YMMV / Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus

• Continuity Lockout: After the mostly self-contained stories of the prior two entries, the plot of this game hinges entirely on the events of Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time.
• Demonic Spiders: Jetpack Thugs. They fly out of range of most of your weapons, and fire clusters of shots at you that are hard to dodge in numbers and do a lot of damage on the higher difficulties. The fact that a lot of bosses tend to summon them doesn't help.
• Game-Breaker: As with its predecessors, the RYNO VII. It's powerful enough that, once it's fully upgraded, you won't need another weapon to defeat the final boss and the fight against it will only wind up being a few minutes long!
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-Universe. Early in the game, Talwyn (via hologram) fakes dying in space to try and amuse Ratchet. After Cronk and Zephyr are destroyed by Progs' detonator, she's not finding the subject of death so funny anymore...
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Compared with some of the other Future games, Into the Nexus is pretty short, about twice the size of Quest for Booty. This game has the Nebulox 7 level, and only 5 planets in the game. One of them hosts the tournament, and the areas you visit on the other 4 will take only twice the time as they would be in a regular-length Ratchet & Clank game. That said, the developers said it would be shorter than most Ratchet & Clank games, and the game was budget-priced at the time of release, so there was at least fair warning that the game wouldn't exactly be a full-length title.
• Magnificent Bastard: Neftin Prog is the twin brother of Vendra Prog who acts as The Dragon to her, plotting to unleash the Nethers into the galaxy. To this end, he and the Nethers start scaring the citizens of the Zarvok Sector out in order to have more room for experimentation, doing a good enough job that he was mistaken for a demon. Aiding his sister in capturing scientists to create a new Dimensionator, Vendra is captured by Ratchet and Clank while Neftin manages to escape with the hostages. For six months, he organized numerous crime sprees and bribed many politicians to cover his operation up, while also plotting to rescue his sister from prison in the meantime. Hiring the Thugs-4-Less and organizing an assault on Vendra's prison ship, he successfully manages to rescue her and resume their plot. When they're betrayed by the Nether Leader, Neftin wastes no time teaming up with Ratchet and Clank to rescue his sister and stop Mr. Eye, promising to turn himself and Vendra in after he's done, which he lives up to in the end.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Nethers and their leader "Mr. Eye" are extremely freaky in appearance. Which is fitting considering that they're Eldritch Abominations-especially the leader that resembles a huge Cyclopean angler fish with a lot of teeth.
  • When Clank descends into the Netherverse to rescue Vendra, it's very reminiscent of Limbo with Clank in silhouette and the generally creepy ambiance. Even more so in that Clank-during gameplay anyway-is always free-falling and must lead two vicious Nethers back to free Vendra from the barrier imprisoning her.
  • The orphanages where Vendra and her brother grew up deserves note as well. The outside is dominated by four cyclopian animatronics who constantly look like they are laughing madly, while happy music is playing. Once Ratchet steps inside, the nature of how the orphanage was run becomes noticeable. There are small metal baskets lying around and robotic claws are going along the ceiling, some still holding some of the baskets. Said claws follow a path that goes through some showers before ending at a conveyor belt which leads into the basement. The basement turns out to have been the windowless sleeping room for the children, with three giant hamster drinking stations.
• Scrappy Mechanic: You can't customize your Quick Select at all; weapons are locked in the order you get them.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: It's actually possible to reach all the fossilized Gargathon horns without using the jetpack, by taking advantage of the decorational level geometry. And since there are exactly as many non-living horns as are needed to get the jetpack... Unfortunately, the hardest to reach fossil doesn't actually spawn until the player acquires the jetpack, so no Sequence Breaking for you. Still, it's the journey, right?
• Tear Jerker: Talwyn's reactions to receiving the news about Cronk and Zephyr's deaths and begging Ratchet to come back as he and Clank are now all she has left.
• That One Achievement: Actually, there's two.
  • The "For Cronk and Zephyr" Skill Point, which requires you to beat Neftin Prog without taking damage. Dodging his attacks on their own is relatively easy, but there's a catch. Actually two. Firstly Neftin has a severe case of Hitbox Dissonance, and you'll often find yourself randomly taking Collision Damage when you weren't touching him at all. Second, he summons Thugs later in the fight, including jetpack ones (see above), and dodging both them and him at the same time is incredibly hard.
  • The "Vandal" Skill Point, which requires breaking all of the windows on Planet Silox. Unlike the above, this one isn't too easy, but there's still a catch. Actually three. Firstly, you aren't actually told what the windows look like (they're very tall and sky blue). Secondly, a lot of these windows require looking around at every building and certain buildings only have a few windows that can be broken among a bunch of windows that do nothing. Additionally, some of the windows are permanently missable until Challenge Mode. However, there is one thing that's nice about this particular Skill Point, and it's that your broken window percentage will not be lost if you die.
• Underused Game Mechanic: This game gives the Gravity Boots the ability to target and leap to different magnetic surfaces. You really only need to do this during the tutorial level and the final boss.
• Vindicated by History: While still not considered an incredible game, Into the Nexus has steadily gained a more positive reception in the years since it initially released. This is due in large part to the tone and writing of the first game's reimagining being divisive among fans (who in turn became more forgiving of this game's shortcomings), though the announcement of Rift Apart certainly helped as well as it being a direct sequel allowed Nexus to lose the burden of being the last game in the original continuity. Tellingly when the PlayStation 3's online store was slated to be shut down back in 2021, this was the only one of the console's six Ratchet & Clank games (not counting remasters) to have its physical copies surge in price as people tried to get their hands on them.