The original Spyro was an interesting game in that back when I played it 11 years ago, I didn't think much of it due to rather primative it can feel compared to other platformers and games. I can to appreciate it for how relaxing and tranquil it was. I'm jumping to Spyro 3 instead of doing a Spyro 2 review first and to put it simpily, Spyro 2's means of progression can be obtuse while also being fiendish in terms of how much time it demands out of the player to get to the final boss. On top of the said final boss being too challenging that the grind for orbs sucks the excitement out of fighting him. Spyro 3 keeps everything good about 2 while fixing the progression issues and adding in new characters.
Everything good about Spyro 3 can also be said about 2. Controls feels tighter and refined. Spyro's speed when turning while in his run animation feels much more fluid, snappy and responsive. Gliding feels tighter and the quick second few seconds of air time after a successful one when pressing the triangle is much more reliable to pull off.
Instead of going to one big hub world with smaller levels. The smaller levels have their own standalone story told in that specific level giving the vibe of you going through an episodic show when each larger hub. One big point to Year of the Dragon's favor is that when beating the smaller level, it remembers you beat it instead of doing the level's story all over again after getting through it once.
Here comes the biggest improvement over Spyro 2 and the first game by extension: the means of progression is very straightforward. In Spyro 3, all you collect are Dragon Eggs to unlock levels and gems to unlock new paths in those levels. So now Spyro 1 of collecting dragons, then eggs and then gems and especially 2's unlocking tailsmans than getting 8 orbs to 64 is gone, thankfully.
What also helps is that new levels will only be unlocked after collecting a certain amount of Dragon Eggs so you are always encouraged to find them to progress furthur into the game. This isn't a case of Spyro 2 where you get a bunch of Tailsmans and then you suddenly need green orbs since like I said earlier you need to collect Dragon Eggs to unlock more smaller levels in the various hub worlds so either way you are encouraged to get gather Dragon Eggs.
Also nice that all the moves you get from 2 carry over to 3 without unlocking them again. Nice way of keeping continuity.
With that said, you still need to collect 100 Dragon Eggs to unlock the final boss. The big issue lies that by the time you get to the 4th boss and beat him you might have around 66 eggs. That's still around 34 of them and it's a while of a lot of nothing of note happening just to get the final boss and it can still feel like grind just not nearly as much as Spyro 2's 8 orbs to 64. It helps that you can find many of them by exploring the world and the need to play the various mini games like skating aren't nessescary to beat them game.
It also helps that regular final boss against The Scorceress is easy so thanks to that, the grind won't feel as much of a waste of time since you'll by beat the game for sure once you get the 100th egg. All of the bosses in Spyro 3 are for the most part easy with the exception of Buzz but he becomes easy figure out after a point.
The grind can still expose the issues that the collectathon platformer had like if there were no progression roadblocks, you have no reason to actually collect the macguffins in question. No new ablities or resources to collect. It starts to feel like busywork.
There are new characters in Year of the Dragon. Most of them are just "fine". They don't really ruin much of anything and you don't need to engage with everything with these characters to roll credits but it can be bizarre that the most praise I can give is that they can be skipped. Shelia's fine to play as untill I have to be better at using her hop. Bentley is also fine as long I don't have to get good at using him.
I did LOVE playing as Agent 9 since the Ratchet and Clank fan in me knows that he's basically a prototype for that franchise. Thanks to the Reignited Trilogy his sections are more fun now due to them controlling like a modern shooter.
Overall, I could say Spyro 3 is my favorite in the Insomniac trilogy. It's a toss up between this and the first game. It keeps the relaxing and tranquil atmosphere of the latter without the obnoxiously obtuse progression of both that and the 2nd game.
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