A very solid game all around. It's got all the usual strengths of Ratchet and Clank, with great weapons, combat, and some occasional platforming. It's distinctly lacking in cynicism like the older games had, with plot and writing that feels right out of a stock kid's movie. The rift gimmick is neat, but doesn't change much in the moment-to-moment combat. It is used very well for environmental design though, really letting the devs get creative with their area concepts. My favorite use of the gimmick is exploring a mining facility both before and after destruction, and needing to regularly bounce between the two. Overall, it lacks an X-factor. After a lot of these games, they start to blur together and Rift Apart doesn't do a whole lot to differentiate itself from the rest of the series. It's still pretty fun though.

Holy hell, this a massive turnaround from the main game. It's gone from a tedious, overlong mess that accomplishes so much less than it's source material, to a compact, well-paced, genuinely fun adventure.

Let's start with some improvements from the base game. For one, everything just feels much faster. You get randomly stopped far less, story sequences are much tighter, even the little animations are snappier. The dungeon designs don't have much more depth than the base game dungeons, but the pace is so much better that it isn't much of an issue. I'd still like to see the environments get more complex. The combat also has some subtle improvements. For one, Yuffie has a robust moveset that gives her a ton of range. She is more fun to play as than anyone in the base game, and working alongside Sonon is a clever way to recontextualize the party-member management from base game.

Also, the side content has improved. Fort Condor is simple but fun, Box Breaker was genuinely tough and very fun. Some of the side stuff is still a bit dull.

Some issues still persist. As I said earlier, the environments could use a bit more complexity. Some enemies are obnoxious to fight, and a few attacks feel poorly telegraphed. It's also too brief to leave much of an impact, but being too short is much more tolerable than being too long.

All in all? Pretty fun. If Rebirth continues with this game's changes, it might be great (and it sorta seems like it does?). Maybe this is too optimistic, but I do think these developers care. When they don't need to make a 30 hour epic out of a prologue, they can make something good.