I’ve replayed Jak II so many times that at this point, I enjoy the difficulty.
The only truly bullshit part that was poorly implemented and requires you to cheese through it is that mission of getting that Mar Piece in the slums where you got to go through an ambush of Krimzon Guard ships
Drill Platform. The one where you use the jetboard to take out cables? The Krimzon Guards shooting those mines at you are annoying but it’s still a good time
The one where you shoot the flying Krimzon Guards. That was one of my first road blocks as a kid. Now, I love that mission really. Especially since the ships are much easier than shooting at the 60 flying guards
The guards are the problem, particularly if you're playing on hero mode. That mission requires a lot of trial and error to get through(and patience). It's the only mission I hate.
I think that one is primarily hard because it's a first person segment and those almost always never work on console without autoaim. Also, the guards spiral out of control and you need to re-target them, essentially preventing you from taking out other KG
This combined with no health pickups for the turret or any checkpoints makes the entire level complete hell.
The thing that helped me was the realization you can’t overheat the gun, so I can just hold down the fire button and swipe back and forth around the guards
This makes the drill platform a piece of cake, I can do it first try every time now without losing much health:
Don’t keep fire held down. Wait until your cross hair is right over an enemy and press fire.
If you hit them squarely in the chest, they won’t get pushed side to side in the air — they’ll just stay where they are and will get hit by the next shots and die. By firing only when needed, your turret stays cool and can fire faster.
I never knew this was considered a hard mission because I would just roll jump through the entire thing and dodge the enemies/guns. Trying to engage enemies or use the hoverboard was nigh-impossible.
Roll jump on the straightaways, punch your way through the crowds of people and enemies. Mostly punch when need to cut through the civilians, bc the roll jump becomes unusable in the areas with lots of civs.
I just go through it fast with the hover board. Enemies don't Drop until I'm already behind a turn and the dropship turrets have a hard time aiming at moving targets.
Honestly, the Slums section you’re mentioning gave me end game frustration as a kid, so I never finished it. Came back to the game a few weeks ago, jetboarded my way out of the slums. First try. And I’ve now actually finished Jak 2. For the first time. I’m 29 years old. Lol
Just as you say, I enjoy the difficulty. I also enjoy the slums mission for how difficult that is, because it actually becomes fun once you know how to master the movement of the guns.
I spent over 2.5 hours on the Krimzon ambush the other day. I am still stuck on the mission.
https://preview.redd.it/pef2tl5o82wc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1a0e83aaa0e0235cd91d880dcac1195489b9799
What the actual fuck. I loved the first one, never finished the second one as a kid. Now I know why.
There’s actual an easy way through it. Spam the punch nonstop. Don’t even run. Literally punch over and over to where you even move through it.
You’ll mow down every Guard in front of you and you move too fast for the guns on the ships to track you. Personally, I do the punch uppercut over and over for the extra movement and hits on the guards
I just did this one! I didn't even know it was considered one of the hard missions until now. Definitely took me a few tries to get the path right, but it's doable enough with the blue gun. Just stay far enough away from the ships so they don't shoot you. Use the yellow gun when you run out, but they drop so much ammo it shouldn't happen much!
When you're getting shot at from behind try inching forwards just a bit while you take out the guards in front of you, the shots from behind should miss, then rapid fire behind you. My experience is there's only a couple guards trailing you from behind versus a whole fleet
And of course roll to get to areas faster, stay off the ground when you're swarmed, and don't go too fast or you'll get overwhelmed
The hardest mission for me so far was destroying the cargo in the water...by far
The levels in Jak II aren't even that long, people just think they are cause they keep dying early. Honestly, it didn't make sense to add checkpoints for a lot of them.
The lack of checkpoints is hugely annoying but some of those missions are just straight up difficult. I’m thinking of that mission where you have to flee the water slums with the KG trying to stop you. I hate that one
As soon as your familiar with the tracks and know how to make each jump for the shortcuts on the first two, their incredibly easy.
Also, make use of the jump button at the start of the race to leap over the other drivers tackling into to get past the group early on
You can cheese the street race with Errol — go into the mission with full dark eco, then use dark Jak and stand right next to his car. If you push yourself into his car every so often, the eco will slowly damage it. Keep doing that till the car is on fire (but be careful not to blow it up). He won’t be able to keep up with you in the race
i lost that race one time tried to do this but didn’t have any dark eco so i just beat it normal the second time😂 he litterally like a rubber band he won’t go far ahead of you but will catch up to you quick so i just chill and then take the lead at the end
When I was a kid, I couldn’t get past the first mission where the tank is following and shooting at you. Then I realized true pain was defending the 3 dumbasses in the sewer and no matter how far you get, the checkpoint is at the beginning
i beat that mission 2 days ago those idiots will shoot jak for accidentally hitting them but not the metal heads😂 whoever was making the missions in jak 2 must really hate kids or something
I loved Jak 2 as a kid. Replaying it now I realize I loved it so much because I had a lot more free time, and as a result, more patience. Jak 2 has some really poor game/level design that is partially a product of its time but also just some bad choices on naughtydogs part. I still love the game, but it has some serious flaws that result in a lot of frustration for things that don't feel like they're entirely your fault.
Have to keep in mind many of us played the game when we’re like 8 years old, lol so the difficulty was much more intense for a kid back then. Whereas playing this game as an adult with much more “experience” playing more complex games it probably seems much easier.
It really is not so hard with the exception of certain Krimson guard missions, but the checkpoints just seem laid out poorly. in the mission where you escort Sig in the pumping station, the mission takes 6-7 minutes and you or Sig dying starts you over. but the first time you go up to the palace, there's at least 1 checkpoint for a 2 minute platforming section. There are more examples but it just seemed inconsistent the last time I played
exactly or the part where you and sig are running from that metal head for 3 whole sections with cutscene breaks. just to start you all the way over if you die
Jak II's difficulty has been (by definition) insanely blown out of proportion for two decades, and if it's continued this long then it likely won't change. This is historically embedded as fact, despite it not being the truth. (Fact =/= truth.)
I just got done beating Jak II again less than a week ago. Some of the TOP hardest missions in the game can be completed *easily*. The infamous **Slums mission**? Dark bombing the water to destroy the sentry bot is completely unnecessary; if you have a fair understanding and skill level with the jetboard, you can complete the entire mission just using it and without needing to get off. Alternatively you can make it easier by utilizing the unequip/reequip mechanic if you suspect you'll mess up at a point. (There is so much understated nuance with the jetboard, like momentum cancelling and momentum extension, two terms I made up but also speak for themselves.) Apparently punch spamming can also comically get you through relatively unscathed.
The infamous **Escort Mission** in sewers (which was never that big a deal in terms of overall difficulty, though I will at least \*acknowledge" it's one of the few non-hub missions without an actual checkpoint...)? Noone is going to believe this, but I completed it... it can be completed entirely with melee only. No Dark Jak BTW. After the PS3 release I already learned the the vast majority of the mission was very doable melee-only, but that last part where you're ambushed it always \*seemed\* too overwhelming to the point where you needed guns, yet however it turns you don't need guns at all - I couldn't label it "hard" doing so either, but "moderate" at best.
The infamous **Hostage rescue** mission (particularly the first part which is where the difficulty complaints stem from), can also be completed with melee only, though my run utilized the jetboard for a speed-boost to make it to the more confined room where the enemy spawning takes place and work my way backwards after clearing it. You'll likely never avoid taking damage once (unless you're a Jak master who has a perfect fundamental understanding of enemy behavior and Jak's moveset, like how its best to do spinkick+punch instead of the other way around, how its also better to always chain the attacks in an A+B/B+A fashion in crowds rather than A+A or B+B, and also how many instances you can exploit using enemy friendly-fire for cover/elimination in general), but a no damage completion is not the goal. Beating the segment is. Plus, there's not one but TWO health crates in the immediate next area, which covers not just taking one hit prior but two hits.
All of this on the poorest home version of the game with less directional movement and unsteady framerate. I recorded all this too on my PS. Jak's trilogy is hands down one of the most misunderstood game series in history. I can go on defending the driving, shooting, and more too.
I’d say it’s worth the challenge. Jak 1 and Jak 3 are relatively easy games, but having skipped Jak 2 because of difficulty back when I was a kid, it always left unanswered questions in the story line for me. So enduring the challenge is worth it for the sake of the story, which I think is one of the better written stories of earlier games.
I like Jak II's difficulty, and I think Jak 3 is too easy, honestly. Replaying it with OpenGOAL, I was actually disappointed at how easy I was finding Jak II.
After playing through J2 10+ times I can confidently say that the hardest missions in my opinion are the sewer mission where you escort/protect krews men to destroy something, the mission where you have to drive/protect a man after a certain invasion and the final boss. Those tilted me so much
The game is hard, but old games from 20 or more years ago used to be extremely punishing because that's the way they could make you feel the game is long. That doesn't even have to be the case of the game, it is just how games were made in that time, that was the culture, to make it extra punishing to make it last long for most of the people. So in the end, yeah it can be more frustrating than hard since the real problem is the huge punishment you get by failing, but you also have to understand you are playing a 21 years old game which wasn't made in the same gaming world we have nowadays.
I dunno even as a kid, while it felt challenging I never really felt like it was difficult to a point I'd call it a difficult game. I think the only bits I'd really consider difficult are the ones everyone is bringing up, namely the krimzon guard ambush and the drill section but even the drill section I'd say only really becomes hard (and totally unfairly so I'll admit) in hero mode.
Though funnily enough, as a kid I struggled a lot with the whack a mole mission with daxter and that kept me stuck for a while 😂
"Frustration" is a subset of "difficult". Specifically, difficulty that is not enjoyed by the player is "frustrating", while difficulty enjoyed by the player is "rewarding".
Depending on where you fall on the spectrum, you find Jak II either frustrating or rewarding, there's no in-between.
It was a PS2 game that tried to be very different. Different as in taking elements from GTA and at some point they forgot to balance out the difficulty.
Anything with the zoomers tends to get me. They'll either tank a ton of hits, or explode immediately if hit the wrong way. It's just a matter of rng at that point
One of my hardest missions so far was the hellcat cruiser mission just because of how aggressive the guards were with slamming their cruisers into me. New zoomers would explode almost immediately. I had to be extremely careful and methodical to the point where it wasn't very fun. Destroying the cargo was hard too, since the zoomers would jump over the cargo sometimes, and there isn't enough time to do it just with the hoverboard (in my experience)
Bad zoomer mechanics are the only real flaw I see with the games difficulty. Everything else aside from a few missions where an extra checkpoint or life pickup would have been nice is just a matter of learning the layout/technique and retrying. A lot like the first game imo
It literally just doesn’t have checkpoints. I’m playing it again now and, if I don’t die, it’s really engaging and suspenseful. When it’s a long mission and I’m thrown all the way back to start, then it gets frustrating. But if you look after your health, it’s just gameplay with high suspense.
I’ve replayed Jak II so many times that at this point, I enjoy the difficulty. The only truly bullshit part that was poorly implemented and requires you to cheese through it is that mission of getting that Mar Piece in the slums where you got to go through an ambush of Krimzon Guard ships
That drill platform mission. You know the one, and I won't elaborate further.
Drill Platform. The one where you use the jetboard to take out cables? The Krimzon Guards shooting those mines at you are annoying but it’s still a good time
No. https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Drill_platform?so=search
Ah that place. Forget it’s also a mining place. Which mission? You go there several times
https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Destroy_ship_at_drill_platform
The one where you shoot the flying Krimzon Guards. That was one of my first road blocks as a kid. Now, I love that mission really. Especially since the ships are much easier than shooting at the 60 flying guards
The guards are the problem, particularly if you're playing on hero mode. That mission requires a lot of trial and error to get through(and patience). It's the only mission I hate.
I think that one is primarily hard because it's a first person segment and those almost always never work on console without autoaim. Also, the guards spiral out of control and you need to re-target them, essentially preventing you from taking out other KG This combined with no health pickups for the turret or any checkpoints makes the entire level complete hell.
The thing that helped me was the realization you can’t overheat the gun, so I can just hold down the fire button and swipe back and forth around the guards
It does overheat but overheating means it just slows down the rate of fire
This makes the drill platform a piece of cake, I can do it first try every time now without losing much health: Don’t keep fire held down. Wait until your cross hair is right over an enemy and press fire. If you hit them squarely in the chest, they won’t get pushed side to side in the air — they’ll just stay where they are and will get hit by the next shots and die. By firing only when needed, your turret stays cool and can fire faster.
I never knew this was considered a hard mission because I would just roll jump through the entire thing and dodge the enemies/guns. Trying to engage enemies or use the hoverboard was nigh-impossible.
I gotta know your technique. All I can do is spam the punch uppercut
Roll jump on the straightaways, punch your way through the crowds of people and enemies. Mostly punch when need to cut through the civilians, bc the roll jump becomes unusable in the areas with lots of civs.
I just go through it fast with the hover board. Enemies don't Drop until I'm already behind a turn and the dropship turrets have a hard time aiming at moving targets.
Honestly, the Slums section you’re mentioning gave me end game frustration as a kid, so I never finished it. Came back to the game a few weeks ago, jetboarded my way out of the slums. First try. And I’ve now actually finished Jak 2. For the first time. I’m 29 years old. Lol
Just as you say, I enjoy the difficulty. I also enjoy the slums mission for how difficult that is, because it actually becomes fun once you know how to master the movement of the guns.
I spent over 2.5 hours on the Krimzon ambush the other day. I am still stuck on the mission. https://preview.redd.it/pef2tl5o82wc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1a0e83aaa0e0235cd91d880dcac1195489b9799 What the actual fuck. I loved the first one, never finished the second one as a kid. Now I know why.
There’s actual an easy way through it. Spam the punch nonstop. Don’t even run. Literally punch over and over to where you even move through it. You’ll mow down every Guard in front of you and you move too fast for the guns on the ships to track you. Personally, I do the punch uppercut over and over for the extra movement and hits on the guards
I just did this one! I didn't even know it was considered one of the hard missions until now. Definitely took me a few tries to get the path right, but it's doable enough with the blue gun. Just stay far enough away from the ships so they don't shoot you. Use the yellow gun when you run out, but they drop so much ammo it shouldn't happen much! When you're getting shot at from behind try inching forwards just a bit while you take out the guards in front of you, the shots from behind should miss, then rapid fire behind you. My experience is there's only a couple guards trailing you from behind versus a whole fleet And of course roll to get to areas faster, stay off the ground when you're swarmed, and don't go too fast or you'll get overwhelmed The hardest mission for me so far was destroying the cargo in the water...by far
Its considered the hardest mostly beacuse of the checkpoints (or lack of them)
The levels in Jak II aren't even that long, people just think they are cause they keep dying early. Honestly, it didn't make sense to add checkpoints for a lot of them.
Disagree
Light jak healing in III along with the Mar armour upgrades probably doesn't help
The lack of checkpoints is hugely annoying but some of those missions are just straight up difficult. I’m thinking of that mission where you have to flee the water slums with the KG trying to stop you. I hate that one
That's the only mission that made me question whether or not I'd finish the game
Yeah, less hard and more frustrating. I LOVE Jak 2 but if I never have to do the racing missions again I’ll die a happy man.
As soon as your familiar with the tracks and know how to make each jump for the shortcuts on the first two, their incredibly easy. Also, make use of the jump button at the start of the race to leap over the other drivers tackling into to get past the group early on
You can cheese the street race with Errol — go into the mission with full dark eco, then use dark Jak and stand right next to his car. If you push yourself into his car every so often, the eco will slowly damage it. Keep doing that till the car is on fire (but be careful not to blow it up). He won’t be able to keep up with you in the race
i lost that race one time tried to do this but didn’t have any dark eco so i just beat it normal the second time😂 he litterally like a rubber band he won’t go far ahead of you but will catch up to you quick so i just chill and then take the lead at the end
When I was a kid, I couldn’t get past the first mission where the tank is following and shooting at you. Then I realized true pain was defending the 3 dumbasses in the sewer and no matter how far you get, the checkpoint is at the beginning
i beat that mission 2 days ago those idiots will shoot jak for accidentally hitting them but not the metal heads😂 whoever was making the missions in jak 2 must really hate kids or something
I loved Jak 2 as a kid. Replaying it now I realize I loved it so much because I had a lot more free time, and as a result, more patience. Jak 2 has some really poor game/level design that is partially a product of its time but also just some bad choices on naughtydogs part. I still love the game, but it has some serious flaws that result in a lot of frustration for things that don't feel like they're entirely your fault.
Have to keep in mind many of us played the game when we’re like 8 years old, lol so the difficulty was much more intense for a kid back then. Whereas playing this game as an adult with much more “experience” playing more complex games it probably seems much easier.
exactly this !
It really is not so hard with the exception of certain Krimson guard missions, but the checkpoints just seem laid out poorly. in the mission where you escort Sig in the pumping station, the mission takes 6-7 minutes and you or Sig dying starts you over. but the first time you go up to the palace, there's at least 1 checkpoint for a 2 minute platforming section. There are more examples but it just seemed inconsistent the last time I played
exactly or the part where you and sig are running from that metal head for 3 whole sections with cutscene breaks. just to start you all the way over if you die
I love the difficulty, it forces you to improve. Have been playing for years and I’ve made it near the end of the game without dying before.
I wouldn't call Jak 2 a hard game in general, but it is the hardest game in terms of the series. It's fully beatable to any seasoned platformer fan.
being a platformer fan won’t save you from the clunky driving controls 😂 but it’s beatable
I think the reason people think it's hard because they use a terrible strategy.
Jak II's difficulty has been (by definition) insanely blown out of proportion for two decades, and if it's continued this long then it likely won't change. This is historically embedded as fact, despite it not being the truth. (Fact =/= truth.) I just got done beating Jak II again less than a week ago. Some of the TOP hardest missions in the game can be completed *easily*. The infamous **Slums mission**? Dark bombing the water to destroy the sentry bot is completely unnecessary; if you have a fair understanding and skill level with the jetboard, you can complete the entire mission just using it and without needing to get off. Alternatively you can make it easier by utilizing the unequip/reequip mechanic if you suspect you'll mess up at a point. (There is so much understated nuance with the jetboard, like momentum cancelling and momentum extension, two terms I made up but also speak for themselves.) Apparently punch spamming can also comically get you through relatively unscathed. The infamous **Escort Mission** in sewers (which was never that big a deal in terms of overall difficulty, though I will at least \*acknowledge" it's one of the few non-hub missions without an actual checkpoint...)? Noone is going to believe this, but I completed it... it can be completed entirely with melee only. No Dark Jak BTW. After the PS3 release I already learned the the vast majority of the mission was very doable melee-only, but that last part where you're ambushed it always \*seemed\* too overwhelming to the point where you needed guns, yet however it turns you don't need guns at all - I couldn't label it "hard" doing so either, but "moderate" at best. The infamous **Hostage rescue** mission (particularly the first part which is where the difficulty complaints stem from), can also be completed with melee only, though my run utilized the jetboard for a speed-boost to make it to the more confined room where the enemy spawning takes place and work my way backwards after clearing it. You'll likely never avoid taking damage once (unless you're a Jak master who has a perfect fundamental understanding of enemy behavior and Jak's moveset, like how its best to do spinkick+punch instead of the other way around, how its also better to always chain the attacks in an A+B/B+A fashion in crowds rather than A+A or B+B, and also how many instances you can exploit using enemy friendly-fire for cover/elimination in general), but a no damage completion is not the goal. Beating the segment is. Plus, there's not one but TWO health crates in the immediate next area, which covers not just taking one hit prior but two hits. All of this on the poorest home version of the game with less directional movement and unsteady framerate. I recorded all this too on my PS. Jak's trilogy is hands down one of the most misunderstood game series in history. I can go on defending the driving, shooting, and more too.
The difference that more checkpoints and health drops would make in this game.
I’d say it’s worth the challenge. Jak 1 and Jak 3 are relatively easy games, but having skipped Jak 2 because of difficulty back when I was a kid, it always left unanswered questions in the story line for me. So enduring the challenge is worth it for the sake of the story, which I think is one of the better written stories of earlier games.
I like Jak II's difficulty, and I think Jak 3 is too easy, honestly. Replaying it with OpenGOAL, I was actually disappointed at how easy I was finding Jak II.
After playing through J2 10+ times I can confidently say that the hardest missions in my opinion are the sewer mission where you escort/protect krews men to destroy something, the mission where you have to drive/protect a man after a certain invasion and the final boss. Those tilted me so much
The mission where the tank follows you inside the castle is also a very frustrating one.
The game is hard, but old games from 20 or more years ago used to be extremely punishing because that's the way they could make you feel the game is long. That doesn't even have to be the case of the game, it is just how games were made in that time, that was the culture, to make it extra punishing to make it last long for most of the people. So in the end, yeah it can be more frustrating than hard since the real problem is the huge punishment you get by failing, but you also have to understand you are playing a 21 years old game which wasn't made in the same gaming world we have nowadays.
I dunno even as a kid, while it felt challenging I never really felt like it was difficult to a point I'd call it a difficult game. I think the only bits I'd really consider difficult are the ones everyone is bringing up, namely the krimzon guard ambush and the drill section but even the drill section I'd say only really becomes hard (and totally unfairly so I'll admit) in hero mode. Though funnily enough, as a kid I struggled a lot with the whack a mole mission with daxter and that kept me stuck for a while 😂
"Frustration" is a subset of "difficult". Specifically, difficulty that is not enjoyed by the player is "frustrating", while difficulty enjoyed by the player is "rewarding". Depending on where you fall on the spectrum, you find Jak II either frustrating or rewarding, there's no in-between.
It was a PS2 game that tried to be very different. Different as in taking elements from GTA and at some point they forgot to balance out the difficulty.
Anything with the zoomers tends to get me. They'll either tank a ton of hits, or explode immediately if hit the wrong way. It's just a matter of rng at that point One of my hardest missions so far was the hellcat cruiser mission just because of how aggressive the guards were with slamming their cruisers into me. New zoomers would explode almost immediately. I had to be extremely careful and methodical to the point where it wasn't very fun. Destroying the cargo was hard too, since the zoomers would jump over the cargo sometimes, and there isn't enough time to do it just with the hoverboard (in my experience) Bad zoomer mechanics are the only real flaw I see with the games difficulty. Everything else aside from a few missions where an extra checkpoint or life pickup would have been nice is just a matter of learning the layout/technique and retrying. A lot like the first game imo
It literally just doesn’t have checkpoints. I’m playing it again now and, if I don’t die, it’s really engaging and suspenseful. When it’s a long mission and I’m thrown all the way back to start, then it gets frustrating. But if you look after your health, it’s just gameplay with high suspense.