Spyro: Season of Ice is the first Spyro game not developed by Insomniac Games and to appear on the Game Boy Advance. Unlike the Playstation series, Seasons of Ice has the player controlling Spyro through an isometric overhead camera. However, all of Spyro's skills are still available to use, including his flame breath and glide. And the flying bonus levels make use of the Mode 7 technology in order to create the 3D like perspective.
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My first Spyro game lol
Like Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, Season of Ice's pre-rendered sprites look really good. It controls fairly well, too. And I can commend the game for at least having more levels and content than Enter the Dragonfly.
The most obnoxious thing about the game, though, is that world states are completely reset after dying. With the exception of enemies not respawning or certain objectives like Lighthouses not turning off, that means any Jack-o-Lanterns or Sandcastles you've tried to destroy to save a Fairy completely reset. Any NPCs you've already talked to will repeat their dialogue boxes if you get too close, as well.
Fairies also only function like single-use Checkpoint Crates in Crash rather than checkpoint flags you can repeatedly return to. Once you save a Fairy, that's your checkpoint area now, and if you die, you return there. As far as I know, you can't interact with a different Fairy to set a new checkpoint for yourself, which makes backtracking annoying.
I'll come back to this later, I just don't think it's worth my time right now.
The most obnoxious thing about the game, though, is that world states are completely reset after dying. With the exception of enemies not respawning or certain objectives like Lighthouses not turning off, that means any Jack-o-Lanterns or Sandcastles you've tried to destroy to save a Fairy completely reset. Any NPCs you've already talked to will repeat their dialogue boxes if you get too close, as well.
Fairies also only function like single-use Checkpoint Crates in Crash rather than checkpoint flags you can repeatedly return to. Once you save a Fairy, that's your checkpoint area now, and if you die, you return there. As far as I know, you can't interact with a different Fairy to set a new checkpoint for yourself, which makes backtracking annoying.
I'll come back to this later, I just don't think it's worth my time right now.
I hate to say it, but this was just terribly boring.
Season of Ice was the first attempt to bring Spyro to the gameboy advance, and in terms of gameplay, it worked. You collect gems, fight enemies and explore worlds by gliding all over the place. This is all there, and at times it's just as addictive as the console games.
However there's just so many things I cannot stand about this game, Firstly, the isometric perspective. I get why it's like this, but I died so many times due to confusing level structures and layering in a game where they want you to glide and charge everywhere. You can't see enough of the screen to see what's coming when the charge is so fast and your view is so crunched. What this leads to is constantly stopping, standing still and panning the camera, and then finally making the jump. It's a huge pace killer and flies in the face of the fast paced platforming Spyro is known for.
The levels are also huge and very confusing, they try and give each level distinct floors so you know where you can land, but all this does it make it hard to remember where you are when everything looks the same. When you complete any objective, the game loves to warp you away to where you collect the reward instead of just bringing it to you, and this always confused me massively when there's no map.
Outside of the main gameplay, the attempt at speedway levels are straight up atrocious and the top down Sparx shooter missions were passable.
It looks pretty good for the system and the music is very Spyro... it's just not fun, it's annoying. I understand this was. likely a hard transition to make, but this game doesn't stick the landing - 4/10
However there's just so many things I cannot stand about this game, Firstly, the isometric perspective. I get why it's like this, but I died so many times due to confusing level structures and layering in a game where they want you to glide and charge everywhere. You can't see enough of the screen to see what's coming when the charge is so fast and your view is so crunched. What this leads to is constantly stopping, standing still and panning the camera, and then finally making the jump. It's a huge pace killer and flies in the face of the fast paced platforming Spyro is known for.
The levels are also huge and very confusing, they try and give each level distinct floors so you know where you can land, but all this does it make it hard to remember where you are when everything looks the same. When you complete any objective, the game loves to warp you away to where you collect the reward instead of just bringing it to you, and this always confused me massively when there's no map.
Outside of the main gameplay, the attempt at speedway levels are straight up atrocious and the top down Sparx shooter missions were passable.
It looks pretty good for the system and the music is very Spyro... it's just not fun, it's annoying. I understand this was. likely a hard transition to make, but this game doesn't stick the landing - 4/10
played it a ton since I was a kid but man it sucked
I first met Spyro in Year of the Dragonfly, but the GBA "Season" games were the ones I first played through. I definitely played through Season of Fire first, then I... at least started Season of Ice? I genuinely can't remember if I beat Season of Ice as a kid. But hey, I did beat it now. 100%, too, more or less.
Spyro is a hard thing to translate into 2D, even moreso than a lot of your 3D platformer mascots of the era. Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot? You can largely replicate their whole thing. Spyro? Well, that's a harder ask.
I think what they came up with - an isometric platformer with an emphasis on running around and flying across gaps - works well enough. Definitely not my preferred mode to play, as the game ends up asking for some leaps of faith every now and again, but it's generally fair with its challenges. Season of Ice generally focuses on the more exploration-based missions from Ripto's Rage/Year of the Dragon than the bigger mechanical missions, so it works out okay. Those thieves are kind of a good showcase why Season of Ice shouldn't be mechanics-driven.
One thing I didn't really appreciate before is how much of an attempt there is to maintain continuity with Year of the Dragon. There's obvious stuff like the presence of Rhynocs (who start their march into inexplicable relevance here) and the core hero friend group being Spyro/Sparx/Hunter/Bianca. But you have deeper cuts as well, like "Hummingbird Fort" being a nod to Sgt. Byrd's backstory (complete with the Hummingbirds all being French), or "Roman City" seeming to take place in Year of the Dragon's "Sunny Villa". Honestly a bit of a nice treat; if I'd been more aware of Spyro lore as a kid, I would've gotten a ton out of all that.
Weirdly, with its limited focus on Spyro and Sparx as the only playable characters, this is perhaps the closest Spyro as a series ever returned to the purity of form of the original title. The only real distractions are the Sparx shmup stages (which, weirdly, may have been one of my first forays into the genre? They're all right) and the Speedway stages. The GBA couldn't possibly replicate the Speedways as they existed on console, so here they're basically Space Harrier-style SHMUPs. They're a'ight, though I don't know what the hell is going on with some of the enemies. Also, while it's cool that the Speedway stages have a time travel motif, what the hell is the "Aqua Age"?
Actually, that Space Age Speedway kinda screwed me over. The palette it uses to differentiate between Green and Yellow enemies is too similar for my colorblindness to distinguish. You need to hit the Yellows to extend your time, while the Greens are just fodder. I'd managed every other Speedway to that point, but no matter how many times I attempted it, I just couldn't get the Hard fairy. I confess I eventually gave up and - since you normally need every fairy in the game to get to the final boss - used a code to cheat my way in. I made up for it by using a glitch to collect two extra gems, so my save file still counted me as having cleared 100.0% of the game. Hopefully that's of some consolation to poor Micki the Fairy?
I owe Season of Flame a revisit to see how well it holds up. I definitely liked it better as a kid, since you get multiple breath types in that game, but who knows? Maybe this'll be another case where I prefer the original's mechanical purity of form on revisit.
Spyro is a hard thing to translate into 2D, even moreso than a lot of your 3D platformer mascots of the era. Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot? You can largely replicate their whole thing. Spyro? Well, that's a harder ask.
I think what they came up with - an isometric platformer with an emphasis on running around and flying across gaps - works well enough. Definitely not my preferred mode to play, as the game ends up asking for some leaps of faith every now and again, but it's generally fair with its challenges. Season of Ice generally focuses on the more exploration-based missions from Ripto's Rage/Year of the Dragon than the bigger mechanical missions, so it works out okay. Those thieves are kind of a good showcase why Season of Ice shouldn't be mechanics-driven.
One thing I didn't really appreciate before is how much of an attempt there is to maintain continuity with Year of the Dragon. There's obvious stuff like the presence of Rhynocs (who start their march into inexplicable relevance here) and the core hero friend group being Spyro/Sparx/Hunter/Bianca. But you have deeper cuts as well, like "Hummingbird Fort" being a nod to Sgt. Byrd's backstory (complete with the Hummingbirds all being French), or "Roman City" seeming to take place in Year of the Dragon's "Sunny Villa". Honestly a bit of a nice treat; if I'd been more aware of Spyro lore as a kid, I would've gotten a ton out of all that.
Weirdly, with its limited focus on Spyro and Sparx as the only playable characters, this is perhaps the closest Spyro as a series ever returned to the purity of form of the original title. The only real distractions are the Sparx shmup stages (which, weirdly, may have been one of my first forays into the genre? They're all right) and the Speedway stages. The GBA couldn't possibly replicate the Speedways as they existed on console, so here they're basically Space Harrier-style SHMUPs. They're a'ight, though I don't know what the hell is going on with some of the enemies. Also, while it's cool that the Speedway stages have a time travel motif, what the hell is the "Aqua Age"?
Actually, that Space Age Speedway kinda screwed me over. The palette it uses to differentiate between Green and Yellow enemies is too similar for my colorblindness to distinguish. You need to hit the Yellows to extend your time, while the Greens are just fodder. I'd managed every other Speedway to that point, but no matter how many times I attempted it, I just couldn't get the Hard fairy. I confess I eventually gave up and - since you normally need every fairy in the game to get to the final boss - used a code to cheat my way in. I made up for it by using a glitch to collect two extra gems, so my save file still counted me as having cleared 100.0% of the game. Hopefully that's of some consolation to poor Micki the Fairy?
I owe Season of Flame a revisit to see how well it holds up. I definitely liked it better as a kid, since you get multiple breath types in that game, but who knows? Maybe this'll be another case where I prefer the original's mechanical purity of form on revisit.