YMMV / Ratchet & Clank (2002)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was Qwark aware of Drek's plan, and if he wasn't, would he have still worked for him if he did? The question is raised by the 2016 movie, where Qwark has a My God, What Have I Done? reaction when he sees the Deplanetizer in-action. On the other hand, in Going Commando, despite Drek's actions being well-known to the public at that point, he still sought revenge against the duo for defeating him.
  • Also, was Helga even aware that Qwark worked for Drek? And if she were, was she assisting him in stopping Ratchet or trying to help the lombax? Her refusing to give up the Swingshot for free could be interpreted as either stripping Ratchet of an important gadget or preventing him and Qwark from meeting.
  • The exact reason Ratchet, still a Jerkass at that point, took Clank from the crash site after he escaped Quartu? Did he know this robot would be useful to him? Was this a Pet the Dog moment? Maybe he wanted something to talk to? Did he need a spare set of parts?
• Anticlimax Boss: Invoked with the starship fight with Captain Qwark on Gemlik Base, the game's penultimate boss fight. You would think that Qwark would be a huge challenge, considering the whole middle act of the game is building up to it. Nope, Qwark is a complete pushover. Your missiles chew through his ship like cotton candy, and are generously replenished throughout the fight, and his only means of direct attack are large, easy to hit missiles and a squadron of easily dispatched Blarg fighters. Even the trail of mines he drops when he is running on fumes are easy to shoot and dodge. And on top of that, dying against him makes your weapons do even more damage when you try again. It makes sense from a character and story standpoint , showing that when push comes to shove, Qwark is all talk and no show.
• Awesome Art: While the quality of the CGI is admittedly showing its age nowadays, the game's cartoony industrial/art deco and retro-futuristic approach gives it a very timeless and all around fun aesthetic that still holds up well. On top of that, the modeling work is still very well done and the animation of the characters is very lively and expressive.
• Awesome Music: David Bergeaud struck gold with this game's soundtrack, featuring a symphony of energetic, atmospheric and unforgettable techno/orchestral tunes, as the awesome page for the series music attests.
• Base-Breaking Character: Ratchet's unheroic characterization prior to his Character Development. He acts like an abrasive and cocky jerk whose motives are purely self-serving for the first third of the game, comes a hairbreadth away from being a Villain Protagonist once he becomes obsessed with getting even with Captain Qwark while acting indifferent to Drek invading and destroying other worlds (and only narrowly avoids crossing the line because Clank strongarms him into doing the right thing, and Ratchet treats him like crap in retaliation for it), and finally gets his priorities straight once he sees the consequences of his actions unfold right in front of him. In the game's initial release, many fans found him completely unlikable and were glad to see him get nicer in the sequels...until the 2016 reimagining came around and made Ratchet a nerdy Luke Skywalker clone, the exact opposite of how he is portrayed in this game, and gave the lion's share of the character development to Captain Qwark, of all people. There are many fans who now believe that Ratchet is actually better characterized in this game (or, barring that, at least had the potential to be a more interesting character if the storytelling execution had been better), since he and Clank have much more time and opportunities to play off of their personality flaws and eventually bond (not to mention it gives Ratchet a fairly interesting character arc), whereas the reimagining removes virtually all of Ratchet's character development and opportunities for the duo to banter with each other, making Ratchet come off as a bland and uninteresting character now. With that said, some fans still prefer his nicer characterization from the reboot and simply find the old Ratchet to be too mean to be likeable.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Metropolis, a truly euphoric level that embodies the entire spirit of the series. The level layout is brilliant, offering a perfect balance of platforming and combat and just the right level of challenge. And the retro-Art Deco art direction and scope of the city still holds up today—you really get a feeling its a living, bustling planet-wide city. And lets not even get started on its jaunty, insanely catchy music. It says a lot that when Insomniac Games were pitching the game, the presentation of this level was what got the game greenlight.
  • Blackwater City. Its a fun mix of platforming fun and is a very enemy dense level, full of ripe opportunities to blow things up. It also has the thrilling sewer section and a fun (if tricky to learn) Hoverboard race track. The unforgettable orchestral/techno score is just icing on the cake. Next to Metropolis, its easily one of the most iconic levels in the series.
  • Orxon. While it is quite unforgiving, it has undeniably great atmosphere. You visit it for the first time as Clank only, making you wonder what this hostile planet with toxic atmosphere provides. Then you make your way through the complex, finding cool gadgets along, while solving interesting puzzles. It also helps this is the longest segment of the original trilogy where you get to control Clank, and thus getting the feeling of how it is to be small, unarmed and vulnerable. As Ratchet, you'll get to visit previously inaccessible places and even obtain some health upgrades. The fact that the pollution on this planet is the result of the Big Bad so he can start off his plan only helps to make it more climactic.
  • Gemlik Base. The eerie deep space atmosphere and moody music are unforgettable, and its one of the most enemy-dense yet creative levels in the entire game, capped off by a very fun and cathartic starfighter boss fight against Captain Qwark. When the 2016 reimagining completely scrapped the level, fan reaction ranged from strong disappointment to outright anger.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After finding out what a traitorous, egotistical scumbag Qwark is and seeing him (indirectly) ruin Ratchet and Clank's friendship by playing them for saps (and then having the nerve to rub it in Ratchet's face by laughing at him then giving him the middle finger just before they fight), you will be enjoying every moment of handing him his cowardly ass on a silver platter on Gemlik Base. And if that wasn't cathartic enough, you get to fight him again at the beginning of Up Your Arsenal, which is arguably even more fitting of this trope, since not only do you get to fight him on foot this time, but you also get to use your weapons against him, which is satisfying as hell.
  • Likewise, seeing Drek ream out Qwark a few times is very satisfying to watch, given what a lowlife Qwark is.
  • After seeing Drek destroy many planets all in the name of profit and greed and being a verbally abusive asshole to everyone around him, getting to fight him at the end of the game and seeing his new planet get destroyed with him on it is incredibly fulfilling.
• Character Perception Evolution: Ratchet's characterization in this game was seen for years as a black mark on it due to his personality coming off as a bit too abrasive and self-centered, which led to a criticism that Insomniac remedied in future games by making Ratchet more traditionally heroic. The 2016 film and tie-in, however, led to a softening in the perception of this take on Ratchet, with many critics of the reboot finding Ratchet had been made too nice and unambiguously heroic, which along with reduced character development and bonding time with Clank made him come off as more of a flat doormat of a character, leading to a We Want Our Jerk Back! moment in some parts of the community wishing Ratchet had been allowed to maintain more of an abrasive edge.
• Complete Monster: Ultimate Supreme Executive Chairman Drek, at first seemingly well-intentioned in finding his species, the Blarg, a new home, is revealed to have been the one who polluted their homeworld in the first place. Drek's real motive is to loot and destroy numerous planets due to the fact that he gets paid for every square inch of the new Blarg homeworld, with plans to begin polluting the new homeworld to start the process over again. Needing a place to put the new planet, Drek attempts to destroy Ratchet's home planet of Veldin, with the implication that he does so just to spite Ratchet for interfering in his plans.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Alien Snappers on the Blarg Station are the first enemies in the game that can be tricky to beat with the wrench. Not only do they take four hits from the wrench to kill — more than any other foe at that point in the game — but every time they're hit they'll snap back at Ratchet for nigh-unavoidable damage if he's still close. Did we mention that they sometimes hang out with large quantities of fast-attacking Alien Swarmers? Thankfully, they're easily dealt with using the Blaster, Bomb Glove, and Glove of Doom, but those won't be an option if you're going for the "Girl Trouble" skill point (see That One Achievement below).
  • Worse than the Alien Snappers are the Toxic Crab enemies on Orxon. As Clank, they cannot even be engaged directly, and he needs to rely on Gadgebots to destroy them. As Ratchet, they will counter every time they are hit with the wrench, similar to the aforementioned Alien Snappers, but they have even more health - the most of any enemy in the game that isn't a fighter or dropship, in fact. Oh, and if you wake up a Screamer, they'll alert every Toxic Crab in the immediate area and they'll start swarming you. Luckily, the same weapons that are effective on Alien Snappers also work nicely on Toxic Crabs.
  • Fighters and dropships whenever Ratchet is on foot. They have a ton of health, and the wrench does absolutely nothing to them. Worse yet, they have a huge range and usually fire quite fast, so the Blaster won't help you much. The only way to deal with them effectively is to use one of the three rocket launchers, but the Devastator and Visibomb Gun are expensive weapons with expensive ammo, while the R.Y.N.O. is so pricey that you probably won't have it until you've gone through a couple playthroughs.
  • The bomb-like Seekers on Gaspar and Kalebo III. They appear in groups, and if you get close, they retract their arms and start swarming you. If you don't destroy them quickly, they explode, dealing nigh-unavoidable damage. They have a good chunk of health, making the wrench and Pyrocitor near-useless, and you can only outrun them with repeated Stretch Jumps, which you may not always have space to do. Worse yet, they're not classified as small enemies despite their size, which means the Suck Cannon won't suck them up and can only damage them if you loaded it using other enemies nearby. Luckily, you can one-shot them with the Walloper, and the Tesla Claw shreds them nicely as well.
  • Plasmabots on Oltanis and Quartu. They travel in numbers, and attack with a Tesla Claw-like weapon with a very long reach, making it very difficult to attack them with most of your weapons. The Glove of Doom is probably your best bet if you haven't already bought your own Tesla Claw.
  • The Blarg Elite Commandos encountered on Kalebo III and Veldin. Not only are they equipped with jetpacks to render your wrench and most other short-range weapons useless, but if you attack one commando, every single other one in the area will start shooting at you, and they can and WILL hit you from very long distances. Oh yes, you'll fight large groups of them at once by the way, and in many cases, especially on Veldin, their dropships will join the firefight, and bombard you with homing projectiles. Better hope you brought your Devastator, Visibombs, or Tesla Claw, because those will likely be your only hope.
• Designated Hero: The protagonists blowing up Drek's new planet at the end is clearly just meant to be a cool moment of them sticking it to the villain (also a bit of a "fruit of the poisonous tree" kind of thing), but it's hard not to have Fridge Logic kick in and realize that all those peoples who were displaced by Drek destroying their planets might've appreciated them NOT doing that, either because some of them could have found a new home there or just because of it containing the only remnants of their original home.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Owing to the climate of Planet Hoven, the Anklebiters are often called the Snowy Boys in the speedrunning community.
  • Also in the speedrunning community, the unnamed Jowai Resort owner in Planet Pokitaru is more often than not simply called The Guy.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why does Ratchet become particularly vengeful and somewhat of a massive Jerkass to Clank after Qwark's betrayal? He was just some teen who doesn't even really know anyone personally, stuck on Veldin up until the start of the game. Not only was he just interested in living it up, something he couldn't do because of his dead-end, backwater dirtball of a planet and because Clank kept forcing him along on the quest to fight Drek, but almost everyone he meets for the first time is some kind of jerk to them first or extorting mission-critical items and weapons for cash. The first time out in the greater star system, and everything is exploitation, commercialization and assholery to the guy with no time to calm down and relax at all; even hoverboarding becomes an impromptu necessity. And Clank dragging him straight into a death trap was the straw that broke the camel's back, as Ratchet notably becomes even more cynical towards every person they meet afterwards. It also explains why he growls like an angry animal when Drek plans to blow up his home; after all the crap they've had to go through, Ratchet likely values Veldin a lot more than when he wanted off of it at this point.
  • Throughout the game, a lot of Drek's various evil deeds - targeting already inhabited planets and starting wars with all of them, deforesting Eudora before taking a chunk of the planet, dumping toxic waste in the oceans of a vacation planet instead of finding an uninhabited planet to dump it, willing to blow up a planet and claim its orbiting spot to spite Ratchet - come across as pointless and only serve to cause more long-term problems if he wanted to create a new homeworld for his species to live on. Hell, he could have just found a planet capable of life without any space-faring alien species already living there if he looked hard enough. With the reveal that he purposefully polluted his homeworld just so he could run what was essentially a planetary real-estate scam for the money, it puts a lot of things in a new light. Why deforest Eudora? He admitted that after he was done selling the new planet he was going to pollute it all over again, so it would be easier to make the new planet only survivable by a minimum so that it would not take too long to make it uninhabitable, like how some real life electronics are built to last for a few years so you'll have to buy another one. Why start all of these needless conflict with all of these other worlds? Because there is profit in war, and it is likely that Drek is the one manufacturing the weapons that his people fight with.
  • It seems odd that Captain Qwark would generously sell you a Gadgetron PDA on Oltanis after you handed him his butt at Gemlik Base. But considering the gadget costs a fair amount of bolts and actually increases the ammo price (and no, the Persuader will not help you here since it only affects the pricing for the weapons themselves), its entirely possible that the thing is actually a bogus piece of merchandise made by Qwark (or, barring that, exploited by him) as a passive-aggressive way of getting back at Ratchet and scamming bolts off of him, which isn't at all out of character for him and makes sense considering his pitiful disposition by that point.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Possibly a glitch because the game doesn't acknowledge this, but you're awarded a thousand bolts every time you set a new record in the Rilgar hoverboard races. Since there are two kinds of records to set, most races take less than two and a half minutes and records get reset every time you turn off the console. This is potentially the fastest repeatable way to get a considerable amount of money outside of Challenge Mode. Consider that the resident Infinity Plus One Weapon is obtainable on the very same planet and locked only behind a Cash Gate and, well...
  • Speaking of which, we have the R.Y.N.O. itself. Let's just say that there's a very good reason it's locked behind a ludicrously large cash gate, because once you get it, any enemy that faces you may as well be bringing a knife to fight the Death Star. It fires 9 extremely accurate auto lock-on missiles at a time at a very fast rate, has an insanely large ammo capacity of 50 total with very cheap ammunition, and deals eviscerating damage with huge range; every mook goes down in one hit from it, and it tears through bosses like wet tissue—even the final boss becomes a cakewalk with it. Its only handicap besides the very high price is that you can't find ammo for it in crates (which, on the other hand, can be remedied by the PDA).
  • For a game breaker that's feasible to obtain within your initial playthrough, there's the Tesla Claw and its subsequent upgrade, the Gold Tesla Claw. While it's only available upon the start of the game's third act (Gorda City Ruins) and its base form is the priciest of all the vendor-bought weapons (40,000 bolts, or the slightly less painful 30,000 if you have the Persuader), it's still far less expensive than the R.Y.N.O.'s staggering 150,000 cost, and even the Gold upgrade only costs around 1/3 of its price (60,000 bolts, plus 4 Gold Bolts). Both versions quickly establish themselves as being worth every single bolt. The base form kills all but the toughest enemies in one hit with lightning-fast accurate auto-targeting and great range. The Gold upgrade takes an already overpowered weapon and makes it even stronger by adding more damage and allowing multi-targeting of foes at once. It is no exaggeration that this weapon, upgraded or not, can clear an entire room in mere seconds, and it basically superannuates other weapons like the Blaster and Walloper. While it does chew up ammo somewhat fast, the cherry on the sundae is that its ammo is easy to find and inexpensive to buy as well. On top of that, the Gold upgrade is available as soon as you reach Novalis in Challenge Mode, so a persistent player can nab it as early as the first few levels and use it to breeze through the rest of the game, and like the R.Y.N.O., it makes the final Drek fight a breeze.
  • While the normal Devastator is a modestly powerful but useful missile launcher, the Gold Devastator is a very overpowered weapon and is likewise a great alternative to the R.Y.N.O.. Like the Gold Tesla Claw, it costs a third of the price (60,000 bolts and 4 Gold Bolts), beefs up the damage to where it can one-shot almost any enemy, and each missile, after hitting once, can bounce off of an enemy and hit another up to three extra times, which when combined with its long range, fast fire rate and insanely accurate auto-targeting, makes it a perfect weapon for quickly clearing out large groups of enemies. Even its modest ammo capacity can easily be remedied by the PDA, which turns this into one of the most broken weapons in the game.
  • In the PAL version of the game, the Pyrocitor of all weapons accidentally occupies this position due to a design oversight in converting the game to 50hz, which causes the weapon to deal damage every frame instead of every few frames, turning it into a ridiculously overpowered flamethrower that can be bought for chump change at the very start of the game. Buying the Gold Pyrocitor later on (which can be accessed in your first playthrough by the time you reach Gemlik Base) only makes it even more ridiculously overpowered.
• Gameplay Derailment:
  • The dev team specifically designed the R.Y.N.O. sidequest to be as super-tedious as it was because if a player was able to access such an insanely broken weapon early on, it would completely throw any sense of difficulty the game has out the window and make getting any other weapons, including the Gold Weapons, outright redundant. Thus, it became a post-game reward meant for persistent players who had already mastered everything else in the game by that point. Cue clever players discovering the Taunter glitch in Blackwater City's sewers, which allows you to stack up on tons of bolts as soon as you land, and thus acquire the R.Y.N.O. right on your first visit, instantly turning the rest of the game into a cakewalk from then on.
  • Another example would be attempting the Wrench-only challenge, as the dev team specifically designed the game to be impossible to complete with only the Omniwrench. It requires exploiting a very difficult sequence break on Gemlik Base^note Normally a shield tower blocking your path can only be destroyed by a gun, such as the Blaster, Devastator, Visibomb Gun or the Suck Cannon, but the "slope-intercept" (SI) glitch, which allows Ratchet to high jump off of slopes, enables you to run along the rooftops to the level's end and exploiting the Infinite Long Jump glitch on the return to Veldin to bypass the otherwise impassable armada of tanks and ships waiting ahead, not to mention the patience of an ordained saint when fighting Drek himself^note It's just barely possible to hit him with the Wrench's Hyper-Strike at certain points, and even there the damage is so marginal that it makes the already difficult fight now last for hours on end.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Amoeboids on Rilgar and Pokitaru, due to their ability to split into smaller and smaller versions of themselves as you kill them. If you're not keeping tabs on their numbers, you can be easily overwhelmed. Fortunately, the Pyrocitor gets rid of them fairly quickly.
  • Orxon has Darters, airborne enemies that move fast, travel in groups and can be annoying to hit with the wrench or even with the Blaster. To add insult to injury, the Suck Cannon doesn't work on them unlike most small enemies.
  • Also on Orxon are Screamers. Though they can't attack directly, they can wake up nearby Toxic Crabs. Oh, and they can fly too, and are difficult to hit once in the air. Missed your shot? Have fun dealing with five or six Toxic Crabs at once.
  • Puffoids on Pokitaru and Anklebiters on Hoven, not only because they attack quickly and in large packs, but because they take two hits from the wrench to kill, unlike all of the other small enemies in the game that die in just one hit. Luckily, the Suck Cannon works wonders on them... provided you remembered to find it on Eudora.
  • The Sentry-bots on Quartu and Drek's Fleet will run towards the nearest alarm and activate it should they spot Ratchet, activating missile launchers that rapidly fire homing shots until he flees. They have high health, a long sight range, and come in groups of two or three, leaving very few ways of killing them all before one reaches an alarm, even with the Tesla Claw. The only safe options are activating the Glove of Doom around a corner or Devastator/Visibomb sniping, and screwing up can lead to your health getting drained quickly.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The "infinite bolts" trick, done by either wearing the Hologuise to Rilgar's racetrack (fixed in the HD version), glitching your way through a wall using the Decoy Glove, or using the Taunter in a certain spot of the sewer section (due to one of the pipe tunnels being located directly underneath the Hoverboard track), which only works once per playthrough.
  • One of the Gold Bolts on Orxon is normally obtainable only going by a path that is blocked by barriers that can be destroyed only from the other side. The idea is to use the Visibomb to destroy these barriers, which can be difficult due to sharp turns the path has. However, in the PAL version, you can destroy the barriers normally with the Gold Devastator - just make sure you don't buy it last - and in all versions, a well-placed ground pound below the bolt will allow you to get it easily.
  • Due to a design oversight, it's possible to defeat the Alien Queen boss using the Gold Morph-O-Ray, but it's tricky (it takes a full 24 seconds to work, and you need the rather clunky Thruster-Pack strafe to pull it off).
  • Due to a glitch, the final boss music doesn't play at all during the fight, only when you go away from the dish the fight starts at—and simply going right back to the dish will just switch the music back to the Veldin theme. There is a way to keep the proper music though—walk all the way through the course to the dish, and then backtrack all the way to your ship, and then teleport to the dish. Do not teleport before these—the water tower Thruster-Pack switch has to be opened on the way you came in before you can backtrack through it. Also, dying during the final fight resets it back to the Veldin music.
  • Thanks to FPS changes when converting from NTSC to PAL, and similar changes being made to the Vita version in all regions, the Pyrocitor becomes one of the best weapons in the game in these versions, dealing damage on every frame the fire it shoots hits something. Speedrunners of categories without the R.Y.N.O. can use this to take down each phase of Drek in seconds.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: When Ratchet and Clank finally meet Captain Qwark on Rilgar, Qwark tells Ratchet of how he notices the potential he has and that he's a true hero in the making. While Qwark was just saying that to butter up Ratchet before he betrays him, the end of the game as well as the sequels (especially in regards to the Future trilogy) show that Qwark, whether he knew it or not, was absolutely right.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It's a tad ironic seeing Captain Qwark starting off as a cold blooded, unrepentant villain in this game after seeing him sincerely become a good guy from Up Your Arsenal and onward.
  • One of Qwark's quips during the dogfight against him as him say "Let's have some facetime", predating the creation of the Facetime app by many years.
  • One of the "Epilogue" posters for the game is for "Ratchet & Clank: The Motion Picture", which became funnier in light of them releasing a movie reimagining of the game 14 years later.
  • The fact mentioned in Batman Can Breathe in Space becomes funny if one remembers how Qwark accessed one of Dr. Nefarious' hideouts.
  • Drek's full title (minus the Chairman part) spells out USED, which fits his character considered his planet-looting actions and the reveal that he's played his whole race for saps as part of a galaxy-scale real estate scam. Come the 2016 reimagining, and it turns out he was being played for a sap the whole time by Dr. Nefarious, who backstabs him and takes the brass ring as the villain.
  • Captain Qwark was originally supposed to be called Quark, but his name was changed due to fears of a potential trademark issue with another series starring a character named Quark. Fast forward to the third game, and that games villain, Dr. Nefarious, would be played by none other than Quark's actor, Armin Shimerman!
  • During his first meeting with Big Al, Ratchet calls the former a "robot guy," to which Al goes out of his way to seemingly correct him, saying he builds robots and is "not a robot guy per se." Come Ratchet: Deadlocked, Al gets some cybernetic implants. Looks like he became a robot guy after all.
• It Was His Sled: Qwark worked for Drek, and Veldin was almost destroyed for the new Blarg planet.
• Jerkass Woobie: Ratchet retroactively becomes this in light of his backstory from Tools of Destruction and on. It's implied that he's lived completely alone on the harsh environment of Veldin all his life and has no knowledge of where he came from or who his parents were (or that his entire race was driven to near-extinction in his universe), and wouldn't have even been able to make it off the planet if Clank hadn't crash landed there. And while he is completely out of line in how he treats Clank and the situation with Drek after Qwark betrays them, it retroactively becomes understandable that he'd have such a hotheaded and irresponsible temperament—he just wanted some kind of life and legacy beyond being a mechanic holed up on some backwater planet, and when he tried to do so he played for a sap by someone he looked up to.
• Love to Hate:
  • Sure, Drek is an utterly despicable person who gladly ruined his homeworld and destroyed numerous planets for money, but he's also such an entertaining, hammy, and cunning villain that you're compelled to watch him whenever he pops up onscreen. It got to the extent that, similar to the complaints of Ratchet's new characterization, fans complained about how Drek was reduced from a scheming sociopath into a bumbling, barely threatening goofball in the 2016 reimagining.
  • Captain Qwark likewise ended up becoming a fan favorite even in spite of his true nature. Sure, he's a creep, but he's also a very charismatic person (due in part to Jim Ward's excellent voice acting and his over the top design and expressiveness) and provides some of the game's funniest moments. Amusingly, even the dev team ended up growing to like him so much that they decided to bring him back midway through development of Going Commando, to the extent that he eventually got bumped up into the game's true villain. His popularity culminated in the 2016 reimagining which, while sanding down his worst qualities, managed to remain fairly consistent with his original egotistical persona while still keeping him funny, and arguably gave him more of a character arc than Ratchet himself in it.
• Moral Event Horizon: Chairman Drek intentionally pollutes his native home planet so that its citizens would pay him bolts to build a new planet out of existing ones. And he plans on doing it again.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The entire idea of stealing entire chunks of planets to build a new world from them while leaving the remnants (And presumably anybody still trapped on them) to meet a fiery fate as their wayward worlds spin towards their native sun..... All for the sake of money!
  • The Deplanetizer and the PlanetBuster are both essentially downgraded versions of the Death Star and will reduce any world to oblivion if properly deployed.
  • Although we never see it in-game, the positively gigantic excavating claw used by Drek to tear planets apart, as shown in his blueprints; the damned thing is bigger than the planets themselves!
  • If you're afraid of drowning, the entire sewer escape sequence in Blackwater City. The soundtrack that plays combined with the rapidly rising water is surprisingly terrifying for what is otherwise a T-rated game at best. Now you know what anxiety sounds like.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The many, many Cash Gates. In a game where bolts are much less plentiful than the sequels, it's a huge pain in the butt to have to fork over big chunks of your hard earned cash just to beat the game while you're trying to save up to buy a new weapon. It also has the side effect of making the R.Y.N.O. sidequest even harder than it already is. Oddly enough, this carried over into the sequel and got even worse, but it was mercifully dropped from the third game and onward.
  • The Thruster-Pack is a great upgrade, but its built-in strafe function is a serious case of Power-Up Letdown in a game that would have really benefited from having it as a base ability. It moves slowly, its range of movement is limited to four directions, and you can't jump without shutting it off, making Ratchet a sitting duck for many attacks. Some weapons, like the wrench and Walloper, stall it, and the gun weapons don't have a proper lock-on function in the first place, so you can't circle around or dodge enemies while shooting them. Thankfully, the sequels gave Ratchet a proper strafe ability and abandoned the Thruster Strafe forever.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Pyrocitor due to its short range and mediocre damage output on anything that isn't a crowd of small enemies or Amoeboids. The Morph-O-Ray completely superannuates it in the game's third act. However, the Gold Pyrocitor significantly improves its damage and range. It also bears noting that this is not the case in the PAL version, where, due to a design oversight when converting the game to 50hz, the Pyrocitor becomes one of the most powerful weapons in the game, even before you buy the Gold upgrade.
  • The Taunter. While not completely useless and a thankfully inexpensive weapon in itself, it can't even directly harm enemies, and it's only helpful in either very specific circumstances (levels with force fields, like the Blarg Station and Orxon) or in close quarters combat involving combining its use with the Mine Glove (itself being a weaker and much slower acting Bomb Glove), meaning you'll barely find any use for it in heated combat. Slightly mitigating this is that it's crucial for performing the famous "Infinite Bolts" glitch on Rilgar.
  • The Walloper. While it doesn't need ammunition and does slightly more damage than the wrench, it has a painfully small range (the wrench has a much wider arc despite being slower) and Ratchet is immobile after the punch, meaning you can end up in the middle of a group of enemies with it and if you don't kill whatever you're aiming for, you're almost certainly going to get hit. More style than substance, its only real use is for dealing with the otherwise frustrating-to-kill Seekers (see Demonic Spiders above), and even then it becomes obsolete in that regard once you get the Morph-O-Ray and Tesla Claw.
  • The Drone Device. It's a neat concept for a weapon, but in execution it feels undercooked. It does not always block damage, and only attacks enemies in very close proximity to Ratchet. As such, the weapon essentially functions as a melee weapon, though one that has paid ammunition, unlike the OmniWrench or Walloper. It can only block damage six times, and it has a small ammo stock, meaning a player has to constantly reload it and use it with discretion. Also, despite what the Help Menu description states, the drones don't protect Ratchet from incoming projectiles that aren't bullets.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Due to the sheer length of the Batalia - Hoven segment, the speedrun community started theorizing of a possible "Pokiskip", which would involve obtaining the Orxon infobot for Hoven as Clank to skip over Pokitaru entirely. The problem? You need to follow the exact same path Ratchet does due to how this particular Infobot works. Fortunately, there has been a good amount of progress, but unfortunately it's been realized that while it's not impossible to perform given enough time, the "Pokiskip" would take more time than it saves. That said, while considered useless in a speedrun, players still want to see this challenge done some day if only for its cool concept.
• Special Effects Failure: During one of the cutscenes where Drek is delivering a message to the Blarg from his spaceship about his partially constructed new world, instead of using a billboarded image of a planet like the rest of the game does, it's painfully obvious that they just used a really small low poly mesh that's just floating slightly ahead of Drek's ship with poor forced perspective being used (the camera movement immediately spoils the illusion).
• That One Achievement:
  • "Take Aim" on Novalis is a very tedious skill point to get—you need the use the Visibomb Gun to destroy a ship. The normal ships are almost impossible to hit except by sheer dumb luck due to their speed, and the most ideal target—a giant bomber—only pops up sporadically and without warning. Your timing has to be just right, or the bomber will fly out of the Visibomb's range.
  • "Alien Invasion", basically the more evil brother of previous skill point. You have to destroy three Blarg Saucers flying in the sky of Pokitaru with the Visibomb Gun. This is difficult to pull off because that winged scrap metal is quite fast and their erratic flying pattern makes it difficult to follow, making you detonate your rocket too far from any of them or flying out of reach of the signal (and detonating) more often than not. Note that here, bolts are scarce and ammo is expensive.
  • The "Girl Trouble" skill point on Nebula G34, where you have to fight the Alien Queen on the Blarg Research Station using only your wrench. It's hard enough as it is, but you will also have to deal with a pack of Alien Swarmers and a pair of Alien Snappers that she will summon at set points. It's also easy to screw it up by accident, because pulling out another weapon besides the wrench will cost you the skill point, even if you don't fire it.
  • The "Speedy" skill point on planet Rilgar, which requires you to beat the race within 1 minute and 35 seconds. Getting this requires the player to use every boost and to cut corners as much as possible.
  • "Shattered Glass" in the Gorda City Ruins. To get it, you have to destroy every blue spherical lamp in the city. However, the lamps reset upon death, so you need to do this on one go, in a tough level with lamps scattered on most of its varying paths. You can use the Visibomb Gun to destroy some of them, but that means spending some cash on its ammo, which isn't that cheap.
  • The "Careful Cruise" Skill Point on Drek's Fleet requires you to swim through the sewer portion without taking any damage. This is made annoying by fans charged with electricity (each one turns faster than the one before it), mines that are hidden around corners that you can't see, and the fact that you're on a time limit.
  • In the PS3 version, the "Bolt Collector" trophy. You need to collect 1,000,000 bolts over the course of your playthroughs (thankfully, you don't need to hold that much at one time, just collect that much). The problem is that the economy is much tougher than it is in every other game; the only values of bolts are 1, 5, 20, and 50, and the New Game Plus multiplier only gives you two times the money from drops, rather than an accumulative multiplier that goes up the more enemies you kill. Even if you wallhack to the Rilgar Hoverboard track and set yourself up with the Taunter under the box pyramid, that may still take a few hours to get the money, depending on how much you've already gotten.
• That One Boss: Drek himself, even though he's the Final Boss. Not only because he takes forever to beat, but because he has several attacks that are hard to avoid, and in the last phase he activates the countdown for the Deplanetizer, which you'll have to stop by smashing the Big Red Button, but Drek will soon resume the countdown, and if the countdown reaches zero, well... There's a reason why some spent hours grinding bolts to get the R.Y.N.O., as it turns Drek (and by extension, the whole game) into a breeze. That said, getting it is anything but that.
• That One Level:
  • Orxon is this twofold - first is the Clank section, which isn't necessarily difficult per se, but is infamous for being a Marathon Level that takes ages to get through. Then later once Ratchet gets the 02 Mask and you can explore it more thoroughly, it becomes one of the hardest levels in the game, mainly due to the sheer abundance of enemies that can take a licking and keep on kicking, especially the Toxic Crabs. And if you take the left path and don't have the Devastator or Visibomb Gun, Ratchet may as well have a target painted on his head, because the local Blarg Saucers will mop the floor with him while staying far out of range of his other weapons.
  • Gorda City Ruins is a tough level, mainly because you're forced to traverse it without Clank and the level is set high up over many bottomless pits. The overabundance of Plasmabots doesn't help matters.
  • While the hoverboard races aren't too hard, the Vita port makes them something that should be classified as torture. As L2 and R2 are placed on the rear touchpad, it's incredibly easy to accidentally start a trick and fall face first on the ground. The already difficult Skill Points linked to the races become even harder.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Buying the R.Y.N.O. At 150,000 bolts, it is the most expensive weapon in the game, and unless you exploit the Infinite Bolts glitch, you'll have to spend at least two playthroughs scrounging together enough to buy it. And to add insult to injury, the Persuader item will not get you a discount on it. Thankfully, the reward is totally worth the effort.
  • Buying all of the Gold Weapons. While finding all the Gold Bolts isn't really hard unless you forgo using a strategy guide, you also need to collect a substantial amount of bolts to buy each one (250,000 total for all of them, more than even the ludicrous price of the R.Y.N.O., but thankfully each individual weapon is priced much, much cheaper), and outside of glitching, it's not that easy to stack up on them in this game due to the lack of the bolt multiplier in Challenge Mode.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Giant Clank. While he's fun to play as, the game gives him very little to do. The Quartu mission barely lasts a few minutes and can't be properly replayed without going into Challenge Mode, and you only use him again for a very brief trek on Veldin before you knock off the first chunk of Drek's health, thus prompting him to shrink Clank, and that moment can be unintentionally skipped by some people playing the game. Fortunately, the sequel gives Giant Clank more time to shine.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While Ratchet is intentionally meant to be an Anti-Hero and some of his faults are part of his character arc (and become somewhat more understandable when you know his retroactive backstory), he comes off as an outright bully and a hair-breadth away from being a villain himself during the second act of the game due to his incredibly selfish and petty revenge-oriented goals, and some of the things he does to Clank are unreasonably cruel, even when factoring in why he acts the way he does—the only reason you'll still be wanting Ratchet to see things through is because Drek and Qwark are that much worse than him. And while he does learn to be a better person by the third act (and even before then he's gradually realizing just what a big deal the threat of Drek's plans really is), but it takes a whole planet being reduced to ruins in front of his eyes to make him realize just how badly he screwed up, and this is after he fulfills his revenge fantasy, not just in spite of it. It got to where Insomniac Games themselves realized they went too far in making Ratchet a hotheaded punk.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While the game is showing its age nowadays, it was a top of the line showcase for what the PS2 could handle and in some places pushes the system as far as it can go—levels like Metropolis are still amazing to look at to this day. On top of that, the animation, effects, modelling work and all around art direction still hold up well to this day.

---