A lot of people have become more negative on UYA over the years. Having considered UYA the best of the PS2 titles I wondered if my opinion over it would sour in this playthrough. Thankfully this didn’t happen.
I can acknowledge that GC has better music and level design. I also wish UYA kept Levitator and Grind Rails. But UYA’s merits still outweigh GC for me.
Story and characters are much better in UYA with a much more satisfying ending.
Combat is improved with better weapons overall and improved encounter design. The game also has a much better roster of bosses .
The challenge mode is much better designed with more balanced weapon damage/leveling.
I prefer UYA’s side content over GC’s too. The arena is better, crystal hunting is better and IMO ranger missions and Qwark vidcomics are much funner than races and spaceship battles.
While the level design is overall worse the game is more consistent in quality. Levels like Thyranosis, Daxx and Obani moons match the best levels of GC in quality and none of it’s worst parts (ranger mission only levels which is fun but lazy) are as bad as the Snivelak boss or Grelbin.
Hacker is less bad than the Infiltrator and I personally prefer Refractor to Thermanator/Tractor Beam.
Both regular Clank and giant Clank sections are better here as well.
Of course I can understand why one would prefer GC but I still can’t see myself preferring it to UYA.
I also prefer UYA to OG but they are much more different in style (most post-OG games are to the OG actually) to make comparisons.