lmao I'm so fucking done with Spyro. Maybe someday if someone gets to really work out a fourth game and it's done well with some new ideas I'd try that. A few years ago I promised a friend I'd beat the trilogy cos I think he gifted it to me? I forget. Anyway the first one was pretty jank and shitty but there was that stink gen 5 game charm I guess so I stuck with it.

I heard the sequels were better and rode that hope into 2 which was a bit more interesting and had some fun characters and a good villain. I dunno if it really felt better to play or what but I had a not terrible time with it overall.

Now I've finished the third game and it's back to being just annoying. I dunno if it's just this game was rushed or if it's that I just inherently find the gameplay in Spyro to be not that good or both. I mean I enjoy the general concept of a collectathon game, I loved DK 64 and Banjo Kazooie back in the day but maybe I was just more tolerant of it as a kid or Rare just spoiled me by being the best at it.

I think a chunk of it comes down to the controls. I just don't like how Spyro himself moves. I'm not saying it's flat out wrong, I just don't think I like it. He's a creature on four legs so it makes sense he turns more widely than other 3D platformer characters. Just little bits of it get annoying after a while. Also the camera is just straight up wonky to me and I find myself running off a platform or just dying to things because it doesn't keep up with how I wanna move. It just doesn't mesh with my mind that well.

All of this stood out in my mind worse than in 2 because in this game there is a multitude of other characters you play as in their own sections. I was told by the friend that these sections as other characters are regarded by fans as the worst aspect of the game and yet I found myself enjoying it. I liked flying around shooting stuff as the penguin or smashing guys as the yeti. Hell my absolute favorite was the like "bullet hell-esque" sections as Sparx. I would take a whole game of that. I thought that to myself though and realized I was enjoying this game most when it wasn't being a Spyro game and I think that's ultimately pretty telling.

There's also a bunch of little things in this that I wouldn't say are a detriment necessarily but stuff that stood out to me as being worse than the last game. Like in this there are areas where you skateboard around but you start them on foot and get on the skateboard but they're still treated as separate areas within a level you have to load into. It's a bit of a contrast to Spyro 2 levels that felt like pretty big and you can get lost in almost. Maybe that game just hid its loading well but the big purple portals in this one just feel like corner cutting and make me wonder if this one was more rushed out.

Speaking of rushed, I feel like they didn't really do enough to establish the characters in this one. The villain is definitely the weakest in the series and just wasn't a thing I was like excited to be building towards. There's only really one other new character who they play into like a villain becoming one of the good guys but stuff just kinda happens with her and it doesn't feel written in an engaging way.

I know that's probably thinking TOO MUCH about character and plot development in a Spyro game but just something about the opening cutscene in 2 with being sent to another world and meeting the professor and his companions and how it all tied into Ripto just got my attention right away and made me want to involve myself more. It was neat! Compare to this game where everything feels placed around. Like even returning characters just feel wasted overall.

So yeah I dunno. This game kinda exposed itself to me in how much I maybe don't like it after all. Going through it just felt like checking things off a list. Some of the worlds and music are neat but it all falls flat in my mind compared to 2. It's probably not the best highlight but I did enjoy the side stuff as other characters. Playing as gun monkey was funny. Gimme Sparx 1943 I dunno.

I didn't despise this game because of the amount of times it allows you to NOT play it and it's still probably better overall than the first one. I don't think I could recommend this now though. I mean, fans of it will play it regardless but its not gonna be in my top like 10 3D platformers I recommend someone try if they want one. Still glad to have completed what I said I would do and I'm glad I did Year of the Dragon in 2024, a proper Year of the Dragon in itself.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon is the 3rd installment to the Spyro trilogy. I never played this game as a kid so the remastered version is my first time playing this game. I don't enjoy this game quite as much as the first 2, the first game was the intro to Spyro so it has that going for it, Ripto's Rage added a lot to do in the game better worlds, better fights. Spyro 3 i just didn't fall in love with the villain or the worlds. The characters are the biggest thing I like about this game, Sgt. Byrd and Agent 9 are by far the best. The worlds are fine they just didn't stick in my mind as well as the first 2 games. The game is still a fantastic 3D platformer it's just not as good as the first 2.

78/100

My thoughts from the original generally hold true for Reignited, so see my original review here. It's obvious that Year of the Dragon made for the template that the rest of Reignited was based on (i.e. game feel from Year of the Dragon was backported into Spyro 1/Ripto's Rage), so this is more directly just a straight graphical upgrade more than anything else. Therefore, I'll just keep this as a quick lightning round of thoughts:

- Yeah I don't love the new Sheila design. It's all right, and honestly Sheila probably benefits from not just being a nondescript cartoon animal, but I dunno, there's something plainly cute about the original design that's lost with the hair and the reproportioned body.
- The other redesigns are great, though. Agent 9's fangs really add something, and I LOVE how beastly Bentley looks this time around, really highlights his original joke even more.
- Thanks to the Elora redesign, the ending, hinting at a budding relationship between her and Spyro, actually landed for me! Nice!
- The Rhynocs look like such freaks, what the hell. Those over-the-top smiles as they wind up that clubbin' they're not gonna make, you gotta love it.
- I love that so many of the original jokes were kept! Definitely would've expected to lose the Nancy Kerrigan Polar Bear or Tara, but no, there they are, fully-realized and better than ever.
- I really kinda loathe that the Reignited Trilogy uses the same credits for all three games. Like I get it, the same team probably worked on all three of them, so staggering it out would've been more trouble than it was worth. But you're missing all the charm of the original credits sequences. No epilogues, no touring the individual worlds, no nice little send-off from the team... Like, was there really no way to get some sort of unique acknowledgement at the end of each game? Ah, well.

In short - a good alternative to the PS1 version; I probably prefer the original, but this is more of a close match for me.