Jak 3 is a messy unfocused version of 2. The throw everything at the wall insanity of 2 somehow worked just about flawlessly in that game's favor. The same approach isn't so graceful here. Pacing is dramatically worse as mission variety took a huge hit. 2 had a perfect balance between platforming, vehicles, and minigames. 3's got a MUCH bigger focus on vehicle missions. Which would be fine in any other game in this series. The hovercars were fun in the first game, they slew in the second, and the racing game that they made after this is amazing. This time the cars are chunky and slow in comparison. Goodbye hovercars with a good sense of speed and perfect controls. Hello slow dirt buggies that flip and slide at the slightest tap of any minor bump in the road. They're not all terrible but they're just never as fun as the rest of the series. This game takes a lot longer to hit its stride than any other game in the series, and honestly I'm not sure it ever does.

Not only is the balance in styles worse, the styles themselves are done worse. I've already mentioned the vehicles. But platforming especially has taken a HUGE hit. It's rare it even shows up and when it does it feels like it's put together in something more primitive than the original Mario Maker. So blocky and uninteresting a lot of the time. I loved every minigame in the first 2 but here I can't really say I feel anything for any of 'em. Guns all get an obnoxious amount of upgrades and you're just obscenely overpowered really quick. Jak gets health upgrades throughout the story as well, and the enemies just can't keep up. You've also got new light powers that are cool during their tutorials, but there's so little platforming in the game you'll forget you have a majority of them. One of the light powers is actually just effectively a "heal to max hp" button. Bosses here are lesser in both quantity and quality compared to 2, or even 1 honestly. Instead of having an actual battle with someone they're the kind of boss that just has you fight a wave of copy paste enemies, then hit the glowing weak point, repeat 3-4 times. The final boss actually has a light eco vent in the arena, meaning you have infinite healing during the final boss. They really took the "it's too hard" complaint with 2 to heart and this game just lost all its teeth as a result. If the only problem was that the game was easy I could maybe forgive it but even the story just kinda sucks here. Which is a shame 'cuz Jak 2's story is one of my favorites in gaming.

-The rest of this review is entirely about the story just as a heads up.-

Again, just like the various gameplay elements, the story is more interested in bringing up new stuff, going nowhere with it, and then introducing something else. Just straight up making a mess of the lore and characters, throwing a plethora of questions it has no intention of answering. Major plot revelations are given quick 20 second interactions and dropped. Most characters aren't given room to do anything of note. Samos and Kiera for the first time are functionally nonexistent. Kiera's VA is changed and as a result was practically written out of the game. It's not just a messy story, SO much of it is explicitly filler. The game's already got 20 minutes less in the cutscene department compared to Jak2, and yet so much time goes by without any legitimate forward progression. Then when it does move it doesn't make ANY sense ever. At one point you meet Ashelin who tries to convince Jak to come back to the city, they need his help. Jak then says "They can ROT for all I care, I'm through saving the world!" The LITERAL NEXT THING YOU DO, is go to the city and start helping them out. I think they were trying to imply gaining light powers is balancing out his darkness, and you DO get a new light power, though that's on the way there. Not sure why he was even going there to begin with. In execution it feels really weak, and more like they wanted major scenes without any of the leadup or follow through. When you get back to the city Samos says the city needs his help and Jak responds as though this is the first he's hearing this even though he was just asked for help and harshly declined 2 minutes ago. "Huh they need me again? What else is new" -goes to help them-

It's not just telling a messy uneventful story, it's going off the rails beyond all reason while doing so. To the point where it's just like yeah ok guy we saw die in the second game is back as a cyborg and he's an entire villainous faction on the same threat level as the metal heads that we supposedly stamped out in the previous game but are here anyway. Last second just pose the idea that Jak is god of this world sure whatever man. I really think it just kinda sucks no matter how hard you try to give the benefit of the doubt.

There's a lot more I could go on about, but I don't like rambling about plotholes 'cuz I'm pretty good at filling stuff like that in on my own. I don't need every single step spelled out for me, I'm a Kingdom Hearts fan dude, I'm down for some stories that need you to meet halfway. I just find this incredibly weak and meandering. The fact it often doesn't make any sense is just icing on the cake. A whole lot of dry "Jak u need to do us a lil' favor" cutscenes that feel like they made the level and didn't know how to tie it into the story. Jak's constantly picking up plot maguffins in every other scene, very rarely is it explained why or how or whatever the point of them is but he sure do be having his own little collectathon adventure in the cutscenes that we don't truly get to engage with as the viewer in any way. Feels lost in translation even though this isn't a Japanese first game.

Like I said, I don't like babbling about plotholes, but this game makes that impossible. Truly some first draft trainwrecks here.
This new character Vegar that was supposedly always there, has enough power in the city council to get Jak banished to the desert despite saving the city and being celebrated in the previous game...And is supposedly "drunk on power" Ashelin says. And then in a random scene, Ashelin, who's been there THE ENTIRE TIME, straight up just says "I dissolve the city council and strip you of your power". Just fires the dude and that's that. She was the Baron's daughter she's literally in charge of what's a literal dictatorship right? At the start she apologizes and says there's nothing she could do, the council they made up for this game is SO powerful that their leader's protest was overruled, but she has the power to completely dissolve it??? Jak's able to come back to the city on his own and is welcome back by every single character. Why'd we have to go through all this song and dance proving ourselves as wastelanders when at any point you could have just come out and given Jak a ride back to town and dissolve the council? Then Vegar gets all mad and threatens them then does almost nothing for the rest of the game. I could try and muster up some fan theory but this game's just not fun to think about, it just gets worse the more you dig in, which is the opposite of how I felt about 2.

And some of the major elements feel so amateurish.
Damas says to Jak;
"Didn't your father tell you to pick your battles wisely?"
"I didn't know my father..." -Awkward silence-
18 minutes of scenes later Sig reveals he was spying in haven city 'cuz Damas wanted him to find something he lost. Almost the very next scene Damas be like
"I mustn't lose you...Like I lost....My son......."

They then want it to be a big emotional moment when it's revealed near the end of the game that Jak is his son. I get it's one of those things that you could say is about waiting for the characters to realize it, and the moment they find out has a tragic element to it. Like in-universe it's fine I guess, probably one of the less horribly stupid major elements. But it just sticks out in my head as really uninteresting writing. The missing family plot is written like a random kid's cartoon that ran out of storylines and needs to pick an overdone trope out of a hat. Trolls 3 suddenly has Poppy thinkin about how cool it would be if she had a sister, omg no way her long lost sister that was never remotely hinted at in the previous 2 movies shows up out of nowhere isn't that a crazy coincidence? It's that kind of awkward "THIS IS WHAT THE STORY OF THE WEEK IS KIDS" type telegraphing that just makes this feel so lame here. And it's like they weren't even confident this plot was good enough to carry the game so they also threw in the same scene that Jak's real name is Mar, which implies he's a god. Maybe he's just named after their god? But we physically see him take off with the gods of their world in the ending. Except in the same scene it acts like we DIDN'T just watch him get into a ship and fly off. It just boils my beans at every turn, denying any possible explanation. One of the last lines in the game is "Wait..Jak is Mar? THE mar?" Ashelin asks, getting nothing but a small nod from a monk standing near her. Only possible thing that makes sense is after we saw him leave, he went back in time to create the universe then used his god powers to come back to the exact point he left and just acted like it didn't happen?????????????

Funny I always hear of people not liking the reveal of what the precursors are. I never minded it. Doesn't really hurt any established lore and actually ties back to the first game in a cool way. Why are the gods of this world randomly met in some underground cave though? Why did they say Jak's proven himself worthy of becoming one of them, then Vegar says NO, EVOLVE ME INTO A GOD INSTEAD and then they just go "lol ok" and turn him into one of them instead of Jak. Then they say they're disappointed in Jak suddenly? (And of course Vegar only actually transforms like a full minute after getting blasted by their evolve light 'cuz they had to reveal what the precursors were first) Then they turn Daxter's GF into one 'cuz she wanted pants like Daxter was wearing? Full on "This series is over and we do NOT care anymore" energy. The bit that Ottsels are actually what the precursors are is kinda cool, genuinely the only aspect I kinda like in this game's plot.

I'm not usually one to make 80% of my review about the story but the gameplay's just a downgrade from 2 and otherwise this is such a mediocre final chapter through and through. TL;DR would just be -mid, toothless version of 2 with an actively self sabotaging story- Jak X was a better followup to Jak 2 than this, and actually gave the characters a lot more room to actually exist and do stuff. It's sacrilege to say but I genuinely like High Impact games' Jak and Daxter the lost frontier better than this.

This game should not work as well as it does. They handle the shift to a T rated style shockingly well narratively, while at the same time outdoing Rockstar in their own style in every conceivable way. The controls are just as expressive and engaging to use as the first game, the guns are really well implemented, and these are the best controlling vehicles in the industry no question. You have such high speed capabilities as well as fine control, and it's so satisfying to weave between higher and upper lanes trying not to crash into anything. Chases are tense, missions are varied and feature a solid mix of all gameplay styles. Which is very impressive given the variety at show here.

Gunplay, platforming, one off minigames, hoverboarding, street races, ring missions, higher speed professional racing on tracks, light collectathon elements, with a dash of crazy taxi. Just like the original game, its inspirations are clear but pulled off with enough grace and unique elements to not feel hopelessly derivative. All wrapped up in a narrative that does a weirdly good job tying into the wholesome Banjo Kazooie styled first game, while at the same time delivering a complex and engaging storyline with iconic characters across the board. Adding so much to the lore and world it's insane. Easily one of the best stories in the industry, with somehow even better presentation in cutscenes than the original game. Love those bits that take place in areas that still resemble the first game's aesthetic. Just a few small areas untouched by the dystopian nightmare the rest of the world went through. Moments like that grow this series' universe in a way some long running franchises struggle to do in ten games let alone 2.

Perfect level of challenge for me. This game doesn't pull any punches, and it refuses to let you simply tank through any of its challenges due to its lack of checkpoints. But I never feel like it's asking too much of me. It's impressive they can make a bunch of enemies that die in 2 hits pose a genuine threat to you despite how powerful your guns are, really well balanced in that way imo. I'd be surprised if this game doesn't filter a lot of people. If this is too hard for you to enjoy maybe give Jak 3 a try, though that one dramatically overcorrected and just isn't as good all around but I'm getting ahead of myself.

This game throws EVERYTHING at the wall and it ALL sticks. Only criticism I could have is especially early on, pacing's pretty slow as you gotta drive between missions a lot. But it does open up and give you more options as to what to do at once later on. And the driving practice outside of missions is important early on before it starts becoming more demanding later. Besides, once you get good at the driving you can get to your destinations really fast anyway. Love the risk vs reward of small cars being faster with better handling except you'll probably blow up if you get into a bad crash. As opposed to the bigger chunkier cars that are a LOT more durable.

This game slays.