Much adored cult classic that I really wanted to love, but mostly everything about the gameplay and dungeon design made me want to throw someone's baby out a window.

The game has a lot going for it with its large connective world that I enjoyed mapping out, and the amazing voice acting and personality of Kain himself. The soundtrack and simple but engaging plot were also enough for me to want to see the end.

I think this is a game i'll have to return to someday to see if i can fully get over it's mechanics, but for a first playthrough they really harmed my enjoyment of an otherwise beautifully crafted game.

I can see the arguments for why people would prefer Going Commando. It's almost immediately jarring to see how much got left behind going into this one, and the levels have largely been replaced by more linear corridor shooting.

However, I felt this game really achieved what it set out to. Going Commando built and expanded on the first game, but the combat in UYA has been refined and perfected. It focuses far more on shooting through everything, so the expanded ranks and range of weapons gives a lot of incentive to use many different approaches. Unlike the previous two games, I didn't feel locked into using cheese weapons because of bad endgame scaling, and I was generally able to use the weapons i enjoyed throughout the game.

The goofier elements are also still present, with Qwark vid comics being more enjoyable to me than the clunky racing and ship combat of GC. It leaves a lot behind, but makes up for it with a stellar focus on combat and making sure everything got time in the oven here.

The story is more of the same, but i wasn't left expecting anything of it since it's just taking these characters we've grown attached to round another tour of the galaxy. Going in blind in 2022, this ended up being my favourite of the PS2 trilogy and I'm excited to try and play some of the other acclaimed games.

A solid improvement on the first game. Combat is far more bearable now, and i actually felt encouraged to try out different weapons because of the upgrade progressions. Level design is still superb too and kept me lookimg forward to more.

However for all it does better, i still felt frustrated in a few areas. The glider and racing sections particularly felt painful to play, and the ship combat was just so-so. Like with the first game, the last few levels are also a bit of a mess, practically begging the player to spam cheese weapons to win or get smacked with infinite enemies.

I ended up having an experience with better gameplay from the first title, but one that didn't really elevate it to a new height. It's still a great game and shout out to Vimm's Lair for letting jaded PC players like me give these games a go.