izigame.me

A very fun game---with some issues.
+: Visuals are gorgeous, exploration and traversal are a lot of fun with the combination of the Speedle, hover boots, grind rails, etc. it feels great to speed around a wide open world. I also thought the characters were adorable and the overall tone is very similar to like a Disney/Pixar movie. In general, all the different planets are really well designed. Whereas in older titles there would be like two very clear paths to choose from, I like that this time around the routes are a bit less obvious and it feels more like you are finding your own way. I also like how when you return to certain planets there is new stuff to do and likely some areas you still haven't discovered. The pocket dimensions are a nice little detour that I always looked forward to finding, and the Glitch sections were a real highlight for me. The weapons, as always, are really cool!
-: On that note, while the weapons are a lot of fun, I wasn't crazy about the mechanic where you press "hard" for a more powerful effect. Maybe its just me but it really didnt add much to the weapons in my opinion. It also felt like the weapon upgrades just weren't all that significant to me in this game. Perhaps it's simply because of the subtler upgrade notifications, but in general going from lvl 1 to lvl 5 just didnt have the same impact for me as in previous titles. Similarly, choosing the specific upgrades piece by piece with raritanium missed the mark with me. It just felt insignificant; knowing how quickly you get to fully upgraded, the individual choices that get you there don't seem to matter much. When it comes to exploration, I really enjoyed how fast you can zoom around, but it did have the classic *game* feeling of "this was all placed here just for this one speedle run" rendering large areas totally pointless once you go through once. This is a challenge for all open world games, I know! The story wasn't particularly interesting or impactful in my opinion, with so many familiar tropes and twists it kinda felt like just going through the motions of another typical Rachet story. While I enjoyed the rift/dimension mechanic, I gotta say some of the characters felt pretty stale and one-dimensional. Mostly i just want more genuinely NEW stories with NEW characters for a Rachet game. I appreciated all the familiar faces making a come-back but this had a bit of the feeling of the Rachet movie/game where things just felt...off. I love the dynamic between Emperor and Dr Nefarious, that was a highlight for sure, but generally I would have rather seen some new characters and villains.
Overall a very fun game that (mostly) covers the bases of what you want in a Rachet game. My biggest complaint, as always with this franchise, is I WANT MORE. I would love a bigger game with a 50 hr+ runtime. More planets. More characters. More significant weapons upgrades! I picked up this game when it was on sale for 50% off, and so I am certainly satisfied. If I had paid full price I think I would have been rather disappointed, even with my rose-tinted nostalgia glasses on.