i'd rank this second-place of the first three ratchet & clank games (with r&c 1 on top and going commando on the bottom.)
the gameplay is improved over the second, but the writing is mixed. we've reached the second R&C that introduces a brand new love interest for ratchet for absolutely no reason. that said, there are a lot of funny jokes! so i'd say it's a pro on the comedy and a con on the plot. having started with the 2016 R&C and then going backwards, i can say that by the third entry i'm definitely getting tired of 2000s kinda-edgy jerkass ratchet.

One of the best third person shooters ever, but at the cost of the more interesting level design and art direction of its predecessors.

This game's development was rather troubled and it shows. Some levels feel hastily slapped together and some of them are just repurposed multiplayer maps. The multiplayer slapped, actually, but sadly it's now dead as a doornail, and I seriously wish the series did more with it after Deadlocked. Fortunately the series' signature strafe-shooting and frantic somersaulting is as good as ever and carries the game really hard.

Though it lacks the highs of some of the other games, it's still a fairly consistent experience overall. It's just absent some of the interesting features of other entries in the series such as platforming gauntlets and branching levels to explore. I still rate it as one of the best Ratchet & Clank games just because what's there is a ton of fun, and though it's less satirical than its predecessors and immediate sequel, it's still one of the funniest games in the series. And David Bergeaud's music still goes just as hard.

I almost can't forgive this game for creating Dr Nefarious, who I consider a plague on the series because he's had every last drop of mildly amusing humour and villainous charisma squeezed out of him and continued to be milked for several more games after he ran dry of entertainment value. But it wouldn't be fair of me to take points away from this game for introducing him, as he was a reasonably entertaining villain in this game and he hadn't yet been milked to death and then some.

And so comes to a close the last R&C game I own (for now). I had always heard that only the first three games were really worth playing (up until the newest one), but a friend of mine who is a fan informs me that is not the case (and I have more R&C on the way in the mail). Regardless, I can see why that may've been the talk around these games, because R&C 3 is a damn fine improvement over 2 to the point where I can see why the series started to deviate from this formula after this point. It took me around 16 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game with only light searching for collectibles.

Just as R&C 2 did, R&C 3 picks up right where the previous game left off, with Ratchet & Clank chilling in the capital of the main city from R&C 2. They suddenly see a news report on TV about their home galaxy being attacked by the evil Dr. Nefarious. Losing no time, Ratchet finishes installing the galactic warp capabilities in his ship and the duo return to defend their home galaxy! After a mission to help rescue the missing Captain Quark, the two are roped into his Q-Force to try and stop Dr. Nefarious and save the galaxy!

The writing is head-and-shoulders above the past two games, easily. Characters recur throughout the story, they have conversations, they grow a report with one another. It's hardly a masterpiece of literature, but it's a far more coherent and realized story than the past two games. It also really gives elements aside from Ratchet & Clank themselves time to shine narratively, with the other members of Q-Force being entertaining and fun, as well as Dr. Nefarious being so delightfully extra and silly that he gives Captain Quark a run for his money. It's not hard for me to see why Sony likes him so much that they brought him back for later games in the series.

The gameplay is still the same overall platforming and action segments as the prior two games, but tightened up and refined even past where R&C 2 brought the series to. Ratchet & Clank control better than ever, and the gunplay is more solid than ever with some of the most fun guns in the series yet (the black hole gun and lava spitting gun are both SO MUCH FUN). Also gone are all of the dreadful mini-games that plagued the even R&C 2, and in their places are a more infrequent hacking mini-game as well as ranger mission segments, where you assist the Galactic Rangers in missions that involve going around a map to attack points, defending a single point, riding around in a Halo Warthog-style jeep, and flying around in a hovercraft to destroy targets. There are even 2D platforming/semi-run and gun segments where you play as Captain Quark. The only tiny complaint I have is that I wish your auto-lock-on were a litttle more accurate, or that you had a fire button mapped to a shoulder button so you could look, move, and fire all at the same time.

It's all great fun, and there wasn't a single point where I thought "well this game was great right up until HERE." The difficulty is also way better tuned than the previous two games, settling in at a nice place between R&C 1's often unfair-feeling challenge and R&C 2's too frequent ease, all leading up to a really satisfyingly challenging final boss fight (although hoo boy is that final level hard).

This is also the first R&C game I'd say has actually good music. The music in the previous games is at best appropriately atmospheric, but this game manages to actually have some nice tunes in it. It's also once again a very pretty-looking game, flexing a good art style and well-designed characters. Although it does encounter some framerate issues from time to time, like Ape Escape 3 (another first party Sony game released around the same time) these are never problems that seriously impact gameplay.

The Japanese version of each of the first 3 R&C games is more or less identical to the international version with a couple notable (and infamous) exceptions. Ratchet has his infamous large, black eyebrows that make no sense with the rest of his fur coloring. His head is also slightly larger, and that all adds up to what I suppose is to make his face somewhat more visibly expressive? I'm not positive on the rationale behind it.

The localization otherwise is really good, and I actually prefer it to the English original in many ways. I think the relationship between Ratchet & Clank suffers a bit, as Clank comes off as similarly silly and quippy to Ratchet in many ways compared to how well-spoken he is in English, but their buddy dynamic is still very fun despite Ratchet's more kid-like voice. The voice cast on the whole feels like they're hamming it up more than the English VAs, and that overall makes for a much more fun time for characters like Dr. Nefarious and Captain Quark. The Japanese VA threw me off pretty bad at first, but it's something I've really grown to love in a way I didn't expect myself to.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is up there with Ape Escape 3 as one of my favorite games on PS2. It plays so well, the writing is so fun, and it all stays varied enough to keep you interested with the new story beats and new guns you find that it's just a big fun time until it's all over. I'd say you should probably at least play R&C 2 before you play this one, but if you only play one of the original 3 games, this is easily the top of the pile in terms of its overall quality.

I didn't know this game with this title but just plain simply "Ratchet & Clank 3" (I guess they changed the title for a good reason).

It was one of my favorite games for the PS2 and one of the first that I bought. I remember that at the time it cost an enormous quantity of 50eur (an amount that hasn't changed that much for video-games, curiously).

I played this game for hours and hours and never was able to finish it because it was just so damn difficult.

One of the best controlling games on the PS2. Ratchet is as effortless to maneuver as ever, with his movement being some of the best to ever grace a console. Bad news is, they forgot to design any levels this time around!

I feel like with each subsequent Ratchet game, I go back and rate the last one higher for what the sequel is lacking. By the time I finish Into the Nexus, Ratchet and Clank 2002 will have 13 stars added to it.

Up Your Arsenal is widely considered the best in the series, and I've also seen people who despise this game. I can't find it in my heart to hate Up Your Arsenal, but I also am not in love with it either, but I find it a bit weak to say I'm somewhere in the middle. The problem is how unfinished the game feels at points, it makes it difficult TO make any grand statement on it when it feels like a dev studio who has been worked to fucking death is starting to burn at both ends. I wish they had been allowed to, you know, take a break and let this game cook, because there's a lot to love here! When a game is made in not even an entire year and has a multiplayer shoehorned into it, it's a miracle the game doesn't mircowave your PS2.

The biggest casualty here, as I alluded to up top, is the level design. There are very few proper Ratchet and Clank levels here: interesting platforming and combat challenges with branching paths and unique level gimmicks. They had started to dissipate by the end of Going Commando, and in Up Your Arsenal they are almost completely M.I.A. In their place you will find a bunch of repurposed multiplayer maps made into Battelfield missions, which I honestly wouldn't have an issue with, if the enemy design was more engaging. Enemies are nowhere near as dynamic as the old games, and are repeated ad nauseam to the point the action just becomes a lot of noise.

This is a tragedy, as the action is the best it has ever been! The guns look and sound great, they upgrade regularly keeping your rotation constantly relevant, and Ratchet's quickness means you can pull off some awesome fucking stunts during the combat, it's just dying for a cast of enemies that compliment it.

Gone is also the biting satire that gave the first two games an anarchic edge. The toll gates are gone, which for games about how self-serving every single person is, fit perfectly. It feels like everything that gave Ratchet and Clank a unique identity is in the process of being sanded down: a process that will be hideously complete with Ratchet and Clank 2016. Here, it is being sanded down into a very fun third-person action game, so I'm not TOO bent out of shape about it, but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the vibrant and enigmatic nature of 1 and hell, even Going Commando. The colors are just gone! The terrain is just a straight shot to the end with a couple of jumps here and there to remind you of old times. The menus and hud are nasty fucking orange and lack any and all identity. Also what happened to the main menu?? Insomniac have always had some great main menus but now it's just Fugly Orange Boxes. What They Do To You Ratchet!!! During the Giant Clank fight at the Holovid studio, it occurred to me that the fight was less visually dynamic than the Godzilla fight in Gex: Enter The Gecko, a game for the PS1. It finally dawned on me that this is a visually very ugly game, even while the character animations are at their peak. It's a very odd contradiction for the game to be living.

The story is also here, and it's whatever. Nefarious is entertainingly hammy and his butler Lawrence is a great foil. Qwark's plans, drawn in crayon, showing Ratchet constantly having to put himself into dangerous scenarios is very funny, and Jim Ward continues to deliver absolute gold as Qwark. James Arnold Taylor also gets some incredible voice work done here as Ratchet, after his personality was in a weird transitory period in GC. I still found the dialogue to be entertaining and snappy enough to keep me going until the end, but nothing was as delightfully clever as it used to be. A main plot about an evil robot wanting to destroy humans is so by-the-books, what happened to the game I love.

This is the first game to have actual writers on board, which, along with 2016's putrid stench still hanging around, leads me to believe that professional writers are hacks. Much to think about here.

The forced-in multiplayer, which obviously affected the single player's development, can't be played anymore, so, cool. Nice. It was a lot of fun back in the day though, they were kind of cooking with that one.

No grind-rails, no space fighting, no racing, only one arena, there is just so much missing here from Going Commando that while I think Up Your Arsenal is more mechanically solid than GC, I just can't agree with anyone saying it's some kind of masterpiece when I am really starting to think this series peaked with the first one and just goes downhill from there.

The shooting is satisfying, the story has some fun spots... Thats all the things I like.

Really big shift in focus this time around. No platforming, no exploration, just shooting, shooting and more shooting. There are linear levels to shoot through, combat arenas to shoot through, and brand new missions arena things to shoot through. It's fun enough but lacks the variety and depth of the previous couple games.

The level and world design is a huge step down. Without any branching paths or exploration they feel completely lifeless, and that means there's no real thrill in unlocking new worlds and progressing through the game.

There's also an overall lack of polish to a lot of it that's hard to ignore. Lots of basic looking menus, janky vehicle sections, and reusing the same maps over and over.

I really didn't vibe with this one!

Clearly the best one of the trilogy that follows everything the previous games did great without adding a lot to the formula. The main improvements of the game are more QOL based than game/level design based but there are still a few with the most important which is the weapons upgrade. In R&C2, you could upgrade your weapons to level 2 and that was it, this time you can go up to level 5. That is a nice improvement that will make you use more different guns until you get to the end of the game and you will start to use your most useful guns. I don't have much more to say other than it has the the coolest weapon of the trilogy and also the hardest final boss.

Up Your Arsenal is another good sequel. Although it's not as ambitious as the previous game Going Commando, what it does well hasn't changed from the previous games, the gameplay is still frenetic and fun. It has some changes I like, and some I don't.

What I've noticed is that there's a shift in focus that started in Going Commando but has reached its culmination here. Which is that it's finally dropped all pretense of being a platformer, and has cemented itself firmly as being a fast paced run and gun shooter. I don't actually have an issue with this in theory, because I never thought Ratchet and Clank had outstanding platforming to begin with. The problem with this change for me is the simplification of the level design, and how that affects the feel of the worlds and player choice. The previous games had worlds with branching paths for the player to choose from. One path could be a puzzle section and another could be a combat section, and there was a lot of fun in exploring the worlds from different angles. They felt organic, and always rewarded with a new gadget or story progression event. The levels in Up Your Arsenal are mostly straight lines to the end. They're finished so quickly that there's hardly any time to appreciate the ambience of the world, and the few split paths they do have usually only lead to titanium bolts, a cosmetic unlocking item. The mission list is functionally useless in this game.

It also has less variety compared to previous games. There's no grind rail sections, hoverbike races, or space ship battles. Instead there's Galactic Ranger missions where you fight enemy hordes, fine at first but there's just too many of them and it's always the same thing. The writing is funnier, but it lost a lot of its edge and corporate satire, and feels more like a typical Saturday morning cartoon.

As far as improvements, there's a second weapon wheel which cuts down on constant menu opening. The weapons got an upgrade up to 8 levels which keeps them useful. There's less Giant Clank levels, which I detested. The bosses are better, they're back to being about as good as the first game's bosses again. I did enjoy the story more than Going Commando's weird evil furby thing, but that's mainly because I loved Dr. Nefarious and his apathetic butler as characters, and not because the story is complex or has any sort of character development like the first game. It added a mini hub, and it's nice that it let me buy armor upgrades without having to remember which level the armor vendor was thrown into.

Even if it's not quite as varied or innovative as the previous games, Up Your Arsenal is still a fun game, and a solid entry worth playing.

The third installment in the original R&C trilogy fully slides on the spectrum toward the "Shooter" half of Shooter-Platformer, but does so impressively well. A shorter adventure than the previous two, but one with fine-tuned gunplay, a more gripping story, and the best arsenal in the series yet. The characters are the best they've been, it's clear to see why Dr. Nefarious became a series mainstay, and the character development for Captain Qwark is some of the best we'll see in the entire franchise. Just left a bit to be desired in the exploration department, but an experience that I'm happy to revisit whenever I get the chance to.