darkknight109 posted...
Honestly, this.
Jak and Daxter was the most quixotic and disorganized series I think I've ever played. Which is not to say it was bad, it was just... chaotic?
Like, the first game was a competent collectathon 3D platformer in the Banjo Kazooie/Mario 64/Spyro vein. OK, cool - I didn't think it was amazing, but it was good enough to hook me and have me yearning for more. Then the sequel came along and they said, "Nope, fuck that noise, we makin' PG-13 GTA3 now!". I found the sudden tonal shift to be both jarring and not well handled (Jak going from a heroic mute to an edgelord was just... so bad). It really felt like Naughty Dog wanted to make a more mature title rather than a Jak and Daxter sequel, so they just put the J&D skin overtop of the game they actually wanted to make and it just... didn't work. Like, if you want to do a GTA-style open world game, fine, but make a new IP for it in that case. Again, the game itself was competent and I had a reasonable amount of fun playing it, but it was just a weird title overall.
I don't remember much of the third game. I recall it being kind of bland and not really delivering on any of the story hooks the previous games had set up (and the truth behind the Precursors was the most random-ass shit I think I've ever seen out of a game plot that was still taking itself mostly seriously). It kind of killed any lingering interest I had in the series and I have no desire to ever go back to it again.
I think one of the things I like the most about the Jak series is that regardless of the fact that some of the dialogue was cringy and edgerlord-ish, at the end of the day, it had a very interesting, engaging, and dare I say unique story. One of the biggest problems with the first game is that the story was pretty bland and basic. Not a ton going on.
But especially for early-mid lifecycle PS2 games, Jak 2 and Jak 3 had well-written stories with fantastically animated cutscenes compared to most anything else at the time, especially platform games. On top of that, I found the gameplay and missions of the 2nd and 3rd games more fun and varied than the first one.
So while I can get that you may have preferred the style of the first game, I feel like you're being a little bit too harsh on dismissing the other two just based off of the fact that you preferred the way the first game was presented.