I remembered loving this game and it being my favourite from the ratchet and clank series but after finishing it last month I've sat on writing the review on it just because I don't know exactly what to say about it, fun game but its definitely not as good as I remembered, the game takes a much heavier focus on its combat and a reduced focus on platforming and the game is much worse for it

nefarious is a great villain though and I couldnt help but enjoy every cutscene with him and its no wonder he continued (and continues) to come back in these games frequently

still fun and worth a play through and I'm unsure if me playing this trilogy back to back caused me to be much more cynical towards this game on revisiting it but regardless its heavy focus on combat makes it a bit more of a pain to get through and a lot less of a chill out fun game like the first 2

I did it in co-op and only enjoyed bits of the gameplay because of that

any time a character opened their mouth both me and my friend would laugh at how bad not only the writing was but the voice acting as well, the gameplay was shallow the side activities were boring, there was fuck all traffic density or pedestrians, every single song on the radio sucked, all the cars handled like shit and any cars that had something resembling speed like the hoverbikes would rubberband and suddenly lose all speed on the tiniest of imperfections in the road.

the only slightly redeeming thing was the map cause it had a fair bit of variety in the areas and was very large but it was also strangely flat but I found it more interesting than steelport, there one was a side quest where you participate in a LARP game and it was the only part where the tone the game seems to be going for worked the best but besides that none of the side content left any impressions on me

I'd try talk about the story but honestly nothing of note happens and none of the characters are interesting enough to even mention and the game just seems to give up in the last 3 missions.

I went into this with an incredibly open-mind having been a Saints Row fan since Saints Row 2 but this game is so much worse than I imagined and its no wonder this game is basically responsible for the death of a company

so to start off I like this game a fair bit, maybe slightly more than the first one but I prefer it due to its more polished gun play and addition of strafing rather than it having more interesting planets (although the giant destroyed gadgetron facility was a really cool opening shot), I found the music a lot less memorable than the first game and also not as atmospheric, in the first game the music really set the tone and vibe of planets and had me turning my game volume up at several points just to be able to hear them to their fullest,

the game has sudden and abrupt difficulty spikes in the latter half that kinda come out of nowhere, I had been steamrolling everything up until the planet Snivelak and speaking of Snivelak the boss fight on this planet was absolutely abysmal and unfun despite the impressive technical aspect of it being accomplished on the PS2 and I felt very similarly about the spaceflight sections, while they are cool concepts and were smoothed out much more in later games I had alot of difficulty locating enemies and even hitting them as they are incredibly small targets,

the story of this game also kinda goes all over the place likely due the rewrites the game underwent and it felt incredibly inconsistent, arenas were introduced in this game and arenas having always been my favourite I was kinda excited to visit a PS2 ratchet arena that I had no experience with, I was sorely disappointed with the variety but had alot of fun with it nonetheless and really enjoyed some of the more specific challenges like surviving a ton of rounds with only 300 lancer bullets,

all in all I do like this game but it trades a lot of blows with the first game and I found its planets less memorable but its arsenal of weapons much more interesting, I didnt like space combat, but I really liked the hoverbike sections this time around and so on. I can understand why this is a lot of peoples favourite ratchet & clank game and absolutely do not hate it despite the issues I had with it.

I have a lot of mixed feelings on this game, I really enjoy the level concepts a lot more here first than the first game and the music is also similar in this regard, I think as a follow-up game its 100% worth playing. but there's some things to be aware of heading into it, it loses a lot of the simplicity that made the first banjo such an enjoyable experience and went more in the direction of padding runtime with unnecessary and poorly implemented backtracking, I cant count how many collectibles I straight up never collect in regular playthroughs due the tedious nature and that's just to start, notes were given a reduced presence and instead of collecting a single note at a time you instead collect bundles which sounds great on paper however less notes means less notes to direct the player to where they actually need to be going which in this game is devastating in some areas

Banjo & Kazooies Moveset (both together and seperately) has greatly expanded but while some of the moves feel like integral new parts of the moveset others can feel like bloat, the split pads were also poorly used in my opinion and kinda groaned whenever I encountered them.

all in all I'd recommend it if you liked the first one but just be aware that its a much longer and tedious collect-a-thon


p.s: this game loses an entire star to Grunty Industries*

(single-player)
three protagonists kinda made the story messy but was an interesting concept that I wasn't to sold on returning to after having played RDR2, characters are memorable for sure but I couldn't help but feel like the story was the complete opposite and all over the place, I was also annoyed to find that the main characters would change the outfits they were wearing on their own between missions which was one of the many small annoyances I had with this game and it also feels very watered down due to the limitations of the Xbox 360 and PS3, the game fails to capture any sense of scale in its map which is only further proven by the bizarre loop highway and blaine county containing absolutely nothing of note within it, Los Santos itself is very dense but even that lacks interiors, its still an enjoyable sandbox but doesn't live up to some of the earlier games like San Andreas own version of Los Santos and its surrounding areas.

(online)
online on launch may have gotten a 3 star from me but over the years its decline in quality is more of a 2
FiveM is also an option which I prefer

this was actually the first game I vividly remember playing and kinda set the standard for me when it came to collect-a-thons and 3D Platformers, incredibly straight forward gameplay and unique move set makes this a very easy game to recommend to anyone of any age to enjoy, the british humor is a nice touch as well, while its age does show its head if you're playing the XBLA versions you shouldnt have much issue as there are a few QOL features such as notes being saved on exiting and re-entering levels where as in the original N64 due to limitations exiting a level would reset non priority collectibles such as notes

TLDR: this was the first game I remember playing so I love it for that.

this game is just, okay theres not really much great to say about it other than its a fairly mediocre ratchet and clank game, the story is based on the film which was riddled with issues and the game even intersects clips from the film as cutscenes which is some sorta thing you'd kinda expect from a game adaptation of a movie from the early 2000s, the core gameplay is fine but like most of the more recent ratchet & clank games a lot of your arsenal doesn't really stand out from each other and makes the weapons themselves kinda fall flat

TLDR: eh

incredible game that was unfortunately rushed and has more cut content than content present in the game and several game breaking bugs including the possibility of bricking your save shortly after the dingodile fight within the evil academy level, with this said the games creativity, brilliant soundtrack and unique charm are huge saving graces paired with the mixture of open-world and traditional crash styled levels seamlessly stitched together make it stand out as my favorite crash game, this game absolutely deserves a remake with restored cut content.

TL:DR rated it a 3 forementioned game breaking issues due to a rushed development cycle however very fun game.