YMMV / Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Drake may be a worse person than the game wants players to believe, and sympathy for him derives mainly from him being pitted against legitimately evil people. While blatantly ignoring laws is one thing, the driving force behind the main conflict is simply Drake wanting to line his pockets with ancient treasure. "Saving the World" from an infectious zombie virus was only an afterthought in light of learning the treasure wasn't what he thought it was and was extremely dangerous. Though in fairness, Nate does try to stop Atoq from selling the treasure as a bioweapon rather than get in on the action himself, showing that even his greed has its limits.
• Angst? What Angst?: Thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness, Nate shows very little emotion when Sully, the closest thing he ever had to a father figure, is shot and seemingly killed before his eyes.
• Ass Pull: Sully survived being shot in the chest at point blank range by a thin journal in his front pocket.
• Breather Level: Especially on harder difficulties, the chapters with the zombie-like Descendants are this to some, as the enemies have no ranged attacks and aiming is more or less unnecessary when compared to the cover-based gameplay of the rest of the game. The enemies are easy to keep at bay, and despite the lower health on some difficulties, Nate can take at least one hit before being killed by his enemies.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Eddy Raja. A little bit crazy wise-cracking rival with a (slight) sense of honor? What's not to love? Some people found him more interesting than the actual main antagonist of the game.
• Good Bad Bugs: The "Skylaunch Glitch". Rolling on upwards angled surfaces and then hitting L2 at the right time can cause Nate to be launched high in the air. This can be used to skip parts of the game when speedrunning.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Nate's quips that nothing is worse than a Panamanian jail in the opening cutscene of this game. In the fourth game, we learn that his older brother Sam was (seemingly) killed when they tried to escape a jail in Panama, as far as he knew at the time.
  • The main twist of this game is that El Dorado actually contained a highly infectious parasite that turns people into zombie-like mutants. Fortunately, by the end of the game it is successfully contained to the colony. However, Naughty Dog's next franchise would take that idea and run with it.
• It Was His Sled: In the first game, the twist that Sully survives being shot by Roman early on (and that he is in fact a good guy and hasn't betrayed Drake). The fact that he's continued to be a mainstay in the sequels helped with this.
• Magnificent Bastard: Atoq Navarro is the true mastermind behind the hunt for El Dorado. Allying himself with Gabriel Roman and feigning his status as a put-upon lackey, Navarro guides Roman's and Nathan Drake's individual hunts on the hidden island towards his own goals, unknown to all. Upon finding the casket of El Dorado, Navarro tricks Roman into getting himself killed before revealing how he has played everyone to his tune, all in the hopes of selling off the virus-laden El Dorado casket as a weapon of war to the highest bidder.
• Once Original, Now Common: At the time of release, practically every one and their mother praised this game for its stellar graphics, cinematic appeal, fully playable setpieces rather than QTEs, and topnotch voice acting and storytelling. These qualities may be harder for fans of the sequels to appreciate, as each of those elements were built upon and improved, leaving the original game looking rather dated and dull by comparison.
• The Scrappy: Gabriel Roman is bar none the least popular villain in the entire series. Very few people have anything positive to say about him, with most of the discussion surrounding him (what little of it there is, that is) concerning how boring and personality-less he is, especially in comparison to his henchmen Navarro and Eddie Raja or later villains in the series. Hell, most fans seem to have trouble even remembering his name.
• Tear Jerker: Nate's reaction to finding the pitiful remains of Sir Francis Drake in the middle of an empty vault, like he had simply laid down and died, without ever having found El Dorado. He even leaves Sir Francis' ring with the body, symbolizing his crushed spirit. Of course, this is made better once we discover that Francis had actually sacrificed himself to prevent the curse of El Dorado from spreading into the world.
• That One Level:
  • The are two segments (Chapters 8 and 12, respectively) where Nate and Elena ride a jet ski that handles very poorly while being shot at by several enemies and either dodging or blowing up explosive barrels in their path that will kill them instantly if touched. In spite of this, the first one isn't so bad, due to Elena wielding a grenade launcher with unlimited ammo, and taking place on a flat, calm riverbed, making it easier to move around and find cover to pick off both the enemies and barrels. The second time though is beyond frustrating, due to having them climb up a series of rapids and falls which is constantly making the vehicle control even worse than normal, the barrels are constantly moving down the rapids and some of them can't be seen until right after you climb the top of one leading to surprise deaths, and there's very little cover making it far easier to have multiple enemies pick you off. Elena also loses her grenade launcher for a standard handgun, and while it also has unlimited ammo it takes far more shots from it and precision aiming to pick off enemies from afar as opposed to the wide-ranged one-hit kill power of the grenade launcher, giving them more time to get a lucky shot off, kill you, and force you to do the whole thing over again.
  • The levels with the Descendants in the Nazi bunker, especially if one dislikes Survival Horror. The enemies are very fast, hard to aim at, can kill Nate with 1-2 very quick melee attacks depending on difficulty, love to sneak up behind you to surprise you with said move while you're fighting one of their friends, or otherwise appear from behind corners right as you're about to turn them, you're basically stuck with a fairly weak sub-machine gun through the entire level (so no shotguns), and the level itself is quite dark and mostly lit through your Infinite Flashlight.
  • Gets even more frustrating right after, when Roman's men are fighting the creatures, since the game is otherwise a cover-based shooter, but the creatures will sneak up and kill you from the other direction while you're in cover, and waiting for them to kill each other doesn't work because fresh enemies pour in the further you progress.
  • Towards the end of the game we revisit the cathedral. This now contains six Laser Sight mooks and two or three with rocket launchers, all trying to One-Hit Kill you.
  • The finale on Navarro's cargo ship. The enemies are behind indestructible cover while the cover you are given is not. They're at a range where they can kill you almost immediately. You are not given any grenades. And through it all, Navarro himself is invincible and popping shots off at you with a one-hit kill rapid-fire shotgun, though he shoots in a very predictable pattern that is easy to avoid once you learn it.
• Waggle: The first game forces you to control the throwing distance of the grenades with the SIXAXIS function of the controller... making placing grenades quite awkward. Luckily, this was made optional in the sequels, and the remastered version on the Nathan Drake Collection removes this feature entirely so that aiming grenades is controlled by the analogue stick.