Just finished it yesterday with 99%. It's a fun game and I've been playing Ratchet since the original, and most of the games in the series.
I liked the gunplay a lot but it definitely got a little bit repetitive at a certain point. The game itself looks beautiful but eventually your eyes get used to it, and then it's a question of "am I still having fun?"
Overall I really enjoyed the experience, although the zooming in of the camera can make it very tricky, especially in the Battleplex where enemies spawn behind you and then wreck you. I still can't beat the low-gravity challenge as there are just too many darn enemies shooting things at you, from behind where you can't even see the projectiles incoming. I just said "screw it" and went and beat the final boss with the difficulty turned down a tad.
One of the higher points of the game was zipping around the level that's out in the desert - that was a ton of fun. Anything in Ratchet where you get to move fast is extremely satisfying to play, and the controls lend themselves to very fast gameplay, which I enjoy.
Same thing can be said about riding around on the snails, but there were a lot of times where I just wanted to get back to the ship and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to do so. Ultimately I would grab a snail (which depending on the respawn point was a huge pain in the ass) and try to find a ramp around the ship so that I could get out of the water. Of course, by crashing the snail into the side of a floating island, I'd fall into the darn water and thus get location-reset across the map all over again. That was actually extremely annoying.
Why didn't they just add a shortcut to jump back to your ship?
I really enjoyed Clank's little puzzle sections, although they never really got too challenging. The strategy was always "do whatever it takes to get all the balls", then "put them in the right spot". I love this style of Lemmings-type gameplay, I just thought they could have done a bit more with it.
The section where you kill all the viruses with the little robot shooter were... fine at best, boring at worst. You just hold down the right trigger to fire, find the pads, and press left trigger once the virus is vulnerable, requiring zero skill or strategy. Felt a lot like padding.
I recently played Ratchet 2016 and had an equal amount of fun. Did I like Rift Apart more than Ratchet 2016? Hard to say. I think Rift Apart is a great game, but the word "brilliant" gets thrown around far too often these days. I ran into quite a few technical glitches of falling through floors, getting stuck in the environment, enemies falling into no-man's-land which then I could not defeat, meaning the cutscene triggers didn't get tripped, so I had to do it all over again, and of course the aforementioned "how in god's name do I get back to the ship?" that sort of thing. Bugs don't really bother me though, so this is more me saying that I didn't find it "brilliant", just an enjoyable way to spend some time.
The integration with the DualSense was really nice. Again, you do forget about it after a while, which is actually kinda proof that they did a great job implementing the feature in my opinion. It's not SUPPOSED to be this super obnoxious thing that constantly reminds you of it's existence - it's an enhancement to the gameplay, and it did just that. The small footsteps that would change depending on the surface you were walking on, the ultra-satisfying SMACK feeling when you launch electrical blasts or fire your machine gun or rocket launcher, the gentle movements to go along with the pitter-patter of raindrops, all really, really cool.
Overall, I'm really happy with this purchase and I do want to go back and try this "challenge mode" new game+ thing. I do plan on getting a platinum (I never cared about this before, I'm not one of those gamers) because I like the collecting in this game and it's just fun minute-to-minute. Frustrations aside, this was a solid experience that I recommend to long-time players of the franchise, but especially to the Ratchet & Clank uninitiated.
