The writing in the sequel is definitely more ambitious and tries to tell a more interesting story from the first. It doesn't really make too many flaws, except for crap like the Errol wanting to race you instead of just flat out killing you, but again the problem comes from the tone shift in that the tone shift just turns the writing into a big revenge story. For so much of the focus to be on Jak, as a character he not only drops the ball but runs in the opposite direction. Another problem is that you spend half the game as other people's errand boys doing sidejobs such as picking up bags of money for Krew. There doesn't really feel to be any initiative on the part of the characters or story.
Some of the VAs were just horrible fits such as Thorn. The entire time he's talking in both Jak 2 and 3, I can't help but imagine Bale's Batman voice. 'I sound gruff because the writers dictated that my character is gruff'. The Baron also couldn't help but sound one-note even during his dying speech. There just isn't any variety in this area.
Now for the villains in particular. Yes, Jak 1 wasn't much better but it also didn't go that overboard either. The Baron is just one step away from kicking that Crocodog and revealing that he's responsible for every major problem in your life(although the story does go down that road anyway). ND took a more serious tone but somebody forgot to tell them that if you go a more realistic route then stuff like the villains start to matter more. Also Krew could be stand-in for Jabba the Hutt. There's also the ridiculous plot-line about Krew selling out the city which is so nonsensical and is more used to advance the plot. All the villains except for Kor, act in the most stupid manner possible.
Now for this godforsaken overworld. I don't mind crappy overworlds, hell I liked the one in No More Heroes and I like the Mako in ME1. I fucking hated this one. There are way too many pedestrians and hovercars for this to be enjoyable. It feels like I'm having to constantly dodge everytime I go some place and it just makes me wish there was a fast travel button. What makes this worse is that the amount of time you have to spent in the damn overworld. There are also some bullshit mission segments in the city such as the race with Errol where you want to strangle the developer. What makes all of this more frustrating is the floating hovercar controls. It's not fun to navigate and overall sucked all the life and enjoyment I was trying to salvage out of this game.
The missions and their environments are for the most part, forgettable and boring. There are really only a couple of acceptable ones such as the Precursor Temple and the underwater mech level but that's really it. ND throws in a bunch of setpieces but unlike Uncharted, I got nothing out of them. The forced shit camera angle also kills some of those bits as well. A lot of the design is industrial in nature and so it becomes pretty repetitive.
Then there is the lack of checkpoints. I'm sure some people liked the increased difficulty spikes, the problem is how big some of these spikes are and how long some of these missions are. The Seal in the Slums mission is absolutely ridiculous with how many enemies there are and how the controls are in general, in that you can't really dodge or move around much. There are also some missions which last close to 10-15 minutes where you have to perform them perfectly or you start from the very beginning. It gets old very fast and very annoying. It's a bullshit arbitrary way of increasing the difficulty and padding out the game time. What makes it all the more frustrating is that due to how the controls are, it sometimes feels like deaths are undeserved and you then have to redo another 10-15 minutes. Atleast with Dark Souls, it feels somewhat fair.
As I stated earlier, part of the problem is the camera. The camera in the game doesn't show all the enemies onscreen or even do a proper job of relaying the action half the time. I would be shooting my gun at some random enemy off the screen, a good portion of the time. There also would be times where the camera would be fixed such as Daxter's chase sequence where I would love to know where the hell I was heading towards. It feels like you're fighting with the camera for hours and the camera is winning.
Now for the auto-aiming gunplay. I wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't so integral to the game and the camera wasn't so bad. The lack of some sort of dodge or guard mechanism also makes this pretty frustrating as you just have to pray that you stagger or kill the enemy before he hits you. The auto-aim also can really just screw you over such as in the final boss fight where you want to focus fire on the boss but the jetpack crew get the attention because of the auto-aim. More control would have made this much less annoying.
For the vehicles, there's a whole laundry list of issues I had with them. The first is that the controls are just too floaty. Yes they're hovercars but it still feels like I'm fighting the controls. This is a major problem due to the number of races and general moving around you have to do with them. This extends to that damn hoverboard where it feels like the grind isn't really connecting other than a few visual sparks. They feel sluggish and are a nightmare to use. There is also the amount of damage that half these vehicles can take. It feels like with the hoverbike that a solid two hits will do it in. What makes matter worse is the bumpercar physics.
Yea I really didn't like this game.
