8: Leaving Yorda on another section is especially dangerous -- she's vulnerable to random attacks, and there's a good chance you won't get back in time. Just returning to the same section as Yorda on occasion will generally be good enough to prevent these attacks.  (You can tell that you've changed sections when the screen fades to black briefly.)
  • 3 of 8: When you are on the same screen as Yorda, the spirits generally won't pay attention to you unless you're in their way.
  • 4 of 8: So make them go through you.
  • 5 of 8: I generally found that it was easiest to take Yorda into a corner and then stand in front of her, so I could swing at the spirits before they got to her.
  • 6 of 8: If the spirits appear and you're not near a corner, try grabbing Yorda's hand and running her to one, even if it means going across the entire screen. You'll need to stop every once in a while to push the spirits away from you, but you only need to hit them once or twice when they get close -- don't necessarily try to kill them right away.
  • 7 of 8: When you're standing between the spirits and Yorda, the spirits seem to pause to try to figure out what to do before attacking either of you.  This is generally a good time to attack -- just step forward a bit and swing.  You can generally hit them several times in quick succession.
  • 8 of 8: If you still aren't able to do that, you'll just have to keep running in circles to keep the spirits away from Yorda.  But if they manage to get to her, all is not lost quite yet.