Revisiting a Classic: Jak II, the Greatest Sequel Ever Made

By Yoyo

As you can probably tell by now, I grew up playing mainly PlayStation platformers. I’ve had every single PlayStation and Nintendo console in my household, so I experienced some of the best titles in gaming — which included Jak II, of course.

Jak and Daxter came out during the golden era of "main protag with their furry little friend". We had Ratchet and Clank, Spyro and Sparx, Sora, Donald and Goofy, etc etc. Pre-2010 was sidekick mania and if you had a game that didn't have a sidekick...well what were you even thinking!

Jak II was released in North America on Oct 14, 2003 by Naughty Dog and Mass Media. Before Naughty Dog was remastering The Last of Us seven different times, they used to make amazing games (jk I'm so excited for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet). Out of the entire series, Jak II is considered to be one of the best with the highest rating across the board from reviewers — something I agree with 100%.

My time with Jak II was spent exploring Haven City and riding his little hover bike while pretending I was a big scary man (Jak is a sweetie, don't let that exterior fool you). Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy was a very simple platformer, it had it's challenging moments but overall it was very straightforward and really good in that sense. All you do is collect precursor orbs to exchange for powercells to help turn Daxter back into a human (simple version of act 1). Jak 1 was very good with an equally amazing story. Honestly the series could've ended with Jak 1 and I would've been satisfied, but then came Jak II.

Jak II takes place right after Jak 1, they end up using ancient technology that teleports them to Haven City, a metropolitan dystopian city currently under attack. Our once silent and sweet protagonist turns into an angry and grueling weapon, rightfully so since Jak was tortured and pumped full of dark eco for two years before Daxter managed to help him escape.

It was SO cool to hear Jak have a voice and a real personality, it felt like we were finally playing as the main character. Jak II doesn't change in terms of gameplay too much, but with the addition of "Dark Jak" it gives the game that bit of edge needed to stand out from the first one.

The tone of Jak II however does a complete 180. The game is edgy but in the best non-cringe way possible and it holds up really well. The game is full on guns, brawling and dark eco transformation. In typical GTA fashion, it changed the industry and shaped a lot of what Haven City became during the making of Jak II. The game is basically Grand Theft Auto 3 but in a cyberpunk setting and that isn't a bad thing. The seamlessness of the city life helped the game standout and the added gun playstyle equaled the added difficulty...like no seriously, Jak II is so hard for no reason.

Gameplay aside, the characters you meet throughout this game are fleshed out really well. A lot of them standalone and they don't act like background characters. Each of them are important to the plot and add a bit of fun banter between our main characters. The level design outside of the city was done really well, sure the camera in the game was a bit janky but it was the PS2 era...what camera wasn't bad.

The main thing about Jak II that I love is how well it holds up in 2026. We've gotten some amazing titles from PlayStation the last three decades, yet a game from 2003 still holds up incredibly well. In order to truly understand why it's the greatest sequel ever made you have to play it and you can still play them natively on the PS5! I recommend that everyone plays at least the first three games, for some reason Sony is cursed when it comes to publishing a fourth installment so we don't talk about Jak and Daxter The Lost Frontier.

Jak II is a good game packed with great characters, a great story, fun gameplay and a moody soundtrack. If you haven't played Jak II, or any Jak and Daxter game, you should.

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