Spyro the Dragon Review

When I played Spyro the Dragon 11 years ago, a large part of me felt completely underwhelmed. I always recall this particular game being remembered so fondly and I couldn't help but be like, "that's it?" Upon playing it now, I do like game more mainly due to the short length and being so light on difficulty that I consider it relaxing to play. Ultimately, Spyro the Dragon is designed to be someone's first game. It did come out in 1998 back when gaming isn't as mainstream and big as it is now. It's target demographic was children and it was the go to 3D platformer series alongside Crash Bandicot especially when that series was about to close out it's trio of platformers. This is a big reason why I had that inital lukewarm reaction I did when I originally played. If you are new to gaming, Spyro could be mind blowing but as someone who's played so many games, it can be rather vanilla. Still for what it is, Sypro is charming.

The good is that the visuals especially in the Reignited Trilogy looks great. Everything looks vibrant, cute and colorful. It felt like it was trying to mimick a classic kids cartoon or medival adventure asethetic and it does a solid job. The characters are quite expressive even it's tone is very much appealing to it's target audience. Where some older dragons would go on and on about their life story and Spyro would be like, "eh don't want to hear it".

Music also does a good job at fitting the atmosphere that the game is going for. Feeling very upbeat and energetic but also giving it's own unique vibe by not being 100% traditional fantasy music.

The story while very simplistic if not outright barebones can personifies the game as a whole a simple adventure where you don't have to think way too much on what's going on. Gnasty Gnorc might just be a plot device or an excuse to get the game going but I can't help but love him for he did what he did because he was called "ugly". It's so pure I can't help but love it.

Gameplay is interesting in that in the moment, it's mostly "fine" and due it's easy difficulty can even be relaxing. Platforming is never too demanding nor does the game ever get too hard. Enemies can be beaten by either using flame breath or charging and it only requires to do the action one time to defeat the enemy. Sometimes there might be another step added to defeat the enemy like charge into an armored enemy to have him fall to his death. Other times you make to flame breath an enemy to get on an platform for a limited but it won't go beyond this. Bosses are pretty much just scripted set pieces or chases. You will find Dragons, Eggs and Gems just by causally going through the levels and to get to the credits isn't too demanding. Add that to you can beat the game in 3 hours on your first run through, Spyro never enters into the realm of monotony because of this.

The most interesting aspect is the structure. Out of all the Spyro games even collectathon platformers by extension, Spyro is a game where you have to play a majority of the levels to get anywhere. This is very poorly communicated. For the to get 50 dragons, 5 Dragon Eggs, and 6000 gems to roll credits but the game never tells you this. You think you need to just get the Dragons but you then need to get the gems, but then you get the gems but you need the eggs but then collect dragons and gems again. This should've been told better to the player. Just tell the player to get both Dragons, Gems and Eggs instead of only collecting one for each world than changing the requirement out of nowhere. Towards the end of the game and getting to the final world, you can just jump straight to Gnasty Gnorc.

The game can have some challenge but that is due to awkward controls. The glide not being very intuititve. When you look across to a wide open gap of the level, you don't know that your glide can make it to the other side until after you do it and the furthur it is, the harder it is to tell you will make it. You could make it or die.

Running isn't the most precise due to how slow the camera is when turning Spyro as he moves. This will mainly be a challenge during the parts where you need to get the Dragon Eggs or chasing Gnasty Gnorc at the end of the game.

Challenge does sort of ramp up towards the end when the Gnorc Commandos show up and you have to kill the enemies in a certain order to get anywhere but this all happens towards the very end of the game and it's almost done by the time they show up. It can feel jarring when the rest of the game was straightforward minus the progression roadblock requirements or how the final boss later was nothing more than a scripted chase.

Overall, I get why I was initially lukewarm but I do enjoy Spyro the Dragon even if it is easy for me to criticize it. Sure, it can essentially be a "casual" game before the term was even coined but there is enough charm here to carry me through it's short length.