Heads up: This post is simply my opinion if you disagree with my opinion I have no issue with that. This post is simply me giving my thoughts on comparing my 2 favorite video game series as a child, Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper and seeing which one I believe holds up better now that I am in my 20's. For the sake of the argument I will only be focusing on the original trilogies of each because it seems unfair to compare a series with 13 games in the series and a movie vs a series with only 4 games so I will only be comparing the original trilogy's of Sly vs Ratchet and not the games that came after the original trilogy.
My opinion: When I was a kid Sly Cooper was my absolute favorite game I played and beat that game so many times I wore out the PS2 copy of all 3 games and had to wait until the remastered PS3 version the Sly Collection came out to start playing again.
Whereas with Ratchet & Clank I played the game a lot I started playing the game for the first time when I was around 8 years old, however with Ratchet & Clank I was less of a fan of it because when I was younger I absolutely could not win any of the games. Whether it was the first game, Going Commando or Up Your Arsenal there would always be a part where I could not win to complete the game. So just given that I could beat the Sly Cooper games but couldn't beat Ratchet & Clank you may think I preferred Sly Cooper and while that may have been the case well into my teens you wouldn't be one hundred percent correct now.
I was finally able to beat the 3 games about a month ago as I'm writing this and now that I have it's a lot more even now that I have. In terms of gameplay I've always preferred stealth and platform style over shooting style games so clearly Sly Cooper is still better than Ratchet & Clank in that regard however in terms of story I enjoy the story more in Ratchet than Sly. That is not to say that Sly's story isn't also great I love the character development of Sly throughout Sly 1 and then the development of Sly's friends Murray and Bentley in Sly 2 and even further development of them all in Sly 3 as well as the storyline as a whole however what really puts the Sly Cooper storyline below Ratchet & Clank is the major inconsistency in the end of Sly 2 where the story with Neyla becoming Clockwerk and the hate chip makes the story fall apart. Ratchet & Clank doesn't have a giant plothole that makes the story fall apart at any point so for story I prefer Ratchet & Clank.
The enemies particularly the main bosses I would say are also better in Ratchet & Clank as well. In Sly Cooper you have Clockwerk, Clock-La (do I need to say why Ratchet & Clank are better other than they don't have Clock-La) and Dr. M. Ratchet has Drek, The giant Protopet and Dr. Nefarious. While I will say that Clockwerk and Dr. M were great boss battles that I very much enjoyed as well as great villains overall and the Protopet boss in Ratchet & clank I wasn't a fan of I still have to say that Drek and Dr. Nefarious are two of the best video game villains of all time and both boss battle were fun as well.
So while for years I always preferred Sly Cooper until recently, if I'm looking for nostalgia I'd still prefer Sly over Ratchet and I prefer platformers and stealth games over shooting games I still have to say that the original 3 games of Ratchet & Clank are a better overall trilogy than the Sly Cooper trilogy.
If you have played these games before and want to comment feel free to do so.