I wouldn't say R&C2 is always the place to start, even though I have a similar opinion - played the first game, thought it was good, played the second game, thought it was incredible - but I don't think I'd have found the second game so incredible if I hadn't started with the first game.
Playing the first game, then the second was one of the most pleasant surprises I've ever had in a game because I thought the first game was good enough that not a lot could be improved, and I was proved wrong when pretty much everything was leagues better. If I'd played the second game, then the first, I probably would've found the first to be kind of a let down, and much more difficult in comparison.
So basically, R&C2 is really incredibly good, but I don't think you can realise how good it is unless you've played the first one beforehand.
Great review though, I'm just rambling.
Another aging review.
I'd completely disagree with you on this one. It's still a great game, it just plays differently to its successors. I admit that I like Ratchet and Clank 2 more, but saying that most weapons in the game are useless or that Ratchet is much weaker is pure hyperbole. This immediately becomes apparent if you try a run in which you try to save as many bolts as possible, because collecting bolts is a lot slower than it needed to be, I'll give you that.
If you try such a run, you'll find that just the basic wrench is actually an incredibly powerful weapon, in heavy contrast to the later games, where it's near worthless. Using it, the Suck Cannon and the Bomb glove which you get for free, is just about good enough to get you through at least half the game, if not more. And even then, the only weapons I'd say are essential are the Devastator and the Visibomb, maybe just the Visibomb if you're good enough, and that should be enough to get you to the final boss, where you should be able to buy whatever you need.
But just because most of the weapons aren't essential doesn't mean you won't miss them. You'll miss the Pyrociter for the crowd control. You'll miss the Blaster for the range and shots the suck cannon can't make. You'll miss the decoy and mine gloves for tough enemies that are chasing you or for making your own traps. You'll miss the Tesla Claw for its ability to easily mop up pretty much anything. You'll miss the Walloper for those few short range enemies the wrench just can't kill in time (I sometimes get it as well since you never have to pay for ammo). You probably won't miss the glove of doom, though. Even I won't defend that one.
Now the lack of strafing is a bit of a problem, but IIRC, I didn't need it much the way the game was designed, and the pseudo-strafe the jetpack had covered what I needed anyway. And you can always pause to switch weapons, though I never found the real time quick select to be that much of a big deal. And I never found I needed that much more armor or health. Let's face it, the armor and health upgrades felt kind of meaningless when enemies could do more than eight squares of damage to you per hit in the sequels anyway. And I really didn't think any of the weapons actually needed an upgrade, other than maybe your missile launchers because they didn't have as much ammo as I would have liked.
Anyway, I like the first one a lot because it's simple, and doesn't have as much of the padding or grinding the future games would have. And also because the environments were prettier, I felt. But that's just me.
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It was a great game back then, but it hasn't aged well
The original Ratchet And Clank was a ground-breaking game, and will always be remembered as such. It was a big experience with great graphics and loads of weapons and gadgets to try. Sadly though, I have to admit that the first Ratchet game feels unfortunately dated nowadays. Why? Ratchet And Clank 2, of course. That game was such an immense sequel that it renders the original massively inferior, in my honest opinion. It improved everything from the first game so significantly that for me, playing R&C1 seems almost painful nowadays, despite it being an admittedly solid game.
R&C1 was a great game for its time, but I think most can agree that it suffers from unfair difficulty due to Ratchet being much weaker here. Weapons don’t upgrade, most of the weapons themselves aren’t very useful, Ratchet's health can only upgrade twice and not by much, there’s no armour, and Ratchet can’t strafe. The game doesn’t pause when you turn on the Quick Select screen either, leaving Ratchet vulnerable when you have to switch weapons. This made several levels absolutely deadly because you could almost never improve Ratchet’s capabilities and chances of success. You were stuck with what you had. Levels like Rilgar, Orxon, the Gemlik Base and Oltanis were and still are almost a chore to traverse and complete, whereas the difficult levels in R&C2 are far more doable and thus a lot more fun to tackle.
As for collecting bolts in this game, it's a slow process and is pretty underwhelming (unlike in R&C2 where it’s simple and loads of fun). Even as a person who grew up with R&C1 and loved it at the time, I still remember the dullness of having to play levels over and over again just to make enough money to be able to buy weapons like the Tesla Claw. Getting enough money to be able to buy the R.Y.N.O. is unbelievably tedious, and the weapon is almost necessary for conquering the game’s incredibly tough boss, Chairmen Drek. Though Challenge Mode allows you to buy gold weapons, there’s no denying that they aren't much fun to buy or use, unlike the weapons of RC&2, which can be upgraded and modified to your liking.
So, is R&C1 a bad game? Of course not! Its graphics, music and gameplay are still decent enough. However, would I recommend it to R&C newbies? No, because the glorious and colossally superior R&C2 is always the place to start.