Should You Play the Spyro Reignited Trilogy?

I grew up mostly playing Nintendo consoles. I had the NES, SNES and then N64. I didn’t really start playing Playstation games until I got a PS2 in high school so I missed out on a lot of Sony franchises, two big ones being the Crash Bandicoot trilogy of games and the Spyro games.

So I was pretty excited to hear that both these trilogies were getting remastered and I’d finally get a chance to play them. Unfortunately though I wasn’t really a fan of the Crash games and I may write about my thoughts in regards to those at a later time. The Spyro tribology was a different story though.

So first, before I really get into my review I have to mention that I played on PC and I used a program called Flawless Widescreen. I have an ultrawide monitor and it doesn’t seem that 3440 x 1440 resolution is supported by default but more importantly the camera is zoomed in so far on Spyro in these games that it’s almost unplayable. Flawless Widescreen fixes both of these issues. It let me set a proper 3440 x 1440 resolution and zoom the camera way out. I set that to a value of 21 and though that was pretty good.

I don’t think there’s any way to zoom the camera out on consoles though so I’d definitely recommend you play on PC. The game really is borderline unplayable with the camera zoomed so far in.

General Thoughts

The first thing I noticed was how differently Spyro controlled and moved. I’m used to pretty precise platforming like in Mario games. Spyro moves fast and the game is designed around him charging around. Because he moves and charges so fast turning isn’t super sharp.

At first I didn’t like this at all and it took a bit of time to get used to. Once I got used to the movement though it felt great and the levels are all designed around this type of movement with wide open spaces that are designed for you to run around in.

You also have a jump and a glide and the levels are designed around you climbing up to higher positions and gliding across sections. Over all the movement is very unique and feels great just like I said, it takes some getting used to if you’re used to more precise platforming.

You can defeat enemies by charging into them or breathing fire on them. Some enemies are only effective against one of those attacks. Like some enemies will wear armor and you can’t kill them with fire so you have to charge into them. I was also really impressed with the enemy design across all three games. Every stage has it’s own unique enemies and you don’t see the same enemies repeated all over the games.

The games are pretty similar with a series of 3 or 4 hub worlds each with individual levels you can reach by going through gates. Each of these worlds has it’s own goal which is more or less just reaching the end. When you finish the 4 or 5 levels in a hub there’s a boss and then you move on to the next hub.

There’s some very nice variety across the games when it comes to levels and level design, you’ve got stuff like your ice world, forest world, desert world, etc. But you also have neat things like a crystal world, pirate world and stuff like that. Most of the screenshots and videos I had seen of the Spyro games looked like everything was just the same sort of castle aesthetic but that’s certainly not the case.

There are also stages where Spyro can fly. You’ll find these stages across all three games and these stages were the only parts of the three games that I really didn’t like.

In these stages you have to fly through rings, defeat certain enemies and do other objectives all under a time limit. I found these levels super frustrating and I more or less 100% completed these games except for these levels. I’m sure I could have probably looked up a guide for the optimal way to do these levels but I hated them so much I didn’t bother.

The main collectable across all these games is gems. You find gems everywhere and for most levels I was able to find every gem no problem. There were only one or two cases where I had a level where I was missing one gem somewhere and gave up.

The different games in the collection have different collectables on top of that but I’ll get to those later.

Spyro the Dragon

This is the first game in the trilogy. The story here is pretty bare bones but that’s ok. Basically there’s a bad guy named Gnasty Gnorc and he turned all the dragons (except you) into statues. You have to free those dragons and fight him as the last boss.

The levels in the first game are very nicely designed and you can 100% complete them from the beginning which I really liked.

In this game Spyro doesn’t learn any special moves, all his abilities are there from the beginning.

For this game I basically went one level at a time 100% completing them (except the flying ones) and finished the game which was a pretty solid experience.

In this game you’re collecting gems, finding dragon statues and chasing enemies with dragon eggs. The different hub worlds are gated off and require a certain number of gems, eggs and dragons to unlock but I never had any issues not having enough stuff here.

It’s also worth noting that every dragon has a unique design and personality which I understand wasn’t there in the original. When you reach a dragon statue it cracks open, frees the dragon and they say a line or two before disappearing and saving your game. There was some nice variety here.

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage!

The second game in the trilogy tries to more with the story and doesn’t do an amazing job. Some characters in another world are experimenting with portals. They open a portal and some little wizard guy named Ripto comes through and takes over their world.

They open another portal to summon a dragon to help. You get sucked through and your goal is to defeat Ripto.

This game adds a few new characters which don’t do much. Again the plot really isn’t the focus here. The goal is basically to go through the levels and then beat Ripto.

Every level in this game though has a little cartoonish opening. I thought these were all pretty dumb and after a while I just started skipping them all the time. It is a kids game after all.

One of the big differences in this game though is that you unlock abilities throughout the game like a climbing ability and a ground pound ability.

In general I like this sort of thing but in this game I found it quite frustrating because some of the earlier levels randomly require these abilities and you can’t 100% the level until you get them. That was one thing I really liked about the first game, I was able to 100% everything and then move on. But in this game I couldn’t fully complete random levels until I unlocked certain abilities and I never really wanted to go back to older levels and do them again. You basically had to go through the entire level, defeat all the enemies, etc. all over again.

It may have been better to gate sections of the hub worlds with these abilities and then just make it so you could complete every level in one go.

For collectables this time you have gems again and then special orbs that are used to power the portal machine. In each level you’re trying to make it to the end to collect a talisman for your journal and when you have enough of those to unlock the next hub world.

You need a certain number of the orbs too to fight the last boss.

The orbs are hidden throughout the world and a lot of them you get from completing minigames. I’m not usually a big fan of minigames but for the most part they were a nice change of pace and not too frustrating.

So overall the second game did improve a lot of things but also there were more frustrations here as well. It was still a fantastic experience though.

Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon

Right off the bat one thing I really appreciated about this third game was that all the abilities you unlocked in Spyro 2 are available from the beginning. It really helps make this collection feel like one big package and it’s definitely best if you play the games in order.

Spyro 3 also has a very basic story with some sorceress stealing all the dragon eggs so she can live forever or something. The main collectable this time in addition to gems is dragon eggs.

When you find a dragon egg it hatches and you see a little baby dragon with a name for a minute. The first game had a ton of great dragon designs but this time they used the same 10 or so models for the baby dragons over and over which wasn’t as exciting as the first game and was kind of a missed opportunity.

This game also adds 4 new playable characters that you unlock. You have to free them, usually by paying gems, and then they have a level where you play as them. After you finish that they’re unlocked and show up throughout the other levels for little sections here and there where you play as them.

Again I had the same problem I had in Spyro 2 where older levels have sections gated off until you unlock these characters and again, I didn’t want to come back and play these levels a second time to finish everything.

Also, most of the characters suck. They’re basically just slower versions of Spyro and with the exception of a military bird who could fly and shoot missals, pretty much every time I had to play as one of these characters I found myself just wanting to play as Spyro.

There’s an addition of a skateboarding minigame which is kind of fun and lots of races. The races in this game are terrible. I don’t know what I was doing wrong but every single time all the opponents would just shoot way ahead and I’d never catch up. So I just gave up on those and didn’t bother with these sections.

Spyro 3 has probably the best level design and lots of great looking level ideas though.

Conclusion

Overall here you’re getting 3 fantastic games all remade with modern graphics and music. The music is great too although pretty standard stuff for the platforming genre.

I only have a few gripes with the games and overall they’re all pretty fantastic. I finished them all in about 25 hours with about 98% completion for Spyro 1, 90% for Spyro 2 and 80% for Spyro 3. As the games went on I had less patience for the flying segments and backtracking.

It is worth noting though if you find all the collectables in each game you unlock a final bonus level as a reward.

So yes, I’d totally recommend that you pick these games up. Just like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, be sure to play on PC and use a mod to zoom that camera out.