Let me start by saying I only ever played the original Jak and Daxter until recently. I loved it a decade ago, and I enjoyed replaying it on my vita the last couple of weeks.

I never really got the chance to play the rest of the trilogy because I was stuck in a desert somewhere in the Middle East when Jak 2 and 3 came out. I always knew I would play them one day and the HD remake collection was my golden opportunity. Add to that, I've been hearing all these wonderful things on the forums over the years about how Jak 2 was the greatest in the trilogy for being dark, revenge game with an open world... so it goes without saying I was actually pretty excited to jump back in to the franchise.

I made a terrible mistake going into this game with high hopes. See, I was under the impression that this was going to be another platformer. You know with hidden collectible in an explorable, slightly bigger world. I thought I was going to search every nook and cranny in a variety of environments that were seamlessly connected.

Yeah I know I'm probably way late too the party to share my opinion on a 10 year old game, but I felt it necessary because of how flawed it is. First the distances you have to travel to progress in the game are just painful. I appreciate Naughty Dog trying to make an extremely large open world game but it just ended up being a  nuisance between you and your objective because the open world has nothing to offer. It works in Grand Theft Auto because you have the option to fool around, find collectables and do side missions, etc.

Second, and this would probably be the the number one rebuttal to my first criticism, the vehicles. "But hatmoza you haz teh vehicles!" Listen. I have played many games with terrible controls in my time. But the vehicles in Jak 2 take the fucking cake. Aside from the painful controls, you have the option to hover close to the ground or above the ground. When you travel close to the ground, you spend 90% of the time running over pedestrians with a high risk of hitting a patrol officer (another issue I'll get to later). When you hover above the ground there's absolutely no way you can drive your vehicle without slamming into oncoming traffic every 5 seconds, which adds more clunkiness to the already clunky driving controls.

Well crap I have to rush this now since I have to go.

Last patrols. The game is pretty much over once you alert security because the AI is mentally challenged. They respawn until you eventually die.

I'm only like five hours into the game and I'm bored to bits. The only time I have fun is when I'm outside the town in a platformy-ish type environment. I'm gonna try to give this game another chance.

Does the game get better?

Idk I liked it, except for that one race in the story that is a huge pain in the ass, anyone that beat the game will know what I'm talking about.

Agreed. Although the driving becomes less annoying as soon as you get the hang of it, the missions also get more difficult, which together with clunky shooter controls and very unforgiven (barely non-existing) checkpoints deliver a good portion of frustration also. It does have its good moments and I managed to finish it, but it doesn't qualify as a good game by any means for me.

The 3rd one plays much more like the 2nd one, but it's difficulty is more forgiving and it has more variety in its missions. It's still worse than the 1st one but I would give it a try even if you give up Jak 2.

LOL. Agreed. I rented the hd collection and beat and enjoyed Jak 1 but couldn't play that piece of junk sequel. God what a change. It was barely the same franchise anymore.

Lies

You hear that Jak 2 was the "greatest" in the series? From who? It couldn't have been a majority

Jak 2 is not a horrible game but when you compare it to Jak 1 you have like 2 games that are CRAZY different.

First time I've played any Jak and Daxter was on the PS3's HD collection and I loved the original. Went to Jak 2 right afterwards and I hated it. I didn't get to where you get guns or anything in the game. I got a mission or two into when you first join the resistance.

The problem with Jak 2 is that it's so monotonous and there's really no direction. Where you accept your next mission is as far as you can get from the exit/entrance so each mission is five minutes to walk there and back, then you go outside and you have no idea what you're really looking for so random wandering, until you find the item lying in the middle of nowhere. No map on outside areas to say, hey, go here and grab this.

I quit and haven't went back.  I don't know if I'll ever play three because I have no plans on playing through the rest of the second.

Jak 2 is definitely the hated one, but I still think it is a very good game

The driving just takes time to get a hang of, once you get a hang of it, it is quite fun and a bit rewarding as you weave through everything at full speed

When I played it I couldn't finish it, but really didn't find it too bad when I played it through recently, just need to go and do more of the side stuff to get my platinum

Having said all that, I must admit that 1 and 3 are far better games

I gave up on it on ps2, but completed both 2 and 3 in the HD collection. Maybe I got better at gaming, since this time around it seemed a lot easier, and the flying cars were not that bad. I didn't have trouble with the racing, years of playing Wipeout probably helped.
Some sections were still extremely frustrating though, near impossible turret sections and escaping being trapped in a corner of the map where all the shacks are sitting in the water.

It does get better, but it also gets worse...

Jak 3 has an even bigger focus on cars and guns, it feels like the development team didn't enjoy making platformers anymore.

Yeh I finished the first one and had mixed feelings about the 2nd one. im about 3 hours in and havent touched it in about a year....Dunno if ill go back.

I finished it out of dogged stubbornness, but I didn't really enjoy it. And I too loved the first. I couldn't even work up the masochism to play the 3rd. Still don't know the big reveal about the Precursors ...

Then again, having Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper series available to play instead didn't help the Jak sequels either, as they were awesome!

My opinion? Your precious gaming hours could be spent somewhere much more enjoyable.