Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
03 Dec 2001
All releases
07 Dec 2001 - PlayStation 2
03 Dec 2001 - PlayStation 2
28 Nov 2017 - PlayStation 4
Tags
Time to beat
Main story
Main story + extras
100% completion
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is a 2001 platform video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the Sony PlayStation 2 on December 4, 2001, as the first game of the Jak and Daxter series. The game follows the protagonist, a young teenager named Jak, as he tries to help his friend Daxter after he is transformed into an "other", a fictional hybrid of an otter and a weasel. The game offers a large range of missions, collectables and objectives, often in the form of minigames, which provide a variety of gameplay experiences, as well as puzzles and platforming stages, which are completed by the player to proceed with the story.
The opening sequence of the game features Jak and Daxter in a speedboat headed for Misty Island, an area prohibited by their watch over Samos. Upon arriving to the island, Daxter had second thoughts about straying from the village. The two perch on a large skeleton to observe a legion of lurkers crowded around two dark figures, Gol and Maia, who were commanding the lurkers to "deal harshly with anyone who strays from the village," and to search for any precursor artifacts and eco near Sandover Village.[4] After the secret observation, Jak and Daxter continue searching the island. Daxter trips on a dark eco canister which he tosses to Jak after expressing his dislike for the item, and as Jak caught the object it lit up. Shortly afterwards a bone armor lurker suddenly confronted the two, where Jak threw the dark eco canister at the lurker, killing it, but inadvertently knocked Daxter into a dark eco silo behind him. When Daxter reemerged, he was in the form of an ottsel, and upon realizing the transformation he began to panic.
| Audio | Subtitles | Interface | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japanese | ✓ | ✓ | |
| English | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Spanish (Spain) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| German | ✓ | ✓ | |
| French | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Italian | ✓ | ✓ |
Jxsse C
2
Starting with visuals it is rather enjoyable for it's time, full open world with day and night cycle on a PS2 was rare for video games at the time.
Level design is good enough, but a large amount of decently well hidden collectibles makes collecting them rather exhausting, considering that story progression is directly tied to them.
Combat is just plain bad, requiring to get close to the enemies, which for the most time will manage to scratch you and take a good chunk of health out of you, gets pretty annoying with time and unnecessary frustrating.
Characters got some charm, the easy highlight being Daxter, but the narrative itself it unmemorable with cutscenes I always just try to skip instead. Also an odd nitpick, female character models are weirdly sexualised and look odd at times, quite a different Naughty Dog back then wasn't it.
Otherwise it's a still a charmful classic, but the kind I would not play though again.
Pros:
•The level design is really good, it has a lot of variety going from tropical island, to lava to an ice fortress, feels more like a Mario game. Enemy design is unique and pretty diverse that blends really well with the environment .
•Collecting is really fun and challenging sometimes, and the platforming to get most collectables is well tought so it does not seem unfair when you can’t reach or collect something.
•Story is simple but quite charming for the PS2 era, characters are quirky and serve as mini-side quest givers in order to make the world feel more alive and animated.
•Menu is helpfull to track missing eggs or power cells, with info on them each with the requirements to get them.
Cons:
•My biggest misstake here is playing the PSVita version which has a lot to be desired, graphics are bad even comapred to original.
•Framerate a choppy 30fps a best, with mostly being mid 20`s, and the worst part are the controls that from time to time decide that a double jump is not possible even if you press the X two times immediately, and the character controls kinda tanky.
•A really fun collectathon but the performance made the experience kinda bad, dropping it 2 points instead of the deserved 9, but I learned my lesson to not play ports on PSVita.