Review #559: Spyro - Year of the Dragon

 Which is whichever year you happen to play this game.

The cover is a bloated as the game itself.

 Spyro 2 was pretty much the pinacle of what you could with the Spyro formula, there wasn't much that could've been done to expand upon it, save elemental breaths(But I'm getting ahead of myself there...) so Insomniac did the only thing left to do: Add more characters. It also brought back a few mechanics from Spyro 1, for whichever reason, thus making Spyro 3 feel like a bit of a retread.

 The excuse, erm, story this time around concerns the Dragon eggs, it's the year of the Dragon and they are about to hatch. But that would be to easy, so a sorceress and her apprentice steal all the eggs before they hatch. Now it's up to Spyro and his cohorts to get them back. The game is about as long as the previous one, but since Spyro's potential was pretty much tapped out, it introduced 4 different pals that you get to play as on bonus levels in a few stages. Sheila the Kangaroo can jump high and kick her enemies, Sgt. Byrd flies around, shoots rockets and can drop bombs, the Yeti is slow but packs a heavy wallop... and can also reflect projectiles, and lastly, Agent 9, a monkey that shoots lasers.

\Some things never change... including the forest landscapes.

 To be honest, these side characters are pretty dull to play as, they are a lot slower than Spyro and their gameplay is nothing to write home about. Sheila gets some annoying secrets hidden over tall heights and Sgt. Byrd gets a few neat puzzles involving dropping stuff over other stuff, but that's about the extent of things worth mentioning about them. For all intents and purposes, their small sub-stages are little more than mini-games. Finishing the game unlocks 4 over-the-top shooting mini-games with Sparx, they are pretty decent but the rewards come too little too late if you've been collecting everything. Improved gem-grabbing reach? Nice, but there are no more gems left to collect. The ability to point towards nearby treasure? Which treasure? I had every gem collected by then. The ability to teleport to whatever stage from the menu? Thanks, but there's nothing left to collect now!

 The new additions are a bit dull, but treading old ground felt a bit lame as well. Keys and chests were gone, why bring them back now? Wizards that alter the stage and buff other enemies? I fought them already in Spyro 1, it was cute then, it's old new now. And the egg thieves that you must chase return, once again, why? They weren't in 2, so it's too late to turn them into staples. It also brings back a few ideas from Spyro 2, like a stage based on planting plants, albeit done better here, and it double down on mini-games, hope you like skateboarding, cause there're a couple of those! It feels a bit like Crash 3 in how they went a bit overboard with all the side-activities, putting it on par with the platforming, something I wasn't too fond of.

The skateboard stages are all kinds of lame, but they can be beaten... even the bonus one.

 Something I appreciated about Spyro 2 was giving worth to the treasure you collected, besides being a gate to stop your progress. Purchasing new moves felt rewarding, even if there were only three different moves. In Spyro 3 money is just a gate. Want to unlock the new character? Pay the price. Want to open up the bridge? Pay the price. It's a minor nitpick, but oh well! What did bother me, however, is that some levels aren't up to par with what I've come to expect from Spyro. Some stages just aren't well designed, hiding treasure behind walls that you must jump and kick with Sheila felt particularly nasty, and there're two slides that are a pain in the butt to try not to fall off from. It's just a few levels that felt like this, but something I didn't come across since Spyro 1's dreaded running jumps on the treetops!

 All in all, Spyro - Year of the Dragon is still a great platform-adventure game, and among the best and best aged on the Playstation 1. It's simply not as tight as the first couple of games. They definitely went for quantity over quality, so the quality suffered a bit, but you got more characters, more vehicles and more silly gimmicks.
 8.0 out of 10