Over the years I've seen a lot of this titles implied negatives. How it's best left forgotten, but to be completely honest the Lost Frontier left me feeling a mix of emotions. But I was never left feeling contempt or distaste for the game.
The High Impact logo at the start colours the entire experience. Having experience with both Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, I thought the stories may be true about this game, however the low bar of being better than those games has been crossed easily. The stench of High Impact is still present. The camera behaves oddly, enemies have spongey health bars, and the core movement just feels stiff and awkward. Jak's moveset has been stripped down from past games. Nothing flows as well as they did in the trilogy, and he lacks the roll, longjump, and highjump. In their place are new Eco powers that were the highlight of the whole experience. Useful for platforming, puzzles, and combat, the Eco powers come in the form of a shield you roll around in, some crystals you can summon, a mine, slow motion, etc. They're better utilized than the Light Jak powers in 3 and I enjoyed using them to my advantage whenever I had the chance.
The new ship combat is another story. It's fine, and never particularly challenging. There's customization of the ship to tailor it to your liking but I never engaged with it much beyond just upgrading the mods I was using and survived just fine. It's just as stiff as Jak's on the ground moveset and never as fun as anything you do grounded.
The final new feature is Dark Daxter. Dark Daxter is a stupid idea with boring gameplay. I got softlocked in one of these stages and had to kill myself to proceed.
Narratively speaking, The Lost Frontier has an alright outline of a story. Jak, Daxter, and Keira travel to the edge of the world to find a new source of Eco because for some reason they need to or the world will die. They're accosted by pirates and eventually meet a man named Skyheed who helps them out and invites them to the city he rules. You do a tutorial for shooting the guns and then leave the city never to return until it appears as the final level of the game. They get some mcguffin there, which is stolen by pirates, and then Keira gets kidnapped, and then you do some dogfighting and they make a truce and become fairly buddy buddy with Jak for the rest of the game. It feels rushed and unfinished, probably because it was just the skeletons of a story given to High Impact of all studios. Things never really advance in a satisfying way, characters are portrayed in bizarre ways, and the game has very little fanfare for some of its bigger twists and turns. Speaking of fanfare, the soundtrack is ok too. It's never memorable but it gets the job done. And visually speaking the game has the same ugly, muddy textures of the Ratchet PSP games, but it manages to stay consistent stylistically with the PS2 games so I have to give credit where it's due.
As the final game of the series I can see why fans would be disappointed however it's not the 0/10 I've been led to believe it is for many years. It's simply mediocre. And maybe that's a worse fate for the final game of this franchise.
The High Impact logo at the start colours the entire experience. Having experience with both Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, I thought the stories may be true about this game, however the low bar of being better than those games has been crossed easily. The stench of High Impact is still present. The camera behaves oddly, enemies have spongey health bars, and the core movement just feels stiff and awkward. Jak's moveset has been stripped down from past games. Nothing flows as well as they did in the trilogy, and he lacks the roll, longjump, and highjump. In their place are new Eco powers that were the highlight of the whole experience. Useful for platforming, puzzles, and combat, the Eco powers come in the form of a shield you roll around in, some crystals you can summon, a mine, slow motion, etc. They're better utilized than the Light Jak powers in 3 and I enjoyed using them to my advantage whenever I had the chance.
The new ship combat is another story. It's fine, and never particularly challenging. There's customization of the ship to tailor it to your liking but I never engaged with it much beyond just upgrading the mods I was using and survived just fine. It's just as stiff as Jak's on the ground moveset and never as fun as anything you do grounded.
The final new feature is Dark Daxter. Dark Daxter is a stupid idea with boring gameplay. I got softlocked in one of these stages and had to kill myself to proceed.
Narratively speaking, The Lost Frontier has an alright outline of a story. Jak, Daxter, and Keira travel to the edge of the world to find a new source of Eco because for some reason they need to or the world will die. They're accosted by pirates and eventually meet a man named Skyheed who helps them out and invites them to the city he rules. You do a tutorial for shooting the guns and then leave the city never to return until it appears as the final level of the game. They get some mcguffin there, which is stolen by pirates, and then Keira gets kidnapped, and then you do some dogfighting and they make a truce and become fairly buddy buddy with Jak for the rest of the game. It feels rushed and unfinished, probably because it was just the skeletons of a story given to High Impact of all studios. Things never really advance in a satisfying way, characters are portrayed in bizarre ways, and the game has very little fanfare for some of its bigger twists and turns. Speaking of fanfare, the soundtrack is ok too. It's never memorable but it gets the job done. And visually speaking the game has the same ugly, muddy textures of the Ratchet PSP games, but it manages to stay consistent stylistically with the PS2 games so I have to give credit where it's due.
As the final game of the series I can see why fans would be disappointed however it's not the 0/10 I've been led to believe it is for many years. It's simply mediocre. And maybe that's a worse fate for the final game of this franchise.