This review contains spoilers
As well as being an absolute masterpiece visual marvel, it's an extremely solid Ratchet & Clank game. It brings quite a lot of new ideas to the table, while returning some of the better old ones. Some of the largest and longest planets, in some cases even requiring you to do return visits with new areas unlocked. Possibly the largest array of weapons yet, featuring a fair amount of new ideas like turning enemies into topiary art. Rivet was a great new character, and the whole mirror dimension thing in general provided some new, yet familiar lore and characters.
I was also super excited to see the return of customisable armour with bonus perks. And the best part is you get all the bonuses even if you don't equip that specific armour.
But it's definitely not the definitive R&C experience. Many things are still missing - the racing minigames have still been gone since the PSP game, the arena likewise feels pretty watered down compared to many past games, especially the PS2 ones.
While the levels in this one are massive, some of the bigger ones have problems with invisible walls, or platforms that should clearly be solid but you just fall through anyway, or certain platforms that you end up sliding off instead of landing on despite looking the same as other solid platforms etc. There's only really 2 planets that have that problem, but it's still noticeable (I did end up realising the reason was because I was trying to sequence break and explore a planet that you would later need a flying dinosaur to get to certain parts, so it feels like a very cheap way of doing that).
The bosses in the game are insanely forgettable. Other than the Nefarious battles, they're all basically just interchangeable robots.
There's very few new planets in the game, and I can say for at least one planet they straight up copy and pasted the layout from the previous game up until the final section. I can kinda understand given the whole alternate dimension thing, they might have wanted to showcase how the planets differed, but... they just kinda didn't? We've already had repeating planets in the past from the same dimension that felt different from before, since of course we never explore an ENTIRE planet, and this felt little more than what we've done there. Even some of the planets that are technically new feel like renamed versions of old planets (I thought for sure that underwater laboratory was the same one from Up your Arsenal)
I did like what they did with gold bolts, adding a new unlockable extra with each one collected, whether it be new skins for weapons, new effects for photo mode (which admittedly I never used), going right up to infinite health and ammo if you really wanted to use them. But for some reason, for a first in the series (maybe, I've missed a couple of games), they straight up removed skill points. That's a darn shame and could have really added some replayability.
While being one of the greatest visual experiences may be this games claim to fame, it doesn't detract from the fact it's still an amazing game. It just quite misses the mark on being what the first brand new Ratchet & Clank game should have been after the series longest hiatus ever imo.
I was also super excited to see the return of customisable armour with bonus perks. And the best part is you get all the bonuses even if you don't equip that specific armour.
But it's definitely not the definitive R&C experience. Many things are still missing - the racing minigames have still been gone since the PSP game, the arena likewise feels pretty watered down compared to many past games, especially the PS2 ones.
While the levels in this one are massive, some of the bigger ones have problems with invisible walls, or platforms that should clearly be solid but you just fall through anyway, or certain platforms that you end up sliding off instead of landing on despite looking the same as other solid platforms etc. There's only really 2 planets that have that problem, but it's still noticeable (I did end up realising the reason was because I was trying to sequence break and explore a planet that you would later need a flying dinosaur to get to certain parts, so it feels like a very cheap way of doing that).
The bosses in the game are insanely forgettable. Other than the Nefarious battles, they're all basically just interchangeable robots.
There's very few new planets in the game, and I can say for at least one planet they straight up copy and pasted the layout from the previous game up until the final section. I can kinda understand given the whole alternate dimension thing, they might have wanted to showcase how the planets differed, but... they just kinda didn't? We've already had repeating planets in the past from the same dimension that felt different from before, since of course we never explore an ENTIRE planet, and this felt little more than what we've done there. Even some of the planets that are technically new feel like renamed versions of old planets (I thought for sure that underwater laboratory was the same one from Up your Arsenal)
I did like what they did with gold bolts, adding a new unlockable extra with each one collected, whether it be new skins for weapons, new effects for photo mode (which admittedly I never used), going right up to infinite health and ammo if you really wanted to use them. But for some reason, for a first in the series (maybe, I've missed a couple of games), they straight up removed skill points. That's a darn shame and could have really added some replayability.
While being one of the greatest visual experiences may be this games claim to fame, it doesn't detract from the fact it's still an amazing game. It just quite misses the mark on being what the first brand new Ratchet & Clank game should have been after the series longest hiatus ever imo.