ROR: Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon (PS1 Vs. PC & Switch) | The Trilogy Perfected

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] buddy tang is and welcome back to another fantastic episode of remake arre break last time we took a thorough look at Spyro 2 riptos rage for the PlayStation as well as its remake in the Spyro reignited trilogy to quickly recap the previous videos I maintain that spyro 1 is a bonafide classic with the clever art style unique music and an incomparable core game loop however its single-minded focus on core gameplay and little else led the game to become boring over time Spyro 2 I thought was an overall good game that made some strides and visuals and music as well as tightening up the controls but failed to properly eclipse its predecessor thanks to a smattering of mediocre minigames meandering level design unnecessary backtracking to older stages uneven content pacing specifically in autumn plains and a poorly executed story even by kiddie platforming standards now arguments I made in those videos will be relevant here and for the sake of keeping the timestamp down as much as I can I request that you watch those two videos first if you haven't already today we return to finish what we started by looking at Spyro year of the Dragon for the playstation or Spyro 3 as I usually call it as well as its remaking the reignited trilogy while there is a sizable crowd that considers this the best game in the series including yours truly generally speaking most reviewers consider Spyro 3 the weakest of the insomniac games similarly the reignited version has developed a reputation for being unpolished and glitchy which will certainly discuss as always remake re-break is a review segment where I look at the classics of the past to see how well they up today with a special emphasis on how well subsequent significant releases which include remakes later gen ports remasters we imaginings etc recreate and improve upon the original experience today I want to address three questions first how well does Spyro 3 hold up in 2020 as a game on its own second how well does the remake and the reignited trilogy hold up to the standards of the previous two games finally do I think Spyro three deserves its reputation as the weakest game in the trilogy without further ado this is spiral year the dragon remake a rebate we begin as always with the story last time I talked about the story in Spyro 2 for 20 minutes I'm gonna try to tone things down but at the same time I want to substantiate why I consider this a huge improvement over the plots of the first two games if you really don't care about the story at all feel free to skip to this timestamp the game opens and artisans with all the dragons and hunters sleeping around a batch of dragon eggs suddenly a hooded figure and an army of rhinox emerged from a network of tunnels and escaped with all of the dragon eggs as it turns out the hooded figure is working for the sorceress a mysterious powerful witch who rules over the Forgotten worlds with an iron fist and an army of rhinox soldiers with help from Zoey the dragon elders get a sense of what's going on and since Spyro and Hunter down the tunnels to retrieve dragon eggs in the process Spyro inadvertently jump starts a revolution against the sorceress by freeing each of the worlds from the rhinox grasp one by one joining forces with local rebels Sheila the kangaroo sergeant bird Bentley the Yeti and agent 9 Spyro sets out to retrieve all 150 eggs liberate the Forgotten worlds from rynek occupation and defeat the sorceress once and for all on the surface the plot repeats a lot of elements from Spyro 2 it's also not a terribly complicated plot nor is it a contender for the greatest story ever told still the story of Spyro 3 manages to succeed everywhere the first and especially the second game failed while going above and beyond for a kiddie platformer in my previous reviews I've argued that while story can be engaging in its own right at the bare minimum it should contextualize gameplay and service of some kind of goal the player is motivated to accomplish and do you really don't need 40 hours of cutscenes or deep resonating themes to accomplish that much and as always I point to banjo kazooie as an example of how to do this well the gameplay is framed as a means of getting even with gruntilda a compelling antagonist the player loves to hate both of the previous spyro games attempted to replicate the gruntilda effect somewhat succeeding the first time in stumbling pretty badly the second time Spyro three attempts the gruntilda effect again and succeeds not once but twice unlike her predecessors the sorceress manages decent characterization a strong well substantiated motivation and most importantly serves as a powerful gameplay motivator to rival or even exceed gruntilda in the first banjo kazooie game part of what makes the sorceress work so well is her relationship with the game's secondary antagonist Bianca one of the rare Spyro characters to display any sort of strong organic character development Bianca is quickly established as a rival character who periodically appears to antagonize Spyro immediately setting up the extent of the source versus conquest a lot of her masters nastier traits have rubbed off on her making Bianca something of a wannabe sorceress but you also get a sense that Bianca is forcing a facade of sorts with the kind-hearted personality peeking through the cracks following an act of kindness by her enemies Bianca undergoes a change of heart in her reluctance to follow the sorceress as increasingly violent methodology creates a palpable tension and their scenes together the glue holding Bianca and the sorceress together is an energy crisis sweeping the forgotten worlds which is quickly set up in the first 10 minutes and developed throughout the rest of the game as it turns out the Dragons used to live in the forgotten worlds but the sorceress eventually banished them to what would later become the dragon Kingdom the sorceress discovered too late however that the dragons for the source of all the magic in their world without dragons the portals are blinking out in certain pleasures the inhabitants once took for granted have started to disappear given what's at stake the sorceress ordering a mass kidnapping of dragons takes on a tinge of gray morality and explains why Bianca would go along with it despite clearly having reservations the back and forth between Bianca and the sorceress is peak spiral writing and does a lot to flesh out both characters I asked you to carry out one simple task and you fail me I should have known than to rely on a child through interactions alone you get a sense that the sorceress considers everyone else disposable and worth less than the dirt beneath her feet as she remorselessly grills Bianca for every failure and then mutates her rynek minions into hideous abominations without a second thought put simply the sorceress is a gaping but to quote Elora from the second game the sorceress is engaging precisely because she's self-absorbed and completely unsympathetic while Bianca is engaging because we know deep down she's a good person and we want to see her do what she knows is right and stand up to her master on that note Bianca's turned to the good side has built up gradually throughout the game and executed perfectly you get a sense that Bianca only went along with the sorceress as planned because she was afraid of her master and because she convinced herself she was doing the right thing due to the dwindling magic in her world ultimately and a bombshell scene it's revealed that the sorceress never cared about her world or her subjects at all and planned to commit mass genocide of the entire dragon race so she alone could become immortal it's even implied by the sorceress being over a thousand years old and saying that she'll die without magic that she's been using it to keep herself alive for centuries and that's why her world's magic ran out to begin with after learning this Bianca reaches a breaking point and rejects the sorceress teaming up with Spyro and hunter to find another solution to the energy problem in other words character development I love it money bags also returns from Spyro to acting as a tertiary antagonist while moneybags was always kind of a prick his money-grubbing douchebaggery reaches an all-time low in spyro 3 where he exploits both sides of the spiral and sorcerer's conflict to line his own kids what No what else are you going to do with all those gems by flying lessons that was a good one moneybags in spyro 3 is such a selfish irredeemable unapologetic money-grubbing bastard that you can't help but love to hate him head on in Spyro it should be a thrilling match in fact I've even placed a little wager on the Rhine och team let's just hope the local team doesn't have any last-minute accidents with every paywall becoming more blatant and arbitrary than the last consequently there's nothing more satisfying than when Spyro finally loses his patience and reclaims every single one of money bag stolen gems one by one that my friends is how you execute the gruntilda effect and ripto should really be taking notes in addition to being genuinely entertaining the story motivates and contextualizes gameplay far better than the previous two games for one thing the annoying trend of offloading critical exposition to the manual because the writers forgot to put it in the game is finally over that said if you're curious how dragons reproduce given that there wasn't a single female dragon in the entirety of Spyro 1 the manual does have an answer for that but that also wasn't a question I really found myself asking since where the eggs came from doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact they were stolen because of that everything you need to emotionally invest yourself in Spyro 3 s plot is presented in the game proper no exceptions also while previous games had to in organically for Spyro into the role of protagonist your of the dragon provides a simple concrete reason why Spyro is the only dragon who can retrieve the eggs spiral you'll have to go nobody else can fit down the holes and that's all we needed upon arriving in sunrise spring Bianca basically triple dog dare you to get a hundred percent which gets me anxious to prove her wrong and galvanizes me into full collectathon mode that was eggs belong to us now and I've hidden them in places you'll never find in a thousand years besides even if you could find an egg our expertly trained armies will dispose of you and take it back do I make myself clear unlike spyro 2 where riptile was never mentioned outside of the hub worlds even a single time spa row three follow Spyro one and frequently name-dropping the sorceress and stages spirals we were carving her come to life they've locked us out of our temples and stolen our food Eustace and I were having a snowman-building competition when the sorceress brought them to life with a spell since then they've been stomping around building ice walls and generally causing trouble even when NPCs don't directly mention her the army of rhinox gives her a titanic all-encompassing presence and makes the forgotten worlds feel like a cohesive world while that does mean that the plot of most levels boiled down to rhinox showed up and did a thing you could similarly reduce the pot of every spyro to level two so and so bad guys showed up and did a thing the critical difference is that in this game the B plot served to reinforce the core conflict and motivate the player to take out the sorceress wall in Spyro to the B plots had no concrete connection to ripto at all and made it come off as though most of a Valar didn't even know he was there it is true that neither the sorceress or her army really impact the midnight mountain stages however you could have potentially already fought the sorceress before playing those levels so expanding to more micro conflicts is excusable at that point moreover the B plots of those levels are generally better executed than the majority of spyro 2 stages on top of all that Sparrow 3 is just much better about giving you macro goal feedback you progress from hub world the hub world by freeing the denizens of each level in return those denizens build you transportation to the next hub world which is infinitely more satisfying than the talismans from the last game between each hub world you witness the sorceress becoming increasingly frustrated with Spyros advancement ratcheting up the tension in the overarching narrative while giving you a sense that playing levels is actually accomplishing something in terms of the characters Spyro himself is pretty much the same as ever like Spyro 2 he doesn't really talk that much but when he does it is entertaining and in line with his tone down characterization from the second game the especially I think adds a new dimension to his character that we haven't seen before it's a sad sight sparks another noble warrior falls victim to the plague of love just look away Spyro may have saved the world three times since that fateful day in artisans but he still got a lot of growing up to do Hunter also appears consistently throughout the game and a role similar to that of spire 2 though he's noticeably braver encoded jump into action this time around in terms of the new characters they're certainly on par with the a velar casts and actually play a more active role in the story besides standing around and hoping Spyro will solve all their problems Sheila the kangaroo is basically what Elora always should have been friendly and willing to stick up for her friends but also brash opinionated and quick to violence this swamp smells so sweet the springtime trees are fragrant I'm off to kick butt Sargent bird is the charismatic leader of the hummingbird resistance against the sorceress he's loyal strategic and fights for what he believes in but is also something of a romantic and has a secretive side a strictly platonic relationship Bentley the Yeti is surprisingly my favorite of the new characters while he looks like a lumbering violent beast Bentley is actually incredibly intelligent and sophisticated finally we have agent 9 who is violent unhinged and harbors an unhealthy obsession with rhinox my tail into a snake is gonna pay while not the deepest characters ever there at least on par with if not better than the a velar cast from the last game spyro 3 also has much better production value than both of the previous games the cutscene animations are a lot smoother and more expressive than Spyro 1 and especially Spyro 2 with the sorceress having easily the best facial animations in the whole trilogy more importantly the sound engineering is a lot more professional than the last game the voice acting is also pretty solid with Pamela Hayden is Bianca being particularly stand out there are a lot of subtleties to her performance and you could tell she really gave it her all to play a magic anthropomorphic rabbit no less so yeah that spyro 3 story while Spyro 2 failed to execute a story that practically writes itself Spyro 3 stories everything it should have been in so much more however it's not a perfect story so let's start with the smaller things and work our way up to the bigger stuff first Spyro 3 has removed the intro and outro cutscenes from Spyro 2 for some reason the writers in that game thought that Rando NPCs dying and over-the-top violent ways was really funny even though it makes the other NPCs come off as unlikable and uncaring about their situation that said I still would have preferred that insomniac attempted to improve these intro outro scenes rather than cutting them altogether second again like Spyro - there's some quibbling little plot holes that gear my grinders for example why do these fireflies need to light the bombs before they start moving towards the cages Zoe says that Sparks and locks new abilities because dragon magic rubbed off on him but sparks literally hangs out with the dragon 24 hours a day Sargent bird mentions that he couldn't use his rocket launchers to escape from the sorceress because he has limited ammo even though sergeant bird could have realistically gotten more ammo after he escaped and even then in gameplay you have unlimited ammo again I consider these minor criticisms certainly compared to what the story does well but I'm trying to be thorough for the sake of the review third many of the B plots follow a trend from Spyro - of subverting the player's expectations in a way that undermines their sense of accomplishment in fireworks factory Greta basically beats the level for you which essentially makes the level pointless since it makes no difference whether Spyro was there or not there the twist that dug here actually put up the ice blocks and icy peaks adds nothing and is actually less interesting than if the rhinox had the only time one of these subversions really works is in charmed Ridge Amie and Azrael being star-crossed lovers dogged by both the sympathetic and antagonistic characters in the stage is satisfying in a way that a statue squishing the Colossus Yeti and robbing the player of a boss fight just isn't forth much like Spyro to the in level cutscenes have not returned to the production value of Spyro 1 we still get recycled character models that stand in place and repeat stock animations and lip-sync again this is fine for a PlayStation game but the first game still looked better in this regard v I should note that whenever I refer to the PlayStation version of Spyro 3 in this review I'm talking about the NTSC greatest-hits version of year at the Dragon the original black label version was rushed and has a lot of bugs notably the cutscenes spike is born exists on the disc and can be accessed with cheat codes but for some reason it doesn't play where it should in the actual game seeing as this is a great scene that develops the central conflict that is a glaring omission finally and this is my biggest criticism I think the writers seriously missed out in giving the sorceress and Spyro a one on one conversation before the final boss the sorceress is such a hateful spiteful wench who subjugated her kingdom for centuries and put the survival of Spyros entire species in jeopardy for her own selfish gain that should make for a great dialogue exchange dripping with character and emotion instead entering the sorceress lair just takes you straight to the boss panel I still think the exchanges we did get between Bianca and the sorceress are great and complete both characters but it's a pretty blatant omission from what is otherwise a solid script so yes I have my criticisms but none of them are nearly bad enough to significantly detract from what is for all intents and purposes a great story so let's talk reignited trilogy how does spyro 3 reignited approached me telling what was already a great story by 3d platforming standards the production value echoes Spyro 2 reignited and recycling stock character models and animations like the PlayStation version that said I did notice that repeated NPCs species tended to have more unique geometry and recurring characters like moneybags tend to have more unique animations compared to the last game I still would have appreciated it if the game used fewer stock animations and followed the first game's example of redesigning every NPC and providing unique animations for every cutscene when it comes to the main cutscenes the characters are well animated with the strong attention to the 12 principles of animation and an eye for clarity in detail the lip-sync and blocking is strong in virtually every scene with every mouth movement perfectly conveying the intended emotions again like Spyro 2 reignited I noticed a lot of smaller touches that add to the characters I enjoy how moneybags gut reaction to being shot by Rockets is to protect his gem beg or hunters reaction to Bianca holding his hand or Bianca's rabbit-like mannerisms to express her emotions in a given scene while many major cutscenes are still pre-rendered and low-quality MP fours surprisingly the scenes were you free Sheila Sargent bird Bentley an agent 9 actually play in engine these cinematics look really good native 4k so I don't understand why every cutscene couldn't have run in engine when pre-rendering takes up more disk space and looks worse I mean I'll take some in engine cutscenes / none but I'm just saying like Spyro 2 reignited only a few actors returned for the remake namely Tom Kenny as Spyro the professor and Sergeant Bird as well as Richard Tatum is agent 9 that said Robbie Damon Cassandra Lee Morris and JB Blanc returned from Spyro 2 reignited as hunter Elora and moneybags respectively and performed just as well as they did before JB Blanc especially has cemented himself as my favorite moneybags I already thought Neil Ross was great in the original but JB Blanc delivers Spyro 3 dialogue with an unmatched conviction that makes the build-up to moneybags downfall even more satisfying than ever it just happens I know the password to open the door to the tomb of the stone golem but it seems to have slipped my mind for the moment if you know what I mean very well then the password to open the tomb is are you ready Bianca was recast with Melissa Hutchison and while I will probably always prefer Pamela Hayden in my heart of hearts Hutchison's performance only seems to grow on me every time I replay this remake perhaps my favorite recast was misty Lee as the sorceress she has one bad read in her introductory cutscene but otherwise she provides an interesting new look into the character while not sounding radically different from Flo DeRay a lot of the same voice talent from spire 1 inspired to reignited return to voice the NPC cast and while it's not a one-to-one copy of the original voice acting it's pretty solid for what it is in terms of what the remake changes obviously the character designs were updated along with the a velar cast sergeant bird agent 9 and Bianca especially don't look radically different from their PlayStation designs though on the whole I'd say Sargent bird still looks a lot better than his doofy ps1 model generally speaking the remake doesn't really rock the boat too hard when it comes to Rando NPCs either though these Renaissance looking guys now carry around lattes which makes it harder to take this guy seriously I was playing catch with my pet wolf Farley but I accidentally threw his ball down this hole and he went in after it now he's stuck down there and I feel so helpless sitting up here listening to his steadily softening whimpers I actually really get a kick out of the toothy grins of the rhinox here they just look so much more hateful and mischievous than they did on PlayStation surprisingly the most controversial read design is Sheila the kangaroo and honestly I'm not really sure why I mean her original design is just a generic kangaroo what was so special about this compared to that her new design is a lot more appealing with the jacket and especially the red hair suiting her perfectly Bentley's design was similarly updated and as far as I'm concerned it's all for the better his original design was okay but he had kind of a crooked posture and dopey-looking face this new design better signifies his gameplay style of powerhouse combat without undermining his intelligence and eloquent speech perhaps my favorite differences regards some subtle tweaks to the sorceress as characterization while still a callous remorseless witch willing to sacrifice the lives of an entire species for her own selfish gain misty Lee's portrayal is a little more feminine than floaty raised this along with the new lipstick and beauty mark gives the sense that the sorceress is vain self-absorbed and obsesses over how she looks thus when she says she wants to live forever what she really means is that she wants to be young and beautiful forever given that she complains about a statue of her looking too ugly it's not too far-fetched this adds a bit of extra dimension to her character and rounds out her motivations somewhat while still retaining everything that was great about her in the original game shockingly year the dragon is the only game of the three to actually change the script whereas the other two games just copied the original script verbatim without addressing any of the problems specifically spyro 3 reignited actually adds some new lines this dragon here says which is a small improvement given how oddly silent the Dragons were watching invaders kidnapped their children the more interesting additions are added dialogue from Sergeant bird Bentley in agent 9 during Bianca's conversations with the sorceress while not a change I was particularly begging for in retrospect it was odd how these characters made cameos in these scenes but didn't really react to what was going on seeing these characters react to rhinox transforming into giant monsters was interesting in a worthwhile addition for as small as it is the one change we didn't get however was my coveted one-on-one convo between spiral and the sorceress I understand that an entire additional cutscene is a little more work intensive than some stray lines especially given how rushed this trilogy was but as long as we're gonna add things that weren't in the original script then why not with all that covered let's talk about graphics I'm not really sure what I can say about spyro 3 that I haven't already said about the first two games as usual I'm running spyro 3 on authentic PlayStation hardware over RGB scart playing on my PVM monitor and digitizing with the open source scan converter like the previous games spyro 3 runs at 512 pixels wide and alike spyro 2 what ops for a performance saving 216 pixels tall to match Naughty Dog's crash games the level of detail technique returns from the previous games to increase the draw distance and allow for larger environments without settling for fog or dips in the performance on that note Year of the Dragon does run at a consistent and evenly paced 30fps 95 percent of the time but like the previous two games the game has its fair share of screen tearing again it's not super frequent but it is distracting when it happens in terms of the art itself this is the third game in the series and by this point insomniac had perfected an art style that transcends the limited polygons and resolution to create something appealing charming and oddly timeless similar to a velar The Forgotten world's encompass a diversity of landscapes that defy common level archetypes we have shipwrecked Badlands cloud factories Roman villas as ye attic temples floating crystal Islands frozen Aztec pyramids and chanted castles and dinosaurian homesteads while the levels in this game are genuinely creative and visually interesting I do feel like the levels in spyro 2 were a little more creative on the whole there are a few stages like icy Peaks spooky swamp and seashell Shore that just kind of played the level archetypes straight still having unique themes for 13 out of 16 main stages isn't bad especially three games in other than that I've been claimed to say spyro 3 is the best looking game of the original trilogy not by a super wide margin or anything but generally speaking I find the models look that slightest bit better and the textures are marginally more detailed and better drawn beyond these trees textured on the walls and spooky swamp I can't really think of any down points to the graphics in spyro 3 I mean I guess the color palette and bamboo Terrace is a little washed out but I'll take that over the homely palate from Mystic Marsh any day otherwise I think this game looks great Nance ends off the ps1 with a visual bang which brings us to spyro 3 reignited like the previous reviews we're gonna focus primarily on the PC version for the highest resolution and framerate so far I've praised the graphics in the reignited trilogy and spyro 3 reignited continues the same high-quality standard once again we have a gorgeous charming and cartoony visual aesthetic that a more realistic art style could never hope to match the colors are stark and striking and the environments have greatly increased in detail over the PlayStation original we also have pretty lighting and specular maps gorgeous particle effects and some very nice-looking models for 2018 the previous games looked absolutely fantastic in native 4k and spyro 3 reignited is no exception one thing I forgot to mention in the last two reviews is the new UI art which is a significant improvement over the original games while it got the job done the monochromatic 3d lettering in spyro one looks kind of tacky and the pre-rendered book textures from the sequels looks straight out of an early PC cd-rom game the reignited Shoji redesigns the menus with the consistent art style while assigning a distinct color to each game with Spyro 1 being purple Spyro 2 being blue and Spyro 3 being orange this helps the reignited trilogy feel more cohesive as a package while still allowing each game to stand apart visually in my Spyro 1 review I said that I considered the Spyro reignited Shoji the best looking game I'd ever played when considering resolution frame rate visual style and level of detail while I was certainly referring to all three games as a package I was thinking of Spyro 3 reignited specifically when I said that because this is my favorite looking game I've ever played full stop - reignited was already more visually engaging than spiral one reignited so my preference for spyro 3 reignited visuals comes down to the slightly better use of color in the overall higher level of detail and the environment geometry again I loved the graphics in the original but stages like midnight Mountain seashell Shore evening Lake Lost fleet sunrise spring bamboo terrace and spooky swamp see a massive visual overhaul here that goes beyond simple Hardware differences meanwhile levels I already liked looking at in the original like cloud spires fireworks factory Country Speedway frozen altars enchanted towers icy peak and sunny Villa look better than ever charmed Ridge especially is the best looking level in the entire package it's just a gorgeous stage from top to bottom that said the performance stutters from Spyro 1 and Spyro 2 reignited on PC carry over to this game as well while the 60fps is consistent 98% of the time and makes all the difference in the world for moment-to-moment gameplay spyro 3 reignited still isn't above the occasional frame drop again I'm playing this in native 4k with maxed out settings but I feel like a port of a console game should run a little smoother than this speaking of console ports we still have to look at spyro 3 reignited on console in my previous reviews I looked at the ps4 pro and Xbox one exports and found that while the 1440p looked nice and while the 30fps appeared more or less consistent in footage during gameplay the game suffers from noticeable micro stutter that has been documented by sites like digital foundry all we have left to talk about is the switch version which is unsurprisingly the weakest version in terms of resolution frame rate and performance now I understand that some people only care about graphics so much and just want a straightforward affordable platform to play the latest releases and in that regard the switch absolutely fills that niche even then I can still point to a lot of great first party games on the switch that will be renowned for both the game designed and clever art direction for the rest of time for those reasons some might say that criticizing the switch version of the reignited trilogy for its graphics is redundant I'm of course and Unreal Engine 4 game targeting the ps4 isn't gonna run as well on switch what did you expect right still this is a comparison video and we have to talk about what makes the switch version different from the others so I have to pick on the graphics at least a little bit now I think it's fair to say that unless you play in a handheld mode a lot the switch version of a cross-platform game is generally the worst on the technical side of nothing else even then most first party games run in non-native resolutions in handheld mode and I find that pretty distracting unfortunately the Spyro reignited Shoji is actually worse than the standard in this regard as reluctant as I am to accept it the standard for performance on the Nintendo switch is 900p 30fps maybe 864 p 30fps if the game is really pretty every once in a while we get a wiiu port running at 1080p 60fps which is great when we do get it but I understand that for an Unreal Engine 4 game that's asking a lot even by these standards the reignited trilogy still falls flat targeting a dynamic resolution with the max of 720p and a minimum of 540 P now with Mario Odyssey I could accept dynamic resolution as a trade-off for a consistent 60 FPS on console and even the Xenoblade games have the excuse of being enormous the reignited shoji doesn't have either of those excuses seeing as it's fairly small and barely reaches 30 FPS even then the models and materials have seen a noticeable downgrade as well the environments are basically swapped out for the lower level of detail versions eg the lower powered geometry you would normally only see at a distance and the textures look straight out of an n64 game sometimes in a professional product I really shouldn't be able to make out every individual pixel on money bags face texture usually when a game runs in standard HD I can at least set the console the 720p and upscale it cleanly to 4k but much like breath of the wild on Wii U in this game the UI runs at 1080p even though the in-game graphics run at 720p or lower meaning that no matter which resolution you pick you still get a bunch of blurry non-integer filtering on the 3d elements now I'm sure I'm the only one who notices or cares about this kind of thing but when you spend as much time and money scaling and editing video as I have you notice it and it drives you nuts oh and I also notice that the audio quality of the voice acting is much lower than the other versions as well you shouldn't anger a magician spiral I just might decide to turn you into a blue hedgehog or something you shouldn't anger a magician spiral I just might decide to turn you into a blue hedgehog or something now I'd show off some better footage of the game running in portable mode but unfortunately I don't own an internal switch capture card and the company that manufactured them went out of business because of that the best I could deal was use the switches built-in recording software which has an abysmal bitrate relative to the resolution but is at least better than me sticking a camera in front of the screen it's worth noting that the game looks somewhat better in real time than the footage suggests due to the heavy-handed mp4 compression even still this game looks noticeably worse in handheld mode than it does docked the game still runs at a dynamic resolution ranging from 648 P to 432 P with even blurrier textures and chunkier geometry also as much as I really don't want to feed into the meme I wouldn't be doing my due diligence as reviewer if I didn't mention the checkerboarded elephant in the room yeah this game has a lot of dithering and yes the dithering and blurry textures are 100% obvious even on the actual screen apparently this is just a staple of the Unreal Engine and it seems that the other versions of the reignited trilogy just do a much better job of hiding it in handheld mode on the switch on the other hand it's really you really obvious it's worth noting that the original ps1 games have a lot of dithering too but that was also the standard for 90s games this game came out in 2019 and I expected a little better now truth be told I'd actually be fine with all of that if the game at least ran well but unfortunately that's not the case the spiral reignited Choji in handheld mode unfortunately drops frames and stutters all over the place now I get it it's the trade-off for portability but is a consistent 30 frames per second really that much to ask for at what point do we draw the line and recognize bad optimization for what it is despite all of these problems this game at least plays well in portable mode for the most part and in that sense it delivers the bare minimum the classic Spyro trilogy on the go given how many times I've replayed the ps1 games on the PSP I was hoping for a decent replacement but unfortunately there's still something of a trade-off between the two versions the PSP version runs far smoother in my experience and honestly as far as portable games go I think it maybe looks a little better but the analog slide pad isn't properly supported at best you can use it to emulate the d-pad but that's not nearly as good as full analog movement that and for some reason the version of spyro 3 on the PSN is the inferior Black Label release and not the definitive greatest-hits version on the other hand the switch version looks worse and chugs a lot bought features analog movement and camera rotation as well as all the fixes of the NTSC greatest-hits version I guess I prefer the switch version if only because I'm more likely to take my switch on the go than my PSP for all of its flaws I can still think of much worse ways to spend a plane ride than the spiral reignited trilogy in portable mode beyond the portability the switch version also has much better Rumble than the other three versions I personally find Rumble really distracting and even if I didn't I find that most games don't even use it that consistently case in point the Xbox Playstation and PC versions of the reignited trilogy supposedly support Rumble but even when I turn the feature on it didn't seem to do any 90% of the time while the rumble on this game isn't as consistent or well implemented as Super Mario Odyssey jumping gliding head bashing and the like do provide vibration feedback here that they didn't on other platforms so if you do like Rumble the switch is the only version that really supports it to any significant degree and as far as I can tell if there are no other major differences despite the switch supporting motion controls you can't use it to control Spyro during speed ways or even aim as agent 9 with either the joy Kahn's or the pro controller given that this is the only platform of the floor to support motion controls except if you owned a VR headset on pc iguess i think that's a missed opportunity now with all that said and I'm going to surprise myself by saying this I didn't find the micro stutter as noticeable here as I did on ps4 pro and xbox 1x again I only have my own eyeballs to work with and don't have the fancy frame analysis tech of digital foundry to verify the frame timings down to the millisecond still by my eyeballs it felt like the switch version was delivering frames closer to the ideal 33 millisecond timing or maybe it's just that the video is so blurry that the stuttering is harder to notice I don't know unfortunately this version also dropped frames or suffered other performance drops far more often and I wrote down at least eight of these major drops in my notes so you can have better graphics and fewer frame drops but have micro stutter the whole time on Xbox and PlayStation or you can have better frame pacing on switch but have weaker graphics and more consistent performance drops so take your pick still the portability factor kind of makes the switch version worth it at least for me and it's still a testament to the strength of the underlying art direction that the reignited trilogy can still be somewhat visually appealing on switch even when the models and textures have been reduced down to their lowest quality versions so yeah if you don't have a decent PC and just want to check out the spyro remake on console I actually think that the switch version is worth considering that said the PC version not only supports a higher graphical ceiling than all read console versions but is also the only version to support a consistent 60 FPS out of the box once again even if you have to lower the resolution to 720p to get it running well on your PC the game will still play better there than on all three consoles moving on let's take a moment or two to talk about the soundtrack in Spyro 3 I found that Sparra 1 had a unique style and fantasy ambiance but with the exception of a few heavy hitters I found a lot of the compositions pretty forgettable spyro 2 i thought was a substantial improvement with overall stronger composition and a much broader soundscape stewart copeland returns to compose for spyro 3 along with co composer ryan beverage and together they refined the Spyro soundscape to perfection while delivering the best compositions in the trilogy year of the dragon expands to include more string instruments metal clanging brass sections banging percussion record scratches and tons of other work II unconventional samples I couldn't begin to describe I find that the percussion especially is a lot stronger than in the previous games which gives the pieces a tighter more energetic rhythm that piggybacks wonderfully off the fast-paced core game loop despite sounding more conventional than spyro 2 in many ways tracks like Harbor Speedway spooky swamp Sheila's alt Moulton crater and chanted skate park in agent 9s lab managed to subvert musical conventions while being easier to listen to than something like breeze Harbor while the hub music in Spyro 2 had a relaxing atmosphere but no real melody the Spyro three hub themes rectify this with some similarly relaxing harmonics while offering some genuinely catchy memorable melodies [Music] [Music] evening like especially is everything that the Spiro to Huff things always should have been are there any flaws with the soundtrack well if I have to dig into the nitty-gritty I do find that some of the later boss themes are just kind of okay but even then buzzes dungeon is easily my favorite boss theme in the entire series so that kind of balances it out also much like house tomorrow to recycled the idle springs theme for fracture hills spyro 3 similarly uses a slight remix of Sheila's theme for lost fleet and recycle Sergeant Birds theme wholesale for enchanted towers the Dino mines theme is also a slight rearranging of sunny villa I should note that when I say Spyro 3 has my favorite soundtrack in the trilogy I am specifically referring to the NTSC greatest-hits version which is the complete soundtrack as intended the original release meanwhile fails to play every track in its intended stage in some cases the tracks just weren't finished in time for the fall 2000 release and and others glitches caused the wrong track to play in the absolute worst case the sorceress boss theme is actually replaced with the first hub world theme which is really jarring it [Music] while all of these issues were corrected in the greatest-hits released the Platinum version of Spyro 3 in the PAL region only fixes a few of these problems specifically this version is still missing the themes for evening Lake the sorceress is layer and the enchanted tower skatepark ostensibly to make room on the disk for multiple languages thankfully the sorceress boss does at least use the spikes arena theme and not the sunrise spring theme again even so the soundtrack and the PAL release is nevertheless incomplete unsurprisingly Steven Vanka or is it Stephane Vaughn qov returns once again to remix the music for spyro 3 reignited right off the bat I should note that the soundtrack is based on the complete tracklist from the NTSC Greatest Hits version in every region given how loyal the previous two remakes were to even the dumbest of design I was honestly kind of worried that the remake was going to mistakenly copy the black label soundtrack but thankfully that's not the case again from an audio fidelity perspective the original soundtrack sounded as good as they realistically could so simply cranking up the sample raider bit-depth wasn't gonna be enough to remaster these soundtracks as long as the reignited shoji was going to include playstation music as an option I really wanted Vong cough to take some risks and reinterpret the songs unfortunately I found the Spyro 1 and Spyro 2 sand tracks huge so close to the originals that Vong coffs remixes couldn't really stand on their own two feet while Spyro 3 reignited is hardly the big risk-taking reinvention I would have preferred I'd still rank it Vaughn Cobbs best work for the trilogy overall maybe it's because I've listened to the original Spyro 3 music more often outside the game so it's easier for me to tell the difference unlike Spyro 2 reignited where there were maybe two tracks I preferred to the originals and a couple I didn't in spyro 3 s case I can point to many tracks that I think sound better than ever in the reignited trilogy I loved the banjos and sonny Vela the new guitars and Sheila's Alperin point the brass and Sergeant Byrd's bass sounds a lot livelier I prefer the buzzing synths of country Speedway and the marimba and Crystal Island sounds more crystally if that makes sense I also really appreciate how sunrise Springs start soft and understated before the percussion accelerates in the rhythm picks up it gives you the feeling of starting off on a new adventure in a strange new world bamboo Terrace adds some backing percussion motives that feel like they always should have been there and frozen alters penetrates your soul with these shivering winds and that amazing flute much like Spyro - reignited von Cobb created unique mixes for levels that recycled melodies in the original namely enchanted towers lost fleet and Dino mines in each case I think these remixes are superior to the greatest hits counterparts and fit the stages better while the original sorceress boss theme sounded disheveled and kind of unfinished volkoff's remix is significantly better with acoustic guitar deep orchestral motives and much stronger percussion my favorite remix in the entire trilogy surprisingly is buzzes dungeon which was already one of my all-time favorite boss themes for the most part it sounds the same but Vaughn cough added a couple extra motives towards the end of the track that really completed in a way I never knew I wanted [Music] [Applause] that's what I meant when I said I wanted to bonk off to take more risks I don't mean just changing the Tambor slightly and calling it a day I mean playing around with the composition to make it sound fresh and interesting and buzzes dungeon and bamboo Terrace are the only tracks where Volkov really attempted that I guess if I really had to nitpick I prefer the original opening measures for crawdad farm I see peak and cloud spires but the rest of those tracks sound just fine to me the rest of the soundtrack I found found to the same category as Spyro 1 in spyro 2 reignited and sounds so close to the originals that I can barely tell the difference all I can say is that I've barely listened to the remix soundtracks for the first two games outside of the game while I've already listened to the Spyro three reignited soundtrack maybe six times and prefer it to the PlayStation soundtrack on the whole needless to say I give it a thumbs-up finally we can move on to the gameplay of Spyro 3 starting off the core mechanics are basically identical to that of Spyro 2 you run jump glide and hover your way through 30 odd stages while flaming or charging enemies and collecting gems unlike Spyro 2 where you unlock new mechanics as the game progressed in spyro 3 you start off with the head bashed ladder climb and swimming abilities from the get-go given that this was the first game in the trilogy I played the in-game skill training was so good that I was never confused or overwhelmed with how to use all these mechanics making their unlockable status in Spyro 2 all the more unnecessary Spyro himself doesn't really get any mechanical expansions we haven't seen before besides maybe the ice breath and frozen altars but even that's just a close-range version of the ice breath powerup from cloud temples in the second game the controls are one-to-one the same as Spyro 2 from the analog sensitivity to the button mappings and the controls were already pretty good in that game so I'm not complaining unfortunately you still use the bumpers for camera rotation which is still too slow and the right stick is still unused the only real difference is that while the camera centering feature in Spyro 2 requires you to press L&R together in spyro 3 the left and right bumpers individually center the camera while the left and right triggers turn it while a small change I discovered this entering feature in spyro 3 almost immediately Wallens spyro 2 it took me several playthroughs to just kind of stumble onto it other than that the core mechanics are just as satisfying as ever jumping gliding and hovering feel great flaming and charging enemies as satisfying and the swimming sections are still a lot of fun on the other hand the head Bash in climbing don't really see any exciting new use cases they didn't already have in the second game granted even the magma cone climbing section wasn't that great but with the exception of a handful of ladders and desert ruins and a few and spooky swamp climbing barely appears at all in this game I guess head bash chests are a little more common than before and there's one secret that uses it but other than that nothing personally I'd rather the level and systems designers focus on mechanics that are fun rather than trying to force ones that aren't for their own sake and for the most part spyro 3 does just that similarly I don't really have anything new to say about the reignited trilogy as far as the core mechanics and controls go as I said in my previous reviews I find that the controls are tighter and overall more responsive than the original trilogy this along with superior sound design and animations gives Spyros movements much stronger feedback compared to the original Spyro 3 the full analog camera control is a blessing for certain platforming sections but once again I really don't understand why the game couldn't have had a sensitivity slider in the options menu that said I did discover during my switch run that not only can you center the camera by tapping the left trigger but you can also hold it down to transition into a tank control scheme similar to banjo kazooie and Super Mario Sunshine in terms of camera responsiveness it really doesn't get any faster than that I also discovered that you can make sharper and faster turns in the swimming and flying sections by turning the camera along with the left stick making for smoother experiences than the original games other than that the controls follow the example of Spyro 1 and Spyro 2 reignited in my spiral 1 review I praised the combat for its simple but effective enemy design that kept you on your toes while properly rewarding players for defeating all the enemies Spyro 2 featured considerably easier enemies while also swapping out gem drops with spirit particles which at best provide unsatisfying back for defeating enemies and at worst force you to wreak ill a bunch of enemies to reactivate the powerup gates and repeat visits to stages spyro 3 immediately fixes that problem by reverting back to the Spyro 1 gem drop system you kill a rhino you get a gem again I still consider spirit particles a minor criticism but gem drops are just more satisfying and rewarding than spirit particles ever could be when it comes to the enemy design itself I find it somewhere between Spyro 1 and Spyro 2 like Spyro 2 a lot of the enemies in the early game especially don't put up much of a fight and practically defeat themselves however by the time you reach evening like the challenge starts to ramp up with enemies that give you a run for your money these ninja rhinox will kick your butt if you're unprepared and really ramped up the tension in the ancient nine section especially these cat wizards channel the Druids from Spyro one manipulating the environment while also Giganta fiying the archer and soldier rhinox these weird metal cup guys are kind of like the electricity norc's from spyro one requiring you to time your attacks accordingly the Dino Desperados and Dino mines give you a brief window to run up to them and attack them before they'll shoot you dead along with dynamite throwers and turret variants that remind me of the north commandos finally in haunted tomb these earth shaper mummies are only vulnerable to these weird explosive snowball things meaning you have to turn their attacks against them again I still think Spyro one had the overall strongest combat encounters of the three games but this is still getting pretty dang close especially compared to the largely ineffective enemies in Spyro 2 speaking of which while editing for my Spyro 2 review I realized that riptos rage downplayed platforming compared to the first game while Spyro 1 consistently tested your sense of timing and spatial awareness Spyro 2 generally had fewer bottomless pits fewer large glides and fewer opportunities to really flex that new hover mechanic when I think back to my time with the second game the only stages I can really think of that have a considerable amount of platforming in them are probably her okosan mystic marsh spyro 3 meanwhile brings platforming closer to its Spyro 1 roots from the beginning stages feature tricky glides that test your skills and force you to think about how to navigate to your destination Master the hover in this game is mandatory in a way that it really wasn't in Spyro - last but not least we have exploration in my review I praise Sparra one for its clever secrets that rewarded players with gems for thinking outside the box in spyro 2 i found that stages were seriously lacking in these kinds of engaging secrets with almost everything being clearly visible and accessible from the beaten path with the exception of that one long glide from the top of the autumn Plains Castle Spile 3 meanwhile features tons of these aha moments to make exploration more rewarding than either of the previous two games moments like taking the secret whirlwind and cloud spires after reactivating the cloud generator the secret underground area in Sergeant Birds Base the treetops and breakable walls in spooky swamp the secret egg and Dino Minds etcetera in the case of icy peak especially the moment where you figure out how to break through the ice and begin swimming underneath the level is really satisfying and adds a spike of engagement to the level that wouldn't exist otherwise on that note the level design is a substantial improvement over the previous two games as I've argued level design provides players with a playground to learn improve and ultimately master the systems and mechanics Spyro 1 did this really well though I still maintain that the artisans levels were maybe a bit too easy even for introductory stages spyro 2 rubbed up the pacing of the main path of stages but emphasized meaningless meandering across the same patches of level design to destroy mistery jars and lock skill points or play annoying minigames this made stage is far more annoying and repetitive to route to 100% completion compared to the first game Spyro 3 meanwhile combines the stronger qualities of Spyro 1 and Spyro 2 while downplaying the weaker aspects of both games making for the overall most polished and best design levels in the classic Spyro series like Spyro 2 spyro 3 retains the overall more streamlined golden paths making for stages that are overall more energetic in faster paced compared to Spyro 1 stages also followed the example of fracture hills and aquaria towers and structuring every level like a giant donut in other words the ending of each stage loops back into the start with a shortcut permanently opening for repeat visits small a small change this makes routing stages significantly faster and more convenient compared to the first two games which either didn't have shortcuts at all or featured arbitrary points of no return back to the start each level also features a handful of side areas accessible by mini portals and bridged by minimal loading screens while primarily intended to house the minigames the side area still feature gems to collect enemies to defeat and even secrets to find what's nice about relegating minigames to side areas is that it cuts down on potential within level backtracking over spyro 2 leaving the main path of each stage fast-paced and well optimized like Spyro 1 while better optimizing player guidance and navigation with stronger signifiers to communicate what is optional and what isn't best part is that you can instantly teleport yourself back to the main stage through the pause menu so as far as I'm concerned these side areas are an unambiguous improvement over the previous two games despite all the new characters all the minigames the new side areas and even some within level backtracking spyro 3 levels are still fast paced straightforward and fun as all held to fully complete core centric minigames can still be finished in a couple of minutes or less with only a few exceptions more importantly I find stages more fun to route than the previous two games it's fun to discover micro optimizations to cut down and repeated travel and to beat the stage that much quicker and all of this is achievable without having to exploit glitches the designers never intended which is the sign of a better designed game now granted I'm sure that if I looked at the time stamps in my footage I discovered that spyro 3 stages are the overall longest of the three games but considering I was having fun the entire time and never felt like stages were slow boring or poorly paced to me it doesn't matter if they're statistically longer because they didn't feel that way so yeah I enjoy virtually every level in spyro 3 from top to bottom but no game is perfect and spyro 3 stages certainly have their share of flaws I'd like to discuss in the interest of fairness first off there's something about lost fleet that just doesn't vibe with me I can't even say that it's a badly designed stage necessarily because there's some really fun platforming and exploration in the third skateboarding section is a blast I think the problem is that much like Zephyr this level just has too much content in too little space and too much reach reading of old ground I don't dislike the submarine game but I also wouldn't have complained if the remake had cut it altogether also grabbing the gems in this room reminds me of destroying the seaweed in the quería towers I guess this is marginally better since the time limit on the powerup gate creates a challenge since you die in the acid but I also wouldn't need to swim around here if I could just collect gems while in the sub I still think Zephyr fracture hills and shady oases are the worst levels in the trilogy but lost fleet is definitely my least favorite level in this game second while the optimal path in every stage is much tighter and less dependent on within level backtracking in spyro 2 the game does have more of it than I remembered in particular mystery jars returned to bog down the pace of bamboo Terrace and charmed Ridge I didn't like these things in Spyro 2 and I don't like them any better here that said two mystery jars in this game is strictly better than the four from Spyro 2 so I'll take what I can get watch treasure chests returned from Spyro 1 in function identically here compared to Spyro 1 or even the armored chests from Spyro 2 why find that the return trips for these are generally quicker and less intrusive thanks to the doughnut-shaped level design and greater abundance of shortcuts on that note sheila's Alps argent Birds Base Bentley's outpost and agent 9 slab eschew the donut shaped level design of the Spyro stages and fall back on the examples of crystal glacier or North Cove and being entirely linear and I really don't understand why given that these stages have some within level backtracking going on having a shortcut back to the beginning of the stage would have actually been really helpful but alas there are many other small instances of within level backtracking sprinkled throughout Spyro 3 like this egg platform and crystal islands for example you could add a tiny platform to get back up and nothing of value would be lost generally speaking however I find these instances shorter and less pervasive than spyro two most instances pay off with meaningfully new gameplay that justifies the downtime and there's usually a fast way to get back on the main drag afterwards contrast this with spyro 2 where the meaningless back-and-forth was treated as an end unto itself to pad out playtime in my previous review I spent a long time and probably too long complaining about the between level backtracking unfortunately spyro 3 doesn't return to the superior design of Spyro 1 where every single stage could be fully completed on the first visit this is because similar to the new moves from the previous game the new playable characters must be unlocked similar to the talismans in the second game you must finish every level in a hub besides the speed ways to reach the next world in fact if you don't know the game that well the potential backtracking is actually higher than it was in the second game in terms of the sheer number of instances now in a perfect world spyro 3 wouldn't have any between level backtracking at all but I'm willing to tolerate it in this game for several reasons first much like how you could skip backtracking to idle Springs by playing Colossus first and unlocking swimming most of the backtracking instances in Spyro 3 can be skipped by playing stages in a specific order if you play sheila's out before you play sonny villa then you won't have to come back to the stage a second time for Shila section later if you know that hunter will get captured an evening like a few stages in you can play Lost fleet first to avoid backtracking for the skateboarding section I also don't really count the Sparks levels as between level backtracking since you're going back to the hub world all the time anyways because of that there are only three instances of backtracking for a hundred percent compared to the five in the last game sergeant bird and Moulton crater Bentley and bamboo Terrace and agent 9 and fireworks factory second the story justification for why the backtracking exists is stronger than it was in Spyro 2 freeing the other characters and turning the tides against the sorceress feel satisfying in a way that paying moneybags for the ability to jump against a wall just isn't third in Spyro 2 there were no compelling reasons why the moves had to be in lockable patting out playtime in spyro 3 meanwhile you're unlocking entirely different characters with unique sets of mechanics learning how to play as six characters at once would be overwhelming and confusing for new players so making them unlockable allows the designers to pace out the new gameplay and make it more digestible fourth the much like Spyro - there are sequence breaking glitches that allow you to enter all three of these sections early and like the double jump and glimmer they're all easy to learn and execute for the Tiki Lodge simply jump on top of this post and hover on top of the birdcage in bamboo Terrace swim over this waterfall and hold up and charge then swim through the air behind this wall in fireworks factory executes a well-timed glide to finagle yourself in between the ceiling and this antenna here with those you can finish all three stages in a single visit unfortunately all of these glitches were removed in spyro 3 reignited however I can still tolerate coming back to these levels because 5 spyro 3 superior level design keeps the recycled content to a minimum unlike Spyro 2 where revisiting a stage we set the level and force you to replay the entire stage the very end or in the worst instances we kill a bunch of enemies to reactivate the powerup gates Spyro 3 eliminates all this unnecessary repetition with its superior doughnut-shaped level design because the end level loop shortcuts stay open and repeat visits you can get from the start of molten crater to the sergeant bird section in about 15 seconds and the same thing goes for the other two levels sixth and finally you're revisiting a stage for substantially new content in Spyro 2 level revisits amounted to grabbing a handful of gems and maybe playing an easy boring minigame in the span of two minutes in spyro 3 revisiting a stage sees you entering a completely new section of the stage you haven't even seen before and because you're playing as the other characters the gameplay is substantially different as well it's like I've been saying since my banjo kazooie review if you're going to make me revisit a stage I've already played and at least give me something substantially new to do when I get there and that's exactly what spyro 3 does this was also the only spyro game on the PlayStation to let you warp from the Atlas though that's a moot point now thanks to the reignited Shoji retrofitting this feature into the first two games a perfect world the side character introductory levels would loop back into the star and these backtracking instances would have been moved to later stages overall I still had more fun playing these levels than I did in either of the previous two games thanks to the fast-paced core stage design use of side areas in far stronger utilization of the core systems bosses returned in spyro 3 with more of them to fight than the previous two games combined the main bosses in riptos rage were a big improvement over the first game and Spyro 3 uses them as a template for the new story bosses buzz spike scorch and the sorceress the other characters provide spiral with power-ups or other items to damage the boss each boss has a unique gimmick that makes them distinct and generally speaking the difficulty curve trends upwards while avoiding the unnecessarily beefy health bar of the gulp boss fight in spyro 2 I don't really have anything else to say about the bosses themselves except they're reasonably challenging and cap-off each hub world pretty well in addition to the four main story bosses there's also an additional eight bosses sprinkled throughout stages making for a total of 12 while a good batch of bosses that are strictly better than the ones from Spyro 1 neither of the two bouts but the sorceress reached the heights of the final boss with ripto at the end of Spyro 2 still these battles are better than average for a collective bond game so I'll certainly take them with the core gameplay largely covered we've got to start talking about the side content and boy oh boy is there a lot of it in these reviews I've sung the praises for the overall systems design in the Spyro series the fast paced core game loop makes the trilogy stand out from other collected bonds which are often bloated with recycled content or otherwise padded for length however the problem with focusing on a toolkit of simple but satisfying mechanics is that they can only stay engaging for so long before the player starts to get bored Spyro 1 is a game that starts out really engaging and elegantly designed with a solid core and excellent level design however because the mechanics barely evolved as the game progresses eventually it starts to become boring because you're doing fundamentally the same thing over and over again for 4 hours straight despite its best for its Sparrow to fail to sufficiently address this issue besides swimming in the hover none of the new mechanics sufficiently deep in moment-to-moment gameplay and 90% of the minigames emphasize using mechanics in the same ways you've been using them all game and therefore don't add any meaningful variety spyro 3 improves on both of the previous games by severely expanding the core gameplay with 4 new playable characters while also introducing a slew of meaningfully different gameplay thereby eliminating the fatigue and elegance issues from the previous games once and for all now many reviewers have argued that this makes Spyro three unfocused with the core gameplay drowning under a tidal wave of random gameplay they didn't really sign on for you'll recall I came to a similar conclusion on Conker's Bad Fur Day this game could have been a great platformer it could have been a great racer and it could have been a great shooter but ultimately conquer puts its fingers in so many pies that none of the individual play styles ever reached their full potential if you feel the same way about Spyro 3 I understand and respect that even if I personally don't agree with it even so I'd argue that spyro 3 shows considerably more restraint and Conker's Bad Fur Day or even the jak and sly games that succeeded it and is much better designed than all of those games to boot unlike all of those games spyro 3 never loses sight of its core gameplay the majority of Spyro 3 is still spent playing a spiral running jumping and hovering around open sandbox levels while flaming and charging enemies and collecting gems and much like Spyro 2 a significant amount of the minigames within Stages focus on the player's core mechanics and this is all in addition to ones that are actually meaningfully different from the core gameplay however while most of these core centric minigames in Spyro 2 lacked sufficient tension to generate player engagement the ones in Spyro 3 are considerably more challenging compare the boring seahorse Tower minigame to the water tunnels in Spyro 3 both of these use the core swimming mechanic but the latter is more challenging since it's realistically possible to fail meaning it actually tests your skills and is ultimately more engaging because of it in fact almost every core centric minigame in spyro 3 is a better version of a similar minigame from Spyro 2 for example while George the snow leopard was pointless and didn't test the players skills to any significant degree Farley the wolf is a puzzle centric platforming section where the player must use Farley's ball to manipulate the environment and escort Farley back to cam Clarke while the cowlick herding minigame in Spyro 2 was boring repetitive and spread the seven cowlicks out as far as physically possible the equivalent Sun seed minigame in spyro 3 keeps it short and sweet with only three Sun seeds that each moved through a different path accelerating the pace and therefore the challenge along the way Nancy the skater forces you to split your attention and tests your timing and spatial awareness while the equivalent lightning stone thief minigame was just a bunch of pointless running around the thief chases and moulting crater and I see peek improve on the sparkplug thieves and mystic Marsh since the use of a unique side area means you aren't being forced to revisit parts of the stage you've already played more importantly these chases are faster paced and therefore more exciting not to mention more challenging the sleepyhead boss fight eliminates the frustrating ice physics from the ox boss fight in Metropolis and introduces mooks to fight between sets it's not a particularly good bus but I'd still rather fight this guy than the Ox the rhinox shooting gallery and bamboo Terrace requires a stronger sense of timing as well as the ability to properly lead your shots whereas the equivalent shooting gallery and dragon shores practically beats itself while the seed climbing section in Zephyr forced you to waste your time hurting calyx or backtracking from the professor to find a second seed the progression and Jack and the Beanstalk is more puzzle heavy and faster paced the manta ray shooting section is a more exciting combination of the manta ray rings and aquaria towers as well as the Sheep saucer dogfight in Metropolis generally speaking the camera angles are far more competent in better at framing the action compared to spyro 2 which often saddled you with the standard platforming camera when an overhead view would have been preferable while almost all of these core centric minigames are better than their spyro 2 with lence there are a couple that are worse for example the Firefly bomb minigame is a lot like the alchemist escort in fracture hills despite the stronger player guidance stomping these mushrooms takes longer than charging an earth shaper so if the Firefly deviates from the expected path you don't really have time to correct yourself before he slams into a mushroom and explodes you'll also remember that I wasn't a huge fan of Colossus hockey and spyro 2 due to the annoying ice physics and insistence on using the standard platforming camera spyro 3 similarly has a weird minigame where you freeze cats and push them into your goal to score points the ice physics and the camera angle haven't improved in the slightest and the minigame itself is also considerably less challenging than the Colossus version I will say that manipulating these cats feels much better to play than trying to grab the puck wall repeatedly clipping through it ultimately this minigame is less frustrating than the Spyro 2 version but it's still not very good certain minigames follow the example of the trolley and breeze harbor by departing from the core gameplay altogether one of these is the two round hovercraft shootout this is like the stationary cannons except you can move around and strafe with the bumpers this minigame is fun for what it is though it could be a bit more challenging and make use of the LOB shots to a greater degree the boss fight against Bluto the wry knock uses a similar tank control scheme only the turning is pretty harsh and you can't strafe sideways given that not everybody owned a duel shock this control scheme makes sense but I still think the reignited trilogy should have updated this to something more analog friendly or at least turned down the sensitivity speaking of the reignited trilogy by and large these core centric minigames play just as well as they did on PlayStation know what there are some Bugaboos I'd like to address you'll recall from my last review that the overhead camera angle in the turtle suit minigame was reverted back to the standard platforming camera and the reignited trilogy the same thing applies to spyro 3 reignited for minigames like the Firefly escort whack-a-mole with Bentley and Nancy the skater in the case of whack-a-mole life that it doesn't really make a difference this isn't like crystal popcorn where the standard platforming camera actively clashes but the incredibly thin window to grab each crystal which gives the AI hunter an unfair advantage in whack-a-mole meanwhile there are tons of moles wandering around to whack at all times and the full analog camera control is responsive enough to frame the action properly Nancy the skater meanwhile is clearly worse than the PlayStation version of the mini game it's hard to guard Nancy against the rhinox when you can't see the whole playing field at once even with the full analog camera control leading me to lose in spots I wouldn't have with the original camera angle consequently the better approach is to look around at the rynek alcoves which is hard when the camera is actively fighting you the whole time in the case of the Firefly escort I find that it doesn't make the mini game any worse since the problem was always predicting which mushroom to stomp and when additionally the rocks no longer respawn and the hitbox for these mushrooms is a lot more generous than it used to be so now it's a mini game that you can easily cheese regardless of all of that there really wasn't a compelling reason to change any of these camera angles so I've got a wonder why spyro 2 and spyro 3 reignited decided to change them to begin with flight sections returned from the previous games and are similar to the Spyro 2 speed waves the only real change to the obstacle course gameplay is that you start off with a little possible time with the start and earn gems directly from the objects instead these minigames were fun in previous games and they're still fun here so I don't really have anything else left to say like the last game hunter is also hiding in each one of these speed ways and finding him triggers a secret minigame all of these minigames are basically more challenging versions of the ones from Spyro 2 though this time you play as hunter himself the only real exception is the airplane minigame but even that's basically a more challenging version of the Sheep saucer dogfight in Metropolis truth be told I always consider these minigames fairly average and among the weaker minigames in spyro 3 in both spyro 2 and Spyro 3 they provide a brief mechanical challenge but are generally too short to leave much of an impression at the very least I can say that the Spyro three renditions were slightly more challenging but honestly you could probably cut these hunter minigames from both Spyro 2 and Spyro 3 and I wouldn't really miss them finally we have the new racing sections which basically replace the skill points from the Spyro 2 speed wings basically you fly through rings in a sequence while using blue boost stars to launch yourself ahead of opponents and red firework stars to temporarily immobilize your opponents long enough to fly past them these minigames test your skills with Spyros flight controls and require finesse to beat while also testing you on your route knowledge of the race course piece of V the hidden star power-ups pulling off these tight turns and beating the race in first place by the seat of your pants just feel satisfying and makes for a gratifying challenge that said I do understand criticism that these sections are maybe a bit too challenging and on that note I should discuss a little-known feature of the PlayStation original automated challenge tuning basically Spyro 3 tracks your performance as you play if you play well the game gets slightly harder and if you struggle the game will get slightly easier the hard mode versions of these races can be really unforgiving which is fine by me for the most part but it can be frustrating to race through mushroom Speedway seemingly perfectly only to lose by literally half a second even then I can usually beat most of these races on my second try if not my first now if you're really struggling with the race minigames you can use optional cheat codes to lower the difficulty unfortunately you can't really do this in spyro 3 reignited because as far as I can tell the automated challenge tuning was seemingly removed in favor of a single difficulty for the most part the remake seems to provide the hard mode versions of minigames and stages which were never that much harder mind you the only real exception is the spiked boss fight and the race with the Sasquatch 6 which both seem noticeably easier than I'm used to unfortunately that does mean that if you are struggling with the racing sections there's no real way around it besides getting good which could be frustrating to the right person now personally even I think they could have toned down the races just a teensy bit but even at their absolute worst I'd still argue that these races represent more interesting meaningful gameplay than any of the minigames in spyro 2 several commenters asked me in my spyro 1 review why I didn't mention the flight controls being slippery ER and the reignited trilogy as I stated in my Spyro 2 review I didn't find that the new controls made that much of a difference for the obstacle course gameplay the racing gameplay in spyro 3 is a bit of a different story and it all comes down to these blue boosts star rings in the original the boost stars just increased your overall speed wall in the remake it also seems to inhibit your turning in a way that's difficult to describe consequently I found myself relying on the d-pad for these hairpin turns or using the left and right sticks together both of which are noticeably tighter still I found myself getting pretty frustrated with the harbour Speedway race and my switch run where I kept just barely missing the Rings however then I went back and played the section on PC and beat it in one try so maybe the switch analog sensitivity just sucks or maybe I was just tilted and I don't know before I move on I should note that there's an infamous glitch and the original 2000 release of spyro 3 where if you play the time trial or race minigames but fail either of them then shut off the console or quit the game the eggs are soft locked and you have to start a new save file or buy a copy of The Greatest Hits version to obtain them this glitch was fixed on the greatest hits and platinum rerelease of spyro 3 as well as in spyro 3 reignited as long as we're talking about flight game played there's also a boss fight against two flying dragons that is on paper a better version of the metropolis cheap saucer dogfight by virtue of being more challenging nevertheless I found myself getting kind of frustrated with this boss on switch and I can't pinpoint any version specific reasons why so I'm gonna blame the underlying design here while I like all of the ingredients of this fight on paper I do think the bosses increasing in speed hiding in alcoves and regenerating their health is maybe a bit too much to have all at once I mean I can beat this fight quickly by virtue of having played it so many times before so I would understand if newer players found this fight really frustrating next up we have the skateboarding sections with one appearing in every hub world now if there's anybody that should hate skateboarding in a spiral game it should be me I've never played a skateboarding game in my life and it wasn't something I was particularly itching to play when I first played spyro 3 in 2011 but honestly I think these are my favourite minigames in the entire trilogy again I'm sure that Tony Hawk pro skater or skate have more finesse and a higher skill ceiling but for a recurring minigame in a platformer these skating sections are super fun with fluid and free-flowing controls that are easy to pick up and play the trick system is easy to learn but difficult to master with the skill points really encouraging you to go ham and learn the more advanced tricks pulling off a nasty NORC or raging rip toe or quintuple rotation makes you feel like a Chad despite all of this these sections still have enemies to fight platforms to jump over and gems to collect meaning they don't stray too far from the core while still providing substantially different gameplay than the main stages the difficulty curve is competent as well with excellent skill training and guided gameplay to help the player learn the mechanics and ultimately master them the third section combines your newfound mastery of the basic movement and tricks to race some wry knock boarders using tricks to build up a boost gauge this introduces a unique risk reward system surrounding which tricks to use and when and how often this race is thrilling and provides a satisfying challenge while feeling different enough from the Speedway races to deserve being in the game now I understand if people find the Sasquatch 6 race maybe a little too hard and certainly I hated them on my first playthrough through a combination of increased skill land increased appreciation for the design I now find it an invigorating challenge and a perfect capstone to the best series of minigames in spyro 3 with all of sparrows gameplay covered which makes up easily 80% of the game by the way it's time to talk about the new playful characters Sheila Sargent bird Bentley agent 9 and sparks I think the problem insomniac ran into and trying to expand Spyros moveset in spyro 2 was that there wasn't much else a dragon could really do with sparrows mechanics already stretched their limits in the second game and Sam niak decided to expand the core gameplay through alternate characters instead which was probably the best approach they could have taken generally speaking reviewers and comment errs don't seem to really enjoy playing as these characters and once again that's a legitimate opinion to hold however being the unapologetic clickbait hipster trash that I am I enjoy playing is all of these characters and consider them a valuable expansion of the core gameplay that's right I said core gameplay just because Spyro isn't on the screen doesn't mean it's not core gameplay in my dated grody old 3d Sonic reviews identified the essential components of Sonic when judging each of the new characters in some cases the characters succeeded while in other cases they fell down pretty hard I'd like to do the same thing for spyro 3 and evaluating all the new characters as I've argued in my previous reviews the spiral core is characterized by three sources of engagement platforming combat and exploration these are the things that make Spyro fun to play and so long as the mechanics of the new characters stay true to these engagement types I have no qualms with calling them core gameplay let's start with Sheila the first character you unlock in the most similar to Spyro overall while spiral levels tend to focus more on horizontal platforming visa V gliding and hovering Sheila sections focused more on vertical platforming allowing for a unique level design and interesting secrets on that note her mechanics include hopping air hopping and high jumps Sheila sections also feature enemies to fight who she can either kick in the face or stop from overhead finally Sheila stages are full of gems to collect in secret areas to discover meaning Sheila takes off all three boxes for Spyro play style out of the five character Sheila has the most sections in one full level and four sub areas out of all of these the climb up the tower and sonny viola is probably my favorite though the combat centric 2d romp through desert ruins was also pretty enjoyable as far as the reignited Choji goes Sheila plays similarly to the PlayStation original much like Spyro however the analog sensitivity for movement is far more responsive in the improved animations and sound design makes Sheila feel much better to play as what's more I noticed while poring through footage that the collision on her kick attack seems more reliable than the original game which would often whiff through baskets and vases overall as a first character Sheila is fun to play even if she's not earth-shatteringly different from Spyro next up we have Sargent bird much like Sheila Sargent bird focuses more on vertical platforming basically you hold our tap cross to ascend using the left and right buffers to strafe and using the d-pad to turn admittedly the flight could stand to be a little more free-flowing but for what it is it's still pretty fun one thing I will note is that if you have the active camera feature turned on the camera will turn whenever you strafe so make sure to switch to the passive camera for these levels that and the straight feature itself is never mentioned by NPCs or in the help menu which is probably why a lot of people understandably don't know about it the reignited trilogy fixes it so that you can comfortably strafe an active camera mode and give sergeant bird a more satisfying flapping animation while also making it easier to turn making sergeant bird easily the best he's ever been for some reason however the remake still doesn't tell you about the straight feature in either tutorials or in the help menu and I really don't understand why with all that said flying around is fun and the emphasis on picking up and dropping objects while simple makes for some decent puzzle solving and mechanical variants sergeant bird sports rocket launchers that auto target enemies after a half second you can also zoom in to snipe enemies in first-person mode similar to Spyro super flame sergeant bird sections are plastered with gems and offer decent secrets to discover making them fun to explore so while people seem to consider sergeant bird this weird departure from the core gameplay he still addresses the engagement types of platforming combat and exploration while feeling different enough from Spyro to add real variety I particularly enjoy Sargent Birds romp through the Tiki Lodge and Moulton crater an open ended sandbox with side areas where the pickup and drop mechanic is put to good use the cat which tower has kind of an odious reputation but it's actually one of Sergeant Birds easiest minigames all you really have to do is strafe out of the way with the bumpers and pop off shots is the witches fly past again given that the game doesn't properly tutorial eyes strafing I understand why people would struggle with this my favorite sergeant bird section is an enchanted towers where you get to fly around the level you already played a sparrow and explore the towers above while dogfighting with flying lizards it's a lot of fun and adds a new dimension to an already great level without feeling to backtracking next up we have Bentley which is easily my least favorite of the new characters to play as while Sheila and sergeant bird are platforming focused characters Bentley focuses more on combat and puzzle solving on that note the platforming and his sections is fairly minimal and not that interesting most of it amounts to a bunch of hopping up staircases and the like I might be able to excuse that a little more if the combat was really fun and for what it's worth bashing the hell out of large enemies and set dressing with her club is really satisfying the problem is that Bentley sections don't take his powerhouse playstyle as far as they really should have Bentley's outpost makes use of all as mechanics well and is the best section overall with the mountain in bamboo Terrace being a close second to the emphasis on whacking boulders in large rhinox with your club the fourth section at least has gems to collect and focuses on Bentley's combat centric gameplay with the whack-a-mole minigame the problem is that Bentley's third section is a shitty boxing match against the Colossus Yeti who somehow survived being crushed again I maintain this minigame isn't nearly as bad as people say it is since you can literally just mash the square button and she's the boss in quick succession but by the same token if the best thing I can say about Yeti boxing is that you can brute-force your way through it that's not the sign of a well-designed fun mini game for what it's worth the controls and the reignited version of this game seem faster paced and more free-flowing than the original rather than wasting the players time with something nobody wanted to play I think insomniac would have been better off including a boss fight against one of these evil snowman guys maybe they could have emphasized this deflection mechanic that is introduced in Bentley's outpost and never used again I don't know anything was more fitting than this despite his flaws I can't say I really hated playing Bentley sections either two out of the four sections are well-designed and used his mechanics well and the fourth one is fine enough not to mention that we've still got tons of gems to find in nooks and crannies to explore Bentley has combat and exploration and passes muster for platforming but I really would have liked more platforming and a boss fight of some kind much like Sheila Bentley plays almost identically to his PlayStation counterpart in the reignited Choji though his animations and movement feel slightly better the camera angle was also shifted to an over-the-shoulder viewpoint and given how bulky this character is that was probably the right call finally we have agent 9 who's my favorite of the four new characters agent 9 controls identically to make a may involve net in the first Mega Man Legends game the d-pad and the analog stick functioned like a tank called the left and right bumpers allow you to strafe similar to sergeant bird in the hovercraft like Bentley agent 9 is a combat focused character only his sections emphasize aiming and shooting at enemies rather than beating them with the club shooting enemies is satisfying and like Spyro and Sergeant bird you can zoom in and shoot enemies in first-person mode if you want agent 1900 pick up grenades and hurl them at armored enemies to damage them like all the previous characters gems and chests are scattered across agent 9 stages making for rewarding exploration many reviewers and comment errs have criticized agent 9 and PlayStation for his unorthodox control scheme and I can certainly understand why dual analog has been the standard and console shooters in the intervening two decades and for good reason thankfully the reignited trilogy updates agent nines controls to include dual analog and shooting with the right trigger you can still play with the d-pad and the bumpers if you want but I imagine new players will have an easier time playing with the analog sticks the aiming and shooting as functional and works well though I can't help but find that it makes these sections easier than they used to be my only real complaint with the new controls is that if you're used to on inverted aiming controls like I am but prefer inversion for the normal camera you have to go in and change the inversion for the camera before and after every agent 9 section while that's mildly annoying gets a momentary inconvenience at worst what's also worth noting is that if you're playing spyro 3 reignited on PC the game supports mouse and keyboard for faster and more accurate aiming even if you prefer a normal controller for Spyro the game allows you to switch to mouse and keyboard on the fly making agent 9 overall best on PC as for agent nines levels I love them all though I could do without the backtracking and agent 9 slab shooting enemies and dodging projectiles as hectic and fun and all of agent 9 sections are just challenging enough to introduce tension and thus engagement the first person shooter section and fireworks factory is one of my favorite sections in the entire trilogy shooting up ninjas and destroying enemy generators is just loads of pulse-pounding fun and the challenge is just high enough to keep you on your toes another one of my favorites is the rail shooter section which is a more challenging version of the rail shooter section and canyon Speedway in the last game these dinosaurs are out for blood so you've got to be really quick on the draw making for a tense and challenging romp that rewards you with hidden gems afterwards mastering the controls and triumphing over all the enemies in agent 9 sections is just satisfying and something I look forward to revisiting everytime I replace Spyro 3 while I do maintain that agent 9 could have used more platforming in his levels the combat and exploration is there and I still find his sections a unique expansion of the Spyro core while offering meaningfully different gameplay in addition to the for critters Sparks is also playable in this game as well these stages are arcade a top-down shooter sections focusing on combat puzzles and exploration the enemies put up a strong fight and the power-ups are satisfying to use levels themselves force you to think about how to progress and are filled with gems to collect and secrets to find in each one ends with a face-off against a decently challenging boss unlike all the other characters Sparks can't jump at all meaning this is officially not core gameplay still two out of three threads ain't bad and the levels themselves are fun in their own right and diversify the gameplay while the reignited trilogy updated agent nines controls to use dual analog for some reason sparks as control scheme carries over verbatim to the remake that's fine by me seeing as the existing control scheme is well tutorial eyes dand easy to pick up and play but I feel like the option for a twin stick control scheme would have been worthwhile what's nice about the PC version is that we get full mouse and keyboard support allowing you to aim with the mouse and strafe with woz d making these sections that much better I should also mention that the PC version supports using the mouse and flying sections as well as in first-person aiming what's also nice is that playing these stages unlocks new perks for sparks including farther gem grabs and extra hit point and the ability to break baskets and vases in the original this is where you officially unlock the sparks treasure finder for some reason you just start off with this game braking ability and spyro 2 even though nothing in the game tells you that you have it I have seen some Spyro 2 fans complain that you don't start with the treasure finder in Spyro 3 but if you're really desperate you can input a cheat code to unlock it early much like the OL abilities cheat code in Spyro 2 the cheat varies between the original and greatest-hits versions so make sure you enter the correct one the last sparks level also unlocks the Atlas warp for more convenient fast travel spyro 3 reignited Falls the examples of Spyro 1 and Spyro 2 reignited in just starting you off with both of these abilities so again if you really need the treasure finder at the start of the game you can just play the remake in terms of the full completion experience Spyro 3 is absolutely chock-full of content and 12 not all of it is great 100% in this game is still straightforward to keep track of like those games achieving full completion unlocks a secret final level super bonus round which is my second favorite final stage in the trilogy behind nasties loop much like that level you spend a lot of it chasing around thieves to collect treasure along with the combo powerup to shoot down sheep saucers and a secret dog fight to the death against the sorceress all that sounds pretty good so why isn't this my favorite of the final levels well personally I find it disappointing that Sheila Sargent bird Bentley and agent 9 don't see a final section of gameplay to send off their play styles instead we get another round of that math submarine minigame again I don't hate playing this but I would have preferred to see the hovercraft or the water tunnels come back instead finally as much as I love the skateboard gameplay I will admit that I raged just as hard at the Sasquatch 6 as everybody else when I first played super bonus round at this point I'm good enough at the skateboarding to appreciate the challenge but I get why people find this frustrating ultimately I think I just prefer the simplicity and better overall execution of nasties loot but this is still a much better final level than whatever dragon shores was supposed to be skill points return from Spyro 2 but unfortunately you still have to wait until after you've defeated the final boss to be able to view them thankfully however the skill point list will tell you which stages have skill points before you've unlocked them however the actual tasks you need to complete is still blanked out in the meanwhile while that's pretty annoying at least I know where I'm supposed to be looking this time around like the other games spyro 3 reignited lists all the skill points and where to find them from the get-go completely eliminating the need to look them up on the Internet as for the skill points themselves I guess they are marginally easier than they were in Spyro 2 personally I think the racing sections are a suitable replacement for the time trials and the obstacle courses but I'm not sure why the challenge runs for the bosses were removed given that none of them are as long or repetitive as gulp I think it would have made for a fun challenge for scorcher spike instead do we do stuff like braking signs killing a swimming chicken burning trees or shooting all the windows in this tower etc even the first two course record challenges are easy to rack up if you can pull off a raging ripto or two the course record for the Lost fleet track is actually pretty hard and basically requires you to finish the course without falling off the cliff granted many of the skill points in Spyro 2 weren't the Coulter big-brained but yeah once again collecting skill points in the original unlocks pages of an epilogue that shows you what happened to all the characters after this game Spyro 3 confirms that not only is ripto still kicking after the Spyro 2 epilogue but nasty NORC similarly survived disappearing in a puff of smoke like this is Sonic lost world or something fun fact the plot of Enter the Dragonfly was actually going to be based on this epilogue but nasty was ultimately cut from the game and reintroduced in hero's tale instead my favorite part of the epilogue is actually the final page it gives you the sense that insomniac had the time of their lives designing these games and it's almost enough to make me shed a tear almost once again the reignited Choji replaces the epilogue with the concept art gallery which is fine again I just don't understand why something charming like the epilogue was cut from the remake while something like boxing wasn't so at this point I've thoroughly covered the original game so what else is there to say about the reignited version well remember how the Xbox 1x and ps4 Pro versions took about 20 to 30 seconds to load a stage depending on the level despite the switch using internal flash memory as opposed to the super slow HD DS on the other systems shockingly the load times are actually five to eight seconds longer depending on the stage and on that note we might as well compare load times of all four versions at once just for the lulz oh my oh my can you help us hordes of Hiroshi's rhinox have overrun our town and kidnapped the mayor you'll recall that the Xbox and PlayStation versions took about eleven seconds to reignite the level whenever spyro dies but the switch version actually increases that by an additional five seconds I was tolerating these load screens and the other two versions but I'm three games in now and I'm absolutely sick of these seriously why does dying necessitate a 16 second loading time when it doesn't in any other game I've ever played again all of these load times are severely reduced on PC especially the reigniting load screens and because there's no intro out show scenes and the levels spyro 3 reignited can load stages marginally faster than Spyro 2 reignited one thing I neglected to mention in the previous two reviews is that the map feature from Spyro 2 has been retrofitted into Spyro 1 and Spyro 3 reignited it's a nice bit of added convenience though personally I find that Spyro levels are small enough and straightforward enough that a map really isn't necessary but I'm sure that a new player will get some use out of it another change that's exclusive Despero 3 reignited is this new mega whirlwind that appears after you defeat the sorceress which takes you to a distant platform with extra lives originally this is going to be where you found super bonus round but insomniac cut it while one of the lead artists was out invocation in any event it's a small but appreciated addition to an already great remake speaking of changes exclusive to this version the original ending cutscene kind of sucks personally I don't really care that much because I fully complete collectathon games since I just think that's how they're meant to be played still this cutscene almost feels like a joke at the players expense what does it completion with what a year the Dragons of completion this will be the finale on the way guys was Barry Oh this'll be happy for disappointed yeah like where the little baby dragon just perps I'm like I expect most of my life playing this game and finally beating it for this hola the reignited version of this cutscene meanwhile is super cute and shows the dragon elders from the remake of the first game bonding with the baby dragons strangely wall orb animations were made to be unskipable and spyro 2 reignited the dragon egg animations remain skippable and spyro 3 reignited though chest opening animations are still unskipable just like they were inspire 1 reignited on that note while baby dragon hatching animations had more unique animations in the original the remake cuts out a lot of the more memorable ones the eggs themselves were also redesigned slightly to better resemble their Spyro 1 counterparts as we all know Activision rushed the reignited trilogy out the door and when you're on a strict production schedule you've got to cut non-essential features consequently I don't blame the developers for cutting animations that 90% of the audience was just gonna skip anyway speaking of this remake being rushed we've got to talk about glitches ever since the reignited trilogy came out spyro 3 reignited quickly developed a reputation as the glitchy estava three games on that note I will say besides the PC exclusive bug and Alpine Ridge and the animations breaking at unlocked frame rates spyro 1 and Spyro 2 reignited seemed basically spotless as far as glitches go the worst I found was this collision glitch in Colossus while grabbing handheld footage on switch unfortunately despite Activision hiring on Sanzaru games to pick up the slack on the third game and even delaying the trilogy for quality assurance reasons spyro 3 reignited nevertheless suffered by virtue of being the last game worked on which is a shame while it is true that spyro 3 reignited has more glitches per capita than the other two games in the package I can't help but find the issue somewhat exaggerated I'm sure a great deal of it got patched out after the initial release what spyro 3 reignited was the only game I played at launch on ps4 Pro and I don't recall running into any major problems a lot of this glitch discourse seems motivated by people hating Sanzaru games who many of you will know for sly 4 flanger ization in time as well as the 3ds sonic boom games while it's true that this third game could have used a little more time in QA spyro 3 reignited is a complete finished product that was clearly tested also let's not forget that the original Spyro 3 was also rushed and had its own share of glitches and cut content as my comparison of the Black Label and greatest hits versions reveals so let's go over all the glitches that I haven't defined I'll preface this discussion by saying that I only have my own personal experience to go off of here I'm sure that many of you ran into a glitch that I didn't and I believe you but I'm also not gonna replay this game 50 times to find every possible glitch because at some point I've got to move on to other games with that said let's go to the list Sheila and Bentley don't seem to have any animations for going through portals these pillars in this room and cloud spires have some funky collision geometry Spyro is oddly stationary during the bluto boss in my PC run sergeant bird suddenly dropped like a rock and the Tiki lodge though I was unable to recreate this glitch later and it didn't happen in my switch run the gem drop from this R I not clipped through the floor and my switch run and it took me a really long time to figure out what happened this glitch didn't occur in my PC run and I was unable to reproduce it on command this mystery jar and bamboo Terrace didn't shatter like it was supposed to on PC similarly the stained glass window also failed to shatter properly also I discovered that if you shoot out a panda at the exact time you killed the last rynek in the shooting gallery minigame the screen will fade to black not fade back in and still give you the dragon egg unfortunately I wasn't recording footage at the time of the glitch so you'll have to take my word for it after defeating spike Spyro slides backwards into the whirligig seat this also happened on my switch run money his feet phased through the floor and frozen altars in both my PC and switch runs also when the final NPC in the stage goes through the exit portal the sound effect of his footsteps loops indefinitely on PC this didn't happen on my switch run and since I can trigger it consistently on PC it seems to be a version exclusive bug also I accidentally managed to line up this frozen cat in such a way to clip this hockey rynek up to the rim of the arena the collision geometry in Lost fleet skatepark is clunky in this area though still very playable still I ran into what seems to be an invisible wall and this area on both my PC and switch runs if you manage to flame these ninja rhinox at the precise moment they jump up towards the ceiling it's possible for the gem drop to get stuck in the ceiling which happened on my switch run however this didn't happen in my PC run and I couldn't manage to reproduce it later this breakable wall and desert ruins didn't disappear after I broke it and till I walked through it this glitch didn't occur in the switch version and I was unable to replicate it on PC the decal map on this giant door disappears and reappears when you get close enough to it in Haunted tomb this dog here stopped in front of the exit portal and this happens every time I replay the level on PC finally in my PC run of super bonus round this thief managed to get himself stuck under a sheep saucer which is reproducible but tricky to pull off also I heard a thief laughing next to the source versus chamber after I'd killed all the thieves [Music] and that's it most of these things are cosmetic and don't really affect a gameplay to any significant degree and given that many of them are difficult to replicate I don't really think they're that big of a deal in fact I think the speedway egg glitch and the original release of Spyro 3 is worse than anything in this remake however the gem glitches are really annoying when they do happen since they force you to reload the stage and the collision geometry in Lost fleet skatepark does feel legitimately clunky and makes the minigame worse compared to the PlayStation version while I do agree that this game deserved more time and polish and that these cosmetic glitches can be distracting I don't think any of them are nearly bad enough to ruin this remake so remake a rear brake how well does Spyro three reignited recreate and improve upon year of the Dragon well first of all I want to say that the original Spyro 3 is a fantastic game in the perfect time out to end a great trilogy of games the story is by far the best of the three games with a decent cast of interesting characters a unique whirl of the compelling central conflict a strong emotional core and Bianca's character arc and contemptible antagonists and the sorceress and moneybags the plot also effectively motivates gameplay as a means of getting even with the sorceress a compelling villain the player loves to hate while providing excellent macro goal feedback the graphics flex the spiral art style to its breaking point with the best models and texture work of the three games making for the overall prettiest game of the three the soundtrack is an improvement over the already great offering and riptos rage with the overall strongest compositions most of her soundscape and most memorable melodies while still preserving Copeland's trademark fantasy atmosphere and ambience Spyro himself is the best he's ever been with the core game loop and mechanics being just as intoxicating as ever paired with overall trickier platforming than Spyro 2 as well as more consistent engaging secrets to discover compared to even Spyro 1 enemies better reflect their more challenging counterparts in Spyro 1 while the bosses are the best and most numerous in the trilogy the level design perfects a winning formula of a tight fast-paced main pathway that loops back into the start of the level with tons of convenient shortcuts as well as side areas to bring out the to beach minigame without overcomplicating and bloating the expected path on top of that the spiral focused minigames are generally better than the previous games with many of them being straight-up better versions of minigames from spyro 2 generally speaking minigames are more consistently challenging and therefore rewarding especially the Speedway races skateboarding is also a highlight of the game with effective skill training a competent escalation of challenge in a simple but engaging trick system unlike the previous two games which both stretched out the core game loop so thin that it eventually became boring spiral 3 expands significantly on the core with new characters while still giving Spyro the significant majority of the content Sheila and sergeant Byrd effectively capitalized in the core Spyro appeal of platforming combat and exploration while Bentley and Agent 9 could have used more platforming in their sections they absolutely nail combat and exploration despite Bentley wasting one of his sections on a crappy boxing minigame finally while Sparks has no platforming at all his levels are really fun in their own right and pay off with some engaging boss battles also I'm just gonna say it the sections where you play as these other characters are better than any of the minigames in Spyro 2 and I genuinely believe that Spyro 3 would be worse off without them with the exception of the boxing minigame int maybe the Firefly is scored but even that has some really fun exploration in it between the Spyro centric minigames fun and satisfying characters that expand the core while offering meaningfully different gameplay expanded Speedway sections and a surprisingly enjoyable recurring skateboarding minigame Spyro 3 is by far the most varied challenging and consistently engaging game in the original trilogy and Spyro 3 achieves all of this without throwing away sparrows game feel from the previous games fast paced collectathon action that's straightforward and simple to fully complete you know something spyro 3 is easily the longest game in the original trilogy but for me it really doesn't feel like it there was no point during any of my three playthroughs of this game where the core spiral gameplay ever got boring probably because all the new gameplay distracted me from it long enough for me to actually miss it contrasted this with Spira one where I found myself wanting to take breaks every hour so after magic crafters or spyro 2 where by the time I had slogged through 11 stages and autumn plains I just wanted the game to end for all these reasons and more spiral year of the Dragon is by far my favorite spiral game ever made and my vote for the best game on the original PlayStation but simply spyro year of the Dragon is one of my favorite games of all time right up there with Donkey Kong Country 2 and Paper Mario 64 that said Spyro 3 is not a perfect game and I tried to cover every down point that I could think of as great as the plot is there are a handful of annoying plot holes and contrivances while I enjoy a vast majority of the minigames there are a couple that are weaker than their Spyro 2 equivalents a few that are perhaps a hair too challenging for newer players a few that are just kind of ok and a couple that are flat-out bad while I'm willing to tolerate the three level revisits after unlocking certain characters in an ideal world the game wouldn't have any revisits at all similarly there are more instances of within level backtracking than I remembered and the game would probably be better off if some of them were cut while I loved the alternate characters Bentley an agent 9 really could have used more platforming and they would have loved one more section for each character and super bonus round oh and there are some annoying glitches and the original release but that can easily be resolved by playing the green label NTSC version most of the stuff is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things especially compared to everything Spyro 3 does well while I can absolutely understand why someone would prefer the more focus Spyro 1 and while Spyro 2 is unique for its sequence breaks and new game+ personally I prefer Spyro 3 to both of these games because it simply has the most engaging and consistent high points in any event I still maintain that it's a resounding improvement over Spyro 2 spyro 3 accomplishes everything that game set out to do better and more consistently of course you're welcome to dislike this game or prefer other games but I'm just saying so with all that said I'd like to rate the reignited version of spyro 3 a remake I reserved this score for remakes that improve the visuals fix issues with the original and maybe add new content still a remake might have some issues left untouched or other neglected opportunities to improve spyro 3 reignited inherits all of the improvements from the previous two games including the better controls superior movement feedback and full analog camera control while I personally never mind it having to unlock the treasure finder or the Atlas warp in the original I've come to appreciate the convenience of just having them in the remake spiral 3 reignited features the most detailed stylized and overall impressive visuals of the three games from the trilogy additionally the soundtrack features stefan von cough strongest worked for the trilogy overall with some excellent new instrument choices that make the best soundtrack in the trilogy sound that much better while spyro 1 and spyro 2 recycled the original scripts and failed to make any improvements Spyro 3 reignited adds a few new lines of dialogue to give the alternate characters a little more agency it also revises the source sources characterization slightly to round out her motivation and make it more understandable when it comes to gameplay spyro 3 reignited is the only game of the three to feature any improvements while Spyro 1 reignited failed to improve the bosses and Spyro 2 reignited failed to improve the mediocre minigames and terrible backtracking while removing all the original sequence breaks as well as the all abilities cheat code Spyro 3 reignited actually addresses people's complaints with agent 9 by updating his controls to use dual analog aiming additionally if you're playing on PC you can play with mouse and keyboard as both agent 9 and sparks to make their sections that much better so if I have so many positives with spyro 3 reignited then why not rate this game a.replace like I said in my spyro 1 review I reserved this score for only the best of the best the remakes I can recommend over their original versions without question while spyro 3 reignited does a lot of things right in is ultimately my preferred version of one of my favorite games of all time it's not beyond reproach and it's clear that this game suffered somewhat from the trilogy strict production schedule for example like in Spyro 2 reignited minigames with alternate angles have reverted to the standard platforming camera while most of them play fine regardless Nancy the skater is clearly worse to play here moreover while I maintain that the game's reputation regarding glitches is exaggerated especially after the patches it's also clear that the game could have used more QA and postgame support while most of the glitches I stumbled across were cosmetic or otherwise benign there were a handful of jam more collision related glitches that were mildly annoying and adversely affected the gameplay even then I couldn't get many of these glitches to trigger consistently still I would have gladly waited longer for that extra bit of Polish despite these missteps this is still a great way to play one of my favorite games of all time and between the superior visual stronger soundtrack and gameplay improvements I'm willing to tolerate a handful of glitches and some missed opportunities as I've always said I'm willing to take the bad with the good to enjoy a game that's worth enjoying and spyro 3 reignited is a game worth enjoying this has been a two-hour long review of spyro 3 and I hope you enjoyed it despite my opinions being wrong however we're not quite done with the reignited trilogy just yet join me next time for an editorial where I talk about some things I've been meaning to discuss if you liked today's review make sure to give it a like and consider subscribing for more you can also find me on the inversed cast where i meet up with hey Doc so I roll and King K to talk about videogames and read bad fanfiction you can find video versions of the podcast on YouTube and an audio version on soundcloud and iTunes I also have a let's play channel EP g place where I do informative playthroughs of games I like and some I don't it's also the new home of Z Bros play silly or playthroughs I do with my brother be sure to go check those out until next time I mix a paradigm gamer and I hope you all enjoyed the review [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: ExoParadigmGamer

Views: 126,573

Keywords: ExoParadigmGamer, Video Games, Mistertitanic, Game Mavericks, Review, Let's Play, EPG, Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2, Ripto's Rage, Gateway to Glimmer, Spyro 3, Year of the Dragon, Enter the Dragonfly, A Hero's Tail, Season of Ice, Season of Flame, Attack of the Rhynocs, Remake or Rebreak, ROR, Xross Platform, XP, Walkthrough, Playthrough, Reignited Trilogy

Id: ifMV3rPiR0s

Length: 122min 20sec (7340 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020