Going Commando was an okay game, but I still couldn't help but feel disappointed with it. I felt like for every step forward it took, it took just as many backwards. Up Your Arsenal, however, is the best of both worlds. This game combines everything I loved about the first two games (sometimes even improving those aspects), it completely ditches the things I hated, and still manages to feel fresh and new.

The RPG mechanics of the weapon levelling system has been completely overhauled and improved. As you use weapons, they'll gain XP and continue to evolve up to a maximum of 5 levels as opposed to just once. I had an issue throughout Going Commando where I felt more inclined to use combat encounters as an excuse to level up unused weapons instead of actually using what was best for a situation... not that it mattered much, because weapons often felt EXTREMELY weak by endgame. Here, weapons continuously levelling up through play meant I was still cycling weapons and trying to level grind them, but I didn't have to stow a good weapon away for the rest of the game just because I maxed it out before the game really started. The strength of these weapons is also bumped up considerably. I found that if ever I was struggling to kill an enemy with a weapon, there was something else that did the job better than whatever I was trying to use.

The weapon variety is very impressive as well. Some gadgets or weapons were consolidated into each other, like the Dynamo and Swingshot into the Hypershot, and the Annihilator gaining Bouncer-like qualities when you level it up before you get the real thing later on. This helps reduce the amount of junk you have to fill your weapon wheel up with. Some gadgets are severely underused, like the Tyrrha-guise, but the Hologuise was also a gadget you only used a handful of times in the first game. The Infector was the only weapon I tried out in VR and went "I'm not wasting my Bolts on this". Even the lesser weapons

I said in my Going Commando review that I liked how there was a save file bonus for playing the first game on the same Memory Card, but that the weapons you get were useless after the first few planets and not worth using. In this game, there's a really funny payoff to having save data for both games on your console. You can get free weapons from the second game with data from Going Commando, which made slogging through the last half of the game so worth it. Thank GOD the Lava Gun isn't trash anymore!! The Plasma Coil is also especially good against Nefarious' robot soldiers. The returning weapons also evolve, unlike GC!!!

And for having save data from the first game, you can get your employee discount from Gadgetron that finally kicks in 2 years after the first game! Which is good because Ratchet & Clank's Bolt economy got hit with some CRAZY inflation! You earn more Bolts, even ignoring minigames, and everything costs more as a result. That said, I still felt like the economy in this game was handled FAR better than Going Commando.

Maybe in part due to my employee discount cutting the cost of weapons down by 10%, but I felt rewarded for being conservative in my spending habits. I was able to buy just about everything before the end of the game. At the same time, I struggled to afford things I REALLY wanted right away, and had to come back long after I had unlocked something. I'm just glad I didn't have to sit and grind like crazy to afford anything like I did for Going Commando. Heck, the ship upgrade station has been completely changed to a purely cosmetic "throw your spare Bolts away" computer screen. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that you don't have to REPURCHASE your cosmetic upgrades once you've bought them already, unlike Going Commando!

The plot was really fun, btw, the best of the series so far (though there's only two other games to judge at this point). Ratchet & Clank 1 established the series tone as a nice middle ground between "interesting storyline" and "zany humor with biting satire". Going Commando tipped the needle a little too far in the latter direction, but Up Your Arsenal moves the needle back to the center where it belongs. It perfectly encapsulates what I love about this series as a brand new fan. It is equal parts funny, zany, raunchy, satirical, and dramatic. The Ratchet series has already hit its peak for me, but I hope the other games are still good from here on out.

Of the three "main antagonists" so far, I thought Drek was good, but I was not surprised to find out Fizzwidget being Qwark in disguise was a last minute addition to Going Commando because the developers just liked Qwark. That twist singlehandedly defeated the entire point of the messages the story was conveying, which already wasn't a particularly interesting plotline to begin with. Nefarious is such an entertaining villain, though, and had the most consistently good character animation in the whole game. He's arguably the definitive Ratchet & Clank antagonist to me, but I've heard fans eventually got annoyed at his constant reappearances in the future. I'll judge those when I get to them. Even if the plot sucked, Nefarious would've saved it from being completely awful.

The boss fights later on were no joke, either. I LOVE Courtney Gears and her boss fight, and needing to beat Nefarious without any checkpoints all in one go was really tense. My only criticism is that the last part of the fight was very unnecessary and mindless, just kinda strafing left and right and holding R1 to fire missiles at it until it falls over. It ruined the ending of what I otherwise thought was a consistently great game.

The game felt way shorter than the other two, but I'm glad it was. It never overstayed its welcome. I'm sure the single player mode's length was no thanks because of the introduction of a multiplayer mode! I was surprised to hear that Killzone was "Sony's answer to Halo" when so much of Halo's DNA can be found in the Galactic Rangers missions, and carries over into Multiplayer as well. I'm excited to play on community servers for years to come, because this is easily one of my favorite games on the PlayStation 2.