YMMV / Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

• Alternative Character Interpretation: While Courtney Gears generally comes across as too gratuitously cruel, conceited, and viscerally hateful of "squishies" to qualify as a genuine freedom fighter, she seems to consider herself in that vein, and though robots in the Solana Galaxy are not shown as being victims of oppression outside her and Nefarious' imaginations, the game does offer her a little satirical affirmation. After the Biobliterator is unleashed, what is the Galactic President's response to the seemingly inevitable Unwilling Roboticisation of his entire electorate? He gets himself heavily implanted with cybernetics so that he may claim to be "half-robot" and continue to get their votes, which Word of God confirms to be a satirical dig at Bill Clinton (and by extension any politician who prioritises image and shallow appeal to a social group over meaningful support of them). Notably, when Ratchet and Clank have saved the day, stopped the Biobliterator, and the "robot vote" is no longer so desperately urgent to court, the President ditches said implants.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The final phase of the final boss, which can be fought using a hovership. The problem is all of the boss's attacks are telegraphed and are slow-moving projectiles, so they're easily avoided with the same strafing and dodging techniques you've used in previous hovership missions. Programmer Tony Garcia, who programmed the final boss phases, claims the reason for this was that so much time and effort had already been sunk into making the first phase of the boss fight work that they decided the second phase should just be an easy "coda" fight instead of overwhelming the player with yet another complex and tough fight.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: The game's turbulent production and rushed content made the staff at Insomniac Games genuinely worried that the game would be a flop, with one staffer saying it was seen as a disaster. They were completely blindsided by the game being a huge critical and commercial success: far from being a flop, Up Your Arsenal was a massive success.
• Awesome Music: More of this game's hits can be found back on the main page. As for this game, composer David Bergeaud clearly brought his A-game to the game's soundtrack with tracks like these -
  • The Starship Phoenix's theme. A very uplifting and hopeful track that plays throughout what is basically this game's main Hub Level.
  • The theme that plays as you're landing on Tyhrranosis. Considering how much of a pain the Thyrranoids have been throughout the game, getting to return the favor by launching an all-out assault on their home turf is made extremely gratifying with this track.
  • The boss theme for the Docks Area Miniboss on Daxx. How such a minor, inconsequential boss like a ship is given such an awesome theme as this is anyone's guess, but at least it's still awesome as hell anyway.
  • The theme for the first half of Obani Gemini. A very trippy, floaty (heh), synth-heavy piece that is, in its own way, quite soothing. The second half (Pollux) is no slouch, either, maintaining the same motifs as the first theme, but more intense as Ratchet fights his way to the heart of Nefarious' plans.
  • Can't forget about Courtney Gears' hit single - "Death to Squishies", a dissonantly catchy tune that is quite literally an anti-organic lifeform anthem that doesn't even try to hide its intentions. The instrumental version that plays during her boss fight is also just as catchy, too.
  • Dr. Nefarious as a Final Boss encounter wouldn't be nearly as memorable if it wasn't for the incredibly epic score that plays while fighting against him. The second phase is also just as epic for what is otherwise a much easier fight than the first phase.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The Final Boss fight against Dr. Nefarious is an awesome, intense fight. After the extreme difficulty of Drek and the pushover of the Giant Protopet, Nefarious hits the sweet spot between the two, possessing attacks that force you to stay on your toes, and won't punish you overly if you mess up. It's nice in concept as well — Nefarious might be a bumbling fool while in cutscenes, but when he's forced to fight, he's very capable of holding his own. It aces presentation, too—Nefarious cycles between solo and flunky fighting, attacks Ratchet while out of his range, and has a wide variety of attacks that can be deployed simultaneously to keep a player on their toes. The way the screen shakes when he emits energy shockwaves, on top of how he laughs like he's having the time of his life while fighting, is delightfully imposing.
  • It also applies to his Dragon, Courtney Gears, notably because of how different the atmosphere of the fight is. The setup to it, the passage through Obani Draco is already cool, basically equaling to entering something akin to artificial moon, with reproductors and sound equipment everywhere, but the fight really takes the cake. In the cutscene before, she turns Skidd into a robot and captures Ratchet, showing him how much of a sadistic monster she is. He's furious! It takes place on her singing stage, first with her dancers attacking you, then her taking on you, all happening while Death to Squishies plays.
  • The Gunship may be a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, but it's a memorable fight, pursuing the player for most of the level, and finally ending in a fight that involves both Boss Arena Urgency and Teleport Spam.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The assassination mission on Planet Aridia. With great music and an expansive environment, there are many ways to approach this level, whether it be using sniper rifle stealth or just outright going in with a destructive vehicle.
  • The Obani Draco, because of how different it is from basically any other planet in this and previous games. It looks like an artificial moon overloaded with sound equipment and even has an enormous disco ball at one point, which you enter. Then the location is topped off with the Boss Battle with Courtney Gears right after her Moral Event Horizon.
  • The Thran Asteroid Belt. The gloomy winter atmosphere is undeniably great, and it has some of the best level design in the game, loads of oppurtunities to blow stuff up, and a fun Clank segment to top it all off.
  • Planet Koros is loaded to the brim with high-leveled enemies. While this would make it border on That One Level, consistently upgrading your weapons throughout the game makes you more than capable of ripping holes through Nefarious's army, which is immensely satisfying. Also, damn near everything in this level can be broken, which makes it a prime candidate for quickly grinding bolts in order to purchase weapons before the final level.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • For those who think Qwark got off too easy in the first two games, getting to fight him personally with your weapons at the beginning of this game totally counts as this.
  • Also, the battle with Courtney Gears. She tricked Clank into letting her guest-star in his show, and captures him right after filming, leaving a decoy behind to lure Ratchet to the Dreadnaught Leviathan. But then she abducts Skidd, and turns him into a robot, her Moral Event Horizon. And then when Ratchet finds out, he's captured too, and realizes she's a pure sadist and sociopath. Fighting and killing her will bring a major satisfaction for players.
  • If you don't like the Hacker sections, being able to make your own in the Insomniac Museum may be a nice change of pace. Go ahead, make one where you only need 1 green piece to finish. Or make one where green pieces appear 10 times as often as red ones.
• Complete Monster: Courtney Gears, pop sensation of the Solana Galaxy, doubles as The Dragon to Dr. Nefarious and is the one carrying out his goal of destroying all organic life in the galaxy. Courtney Gears operates Nefarious's Biobliterator—a device that subjects any organic to Unwilling Roboticisation, reducing them to mindless murder-bots—and tests it out on Skidd. Not only intending to use the Biobliterator on a much larger population, Courtney turns her latest hit into a sensation to encourage her loyal fans to kill any "squishies" that Nefarious doesn't convert with the Biobliterator.
• Contested Sequel: While in its initial release it was near unanimously acclaimed as an Even Better Sequel to the already beloved Going Commando and still has a similar reputation today, there are some who argue that for all of its merits, the game is a major step down from the previous two games, often for the same reasons that the game is beloved—namely, streamlining the main gameplay to the point to where the platforming is almost nil compared to the combat, the blatant amount of development corner cutting due to the overly linear or just generic level designs, very repetitive enemy roster, and shorter and easier length of the single player campaign due to the focus on the added multiplayer mode. The story, while still well loved, is likewise contested due to its less cohesive feel.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Thyrranoid Turret Stations encountered during the Galactic Ranger missions. On the Hovership, they're actually not to bad to deal with, if at all. On the ground, though? Annoyingly difficult by comparison due to the way they fire their missiles at you; initially going for a slow arc before suddenly dropping on Ratchet's immediate vicinity before you get the chance to react. Yes, just like the Y.E.T.Is, so too did this get a Snowbeast Award over at Insomniac Games. Comparatively though, they're nowhere near as frustrating due to their rarity as well as the fact that they're, in the grand scheme of things, only encountered in completely optional missions that you can skip entirely.
  • The Four-Eyed Tyhrranoid Captains. They're essentially the Blarg Commandos from the first game, but with a much quicker, more long-reaching blaster that is liable to catch you by surprise. Fortunately, they're very susceptible to the game's resident Game Breakers, the Bouncer and Rift Inducer, and go down quickly if you're quick enough to get the drop on them first.
• Disappointing Last Level: After the crazy fun Koros, the game caps off with the rather underwhelming Mylon, which is a rather short and straightforward level that consists of a couple Tyhrra-Guise segments and a basic Reflector puzzle, with a few enemy segments sandwiched in. While tough, it's not particularly inspired in design compared to the rest of the game, and the enemy lineup is nowhere as action packed or overwhelming as Sasha makes it out to be on Koros. Fortunately, it caps off with a truly awesome final boss as a consolation prize.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Courtney Gears became a popular minor character of the franchise, earning a few cameos in subsequent games. Her music video and her looks help.
  • The Galactic Rangers. Not only are they some of the few characters that give Ratchet proper appreciation for his work, they promise to pay him back for all his help. They make good on that promise throughout the game by giving Ratchet several valuable gadgets, and ultimately show up during the final boss battle to take out a good number of Nefarious's mooks alongside the duo.
• Even Better Sequel: UYA takes Going Commando, trims the fat, and refines the heck out of everything else. Add the surprisingly good multiplayer, and the result is a game that's usually regarded as the best of the series. The only general complaints are how short and easy it is compared to the previous games.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In contrast to Going Commando's first-game weapons, all of the Old Save Bonus weapons in this game are extremely powerful. By extension, having an old save is this, because it allows you to get these weapons for free while normally they cost as much as 250,000 bolts apiece, meaning you can save your money for getting the other weapons and armors:
    • The Miniturret Glove launches an automated turret to attack, the turrets are powerful, target enemies on their own, are invincible, and you can have several out at once. Additionally, unlike in Going Commando, the turrets will now teleport to keep up with you, preventing them from ever being wasted. The only downside is the limited ammo, but it's so good that you'll mostly only need to use one to take out a group of enemies anyway.
    • The Lava Gun can still destroy enemies quickly, and retains its constant stream properties when it upgrades this time, meaning that it remains an excellent crowd controller.
    • The Bouncer retains this status from the previous game, despite having less ammo this time around. It can clear out a group of enemies with the initial bomb, and if another group comes in, they'll be taken out by the bomblets left behind. It also works extremely well on powerful enemies.
    • The Plasma Coil isn't too bad initially, but once it becomes the Plasma Storm, it fires an orb that zaps everything in its path. Little enemies have no chance of reaching you, and one or two more will take care of the rest with ease.
    • The Shield Charger outclasses the Holoshield in every aspect, as it surrounds you directly as opposed to putting up a stationary barrier. It can soak up a lot of damage, so stray fire isn't as threatening. Once it becomes the Tesla Barrier, it'll also zap any nearby enemies, meaning that you don't have to worry about the weak ones anymore.
  • From the new weapons, the Rift Inducer. It shoots a black hole that sucks all small to medium-sized enemies within its reach (basically most of them), including Tyhrranoid Captains who border on Demonic Spiders otherwise.
  • Then there's the series annual superweapon, the RY3NO. Anything that isn't a boss dies in one hit from its auto-lock on missiles, and each shot fires 8 missiles at once. Its also ridiculously easy to upgrade, and each upgrade ups it to 12, 14 and 16 missiles per shot while increasing the ammo capacity each time, with the final upgrade turning it into the RYNOCIRATOR, which is best described as The Zodiac from Going Commando done right—it fires a flash of light that disintegrates any mook on screen in a blinding flash of light, and it can be fired at a very rapid rate, can fire 50 shots. There are a few handicaps to it, though—it can't be accessed until Challenge Mode, its the most expensive weapon in the game at 3,000,000 bolts (2,700,000 if you have a complete save of the original Ratchet and Clank game on your memory card), its ammo is very expensive (1,000 bolts per shot) and can't be found in crates (although the Gadgetron PDA helps mitigates this, the ammo is even more expensive if you buy it that way), and it isn't particularly effective against bosses.
• Genius Programming: The game originally shipped without any method of patching it, which proved problematic for a multiplayer game. However, Insomniac managed to patch the game anyway by essentially hijacking the EULA. It must be read to be believed.
• Goddamned Bats: The Amoeboids in the sewers at Aquatos. They are everywhere in the tunnels and the bigger Amoeboids will split into smaller ones if you hit them. If enough of them are killed in quick succession (usually when leveling up weapons), the game will slow to a crawl until you leave the sewers.
• Goddamned Boss: Klunk. He is not tough, does not hit that hard, and would be pretty manageable. However, you don't have Clank, so you can't do things like long jump or glide, resulting in a classic case of Damn You, Muscle Memory!. The fight also takes place on a set of moving train platforms while the boss is fond of shockwave attacks, screwing with jump timings even more.
• Good Bad Bugs: For some reason, on planet Kerwan the boost exhaust from the Charge Boots appears as a light green instead of the normal cyan.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of the announcer's lines in Annihilation Nation is "This Lombax clearly had a rough childhood!" Considering what we learn about Lombaxes in later games...
  • Also, Angela Cross appears in the cinema audience at the end of the game in her thief disguise. She's later confirmed to be a Lombax, so there's an in-story explanation on why she just didn't appear in her normal attire.
  • Right before Ratchet faces Giant Klunk in battle, Nefarious quotes that it's a shame Ratchet wouldn't live long enough to see "the rest of his kind exterminated". While he means organic life forms in general, his words take on a different meaning today because Tachyon had already committed genocide against the Lombaxes long before the Battle of Metropolis.
  • Courtney Gears' role as a parody of Britney Spears can be a lot harder to stomach ever since the controversy surrounding the artist's conservatorship became public, seeing as the majority of jokes and remarks aimed at the character are clear Take That!s towards Spears herself.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The vid comic narrator expressing utter disbelief at the concept of "robotic pirate ghosts", which end up being the main enemies in Quest For Booty.
  • In a similar vein, Clank's utter bewilderment at Nefarious thinking he's a real secret agent rather than just an actor who plays one. The Secret Agent Clank spin-off would later take the idea of Clank being an actual secret agent superspy and run with it.
    Clank: I believe there has been a misunderstanding. Secret Agent Clank is merely a fictional character I play on the holo...
    Nefarious: LIES! SQUISHY LIIIIIIII-(fft)-"Oh Lance..."
  • Before Nefarious starts to battle Ratchet and Clank, he responds "Fine, I'll do it myself".
  • As shown in the vid comics, Qwark had once snuck himself into Nefarious' lair on Magmos while Disguised in Drag as a French Maid who delivers pizzas. Nefarious is unamused, even calling Qwark "stupid". In A Crack in Time, he does this again as "Nurse Shannon", with Nefarious reacting with a simple Eye Take.
  • Ratchet can obtain a dual-bladed lightsaber to replace his wrench via a cheat code. Some 15 years later, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order would play very similarly to Ratchet & Clank games, down to similar leads (mechanic and his Robot Buddy), levels taking place on different planets, and Ability Required to Proceed gameplay.
  • The Holostar Studios stage includes a bit where Clank needs to film a scene of Giant Clank taking down an armed Godzilla expy and a bunch of robotic mooks in a destroyable city. While it's a parody of Kaiju movies, nowadays the presence of giant robots, army vehicles, excessive property damage and lots of explosions may remind players of Michael Bay's Transformers Film Series instead.
  • Sasha being an officer in a space navy with her grey uniform and dark mid-length hair, that sends the player character on missions (often with the help of ground forces) to stop a madman bent on intergalactic genocide (and the fact that she's the daughter of a respected leader), could easily be mistaken as a furry Expy of Miranda Keyes from the two sequels of the Halo trilogy. if not for the fact that Halo 2 didn't come out at least a week after Ratchet and Clank 3, proving that it's entirely coincidental.
• Ho Yay: One of the last cutscenes of the game shows Skrunch trying to kiss Clank. The response: "Do not even think about it!"
• Hype Backlash: The game got this in The New '10s, with some arguing that its reputation as the best game in the series is undeserved and that it has many obvious flaws in hindsight, namely its generic level design (a lot of which were recycled from the games multi-player) and very repetitive enemy roster, low difficulty, relatively short length and rather uncohesive story.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Yo no. Tengo vertigo. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah." Within the speedrun community, these Spanish lines from one of the Galactic Ranger robots during the first HALO jump became a meme due to a combination of awkwardness and speedrunners formerly running the game in Spanish to save time. Since the line occurred not even a whole minute into every speedrun category for Up Your Arsenal, this came up in chat a lot.
  • With speedrunners discovering German is a bit faster than Spanish, the meme has since shifted to the Galactic Ranger's German line, "Ich hab hohenangst".
• Moral Event Horizon: Courtney Gears crossed it when it's revealed she turning Skidd into a robot. Not only all that, she's a bit too sadistic when Ratchet fights her immediately after this reveal.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Lava Gun. Its final version in the previous game wasn't liked due to losing the continuous stream that was its best attribute. Here it keeps it, maintaining its great crowd controller status for the entirety of the game.
  • To a lesser degree, the Disc Blade Gun. Some people complained about its spiritual predecessor in Going Commando, the Chopper, because Ratchet couldn't move when throwing stars. The Disc Blade Gun shoots them instead and thus doesn't have that problem.
  • The Tyhrra-Guise. Unlike the Hologuise, it allows Ratchet to jump, the movement is way faster, and while its dialogue sequences are much longer than merely waving to lower force fields, they also provide several of the game's funny moments.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Hacker. While the hacking minigames in the previous games were either quickly over or incorporated puzzles in them, the hacking minigames of this game are a chore. The idea is simple; destroy each red blob before they reach the edge of the ring, and collect about 8 to 12 green ones to progress. The issue is that the green ones take their sweet time to spawn, and most of these minigames have multiple stages, so processing through a locked door can take several minutes.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Infector. While brainwashing enemies is a neat idea, the execution is lacking. Enemies are either too tiny to justify using it or too mobile for infected ones to properly attack; Two-eyed and four-eyed Tyhrrannoids are the only real worthwhile targets, and it's worse than the wrench on bosses. Sealing the deal is that the weapon is extremely slow to upgrade, requiring far more nanomites/experience than its peers from the game's first act and twice as much as the Suck Cannon, which you can get at the same time for cheaper.
  • The Plasma Whip. It would make a suitable replacement for the wrench, dealing more damage and having a much wider range and radius, but this is dented by it inexplicably requiring ammo. Its damage doesn't just fall behind, it's never there to begin with—at V5, it still does less damage than the N60 Storm's V1 power. You would think a weapon made of burning plasma would be more threatening, but that's not the case...
  • The Holoshield Glove. On paper, it sounds good, being a deployable shield that actually heals you after you upgrade it enough. However, its small and awkward shape means it will not block as much as it should, the shields disappear without warning after taking enough damage, and the Shield Charger is superior to it on every way as it creates a shield around Ratchet and deals good damage to nearby enemies as the Tesla Barrier.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Beating the game while only using the wrench. Yes, its been done (although using the lightsaber cheat code makes it significantly easier).
• Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer:
  • While the single player campaign is generally quite well regarded, the game is also known for its surprisingly solid four-player multiplayer mode that is considered just as, if not more fun than the main game.
  • While some of the Annihilation Nation challenges are mandatory to complete, the many side challenges are extremely addicting due to being full of pure combat without being too overwhelming in difficulty. The big bolt rewards and ripe chances to farm for XP are just icing on the cake.
  • While the Qwark Vid-Comics are mandatory to complete the game, they're so damn addictive due to their simple side-scrolling nature that you'll find yourself playing them far more often than needed. That Challenge Mode offers big bolt rewards for collecting all the Qwark Tokens in them makes it even better.
• That One Achievement: The Qwark vid-comic time trial skill points can be a pain to get through, as they require precise platforming and dying doesn't restore the lost time, meaning that even one death can cost you the challenge. The worst of the bunch is the final comic, where you have to contend with rising boiling acid and some platforms that have moving purple sludge on them, meaning you might have to wait until you can safely jump on them if you don't want to get hit, which you can't really afford.
• That One Sidequest: Getting all of the Sewer Crystals on Aquatos is not hard (it's downright easy compared to the frozen hell that is Grelbin) and is totally worth the effort due to the big bolt rewards and how easy it is to farm for XP due to the sheer abundance of Amoeboids, but it can be very confusing due to the level layout and downright annoying due to some wonky game mechanics. The sewers are cramped and have very little distinct visual hallmarks to remind you where you are, forcing you to constantly pull up the map—and half of the map doesn't even show up until you get the Map-O-Matic. And while getting the Map-O-Matic makes finding all of the crystals easy, you also need the Gravity Boots to access the other half of the sewers, and since the entire maze consists of cylindrical tunnels, you can get easily disoriented by walking around them if you don't consciously try to stay in a straight line. The Charge Boots are all but useless in the lower areas due to the auto-equipping Gravity Boots cancelling them out if you step out of the water, forcing you to slog through the long tunnels at a snail's pace, and you can't turn off the Gravity Boots at all in the areas without water. And there's also the walls of goop hiding King Amoeboids that only break if you find them on the right side, often forcing you to find a long way around to reach the things.
• Tough Act to Follow: Up Your Arsenal is generally considered to be the best game in the franchise, which is why Deadlocked and Size Matters initially didn't do so well (though while Deadlocked eventually became popular in it's own right, Size Matters is hated by a lot of fans for its Narmy elements that don't always charm players).
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Giant Clank only appears once in the game for a boss fight (which can't be replayed unless you go into Challenge Mode).
  • The Warp Pad is a gadget that lets you place a marker atop certain floor pads, which you can then warp to from elsewhere using the Warp Pad's wrist component. There are two of these floor pads in the entirety of the game, which both appear in the same level, and one of the sections you can use it in can just be bypassed with the Charge Boots. The Warp Pad was originally supposed to be usable anywhere, but Insomniac quickly realized this could be a total Game-Breaker and would require extensive testing of every level to make sure it didn't create any bugs, and by then it was too late in production. So they had two choices: either cut it entirely, or heavily limit it.
• Unintentional Period Piece: One of the characters of the game, Courtney Gears, is a clear parody of Britney Spears, with the game having come out in 2004, around the time when her popularity was still fairly widespread. This is arguably downplayed by the fact that while her popularity is not at the heights it was back then, she had a Career Resurrection after a period of trouble, and remains well-known to this day, with a large fanbase to boot.

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