Spyro Original Trilogy Retrospective (FULL)

here's a quick little question you could answer in the comments what was the first video game you've ever played when i was a little kid probably around six or seven i was at my grandparents house for a family reunion maybe thanksgiving i don't remember and one of my awesome uncles came up to me and wanted to show me something in his room so okay i go to his room and i save his blocky purple dragon on a tv screen just standing there with his back turned and my uncle hands me this weird button covered contraption that felt good to wrap your hands around now i'm not entirely sure how fast i adapted to it but i remember it being strangely intuitive and me catching on surprisingly quickly i remember jumping and running around spraying fire on the green guys flying through the sky for a bit trying to jump over these guys canes but most of all before having to get off i remember after making a tough glide running around in a green hilly field just free as free could be and seeing more rolling hills in the distance that sadly i couldn't go to but still gave me this all struck adventurous feeling i may just be over romanticizing this but it felt like i found access to no entered a new world one with endless possibilities and adventure and quite possibly if you were to ask my dad ruined my life oh yeah boy i'm finally getting to do this after years of on and off planning taking a look at one of my most favorite video game series of all time spyro the dragon the best platforming mascot how can i back up this claim easy exhibit a he's a dragon he can set an inferno to your crops your livelihood and your life if your village doesn't at least offer up one full-grown steer every other day who wouldn't want to play as one of these monstrous things [Music] three factors led then fairly new studio insomniac games to the creation of spyro a demand for more family-friendly games on the playstation to more directly compete with nintendo and to counterbalance the influx of m-rated hits on the system two somebody on the team making a new 3d game engine perfect for open world exploration and three one of the game designers slash artists just saying bruh uh dragon would make such a great playable character like you could fly brave fire smash stuff like they're my favorite animal i mean i know they ain't real but they're still my favorite animal they are just the greatest creature i mean it's the combination of a tyrannosaurus rex with with wings and breeds fire i mean you've got the best of everything in the dragon this is new territory for a relatively new team just getting off a completely different kind of game that only had moderate success but with smart planning and ingenious design decisions they're able to pull off one of the most notable platforming experiences of that generation having the purple lizard being considered the playstation's unofficial mascot well second to crash but i'll get into the relationship between the teams behind crash and spyro on another date just know these games are great and hold a special place in many people's hearts mine included fyi i'm going to focus on the original playstation version of these games not the recent remake if you want my opinions on that check out this cruddy video at least after watching this one as i mainly mull over the differences between this and that with those things out of the way it's time to address a burning question you may be asking what are these games even about well they'll have you playing as spyro a young dragon who's capable of flaming charging jumping and gliding and the following games you will get new moves like hovering climbing head bashing spitting stuff swimming swimming underwater and no longer having access to this mostly useless very situational role i'll tell you what spyro feels wonderful to control jumping and making long glides feel inherently satisfying and using the charge as a dash makes movement feel fast fluid and if you're going through a bunch of enemies and chests unstoppable despite this in playing these games so many times i had some like difficulty with my latest playthrough i don't know this game just feels more jank than i remember like i don't remember spyro having this much airdrift and i distinctly remember the charge of being able to clear my height well it does them in sequels so there's that so if the gameplay i'm showing here kind of sucks at some points i i would like to apologize in advance for offending your sensibilities because it's definitely offending mine maybe my muscle memory is thinking of when i played the reignited trilogy especially since i'm using a ps4 controller this time around in my opinion reunited had the best and most refined gameplay way better than the originals heck i think i remember saying in that video that it probably ruined my ability to play the classic ones because well that's probably what's happening i feel like the best control related thing with reunited was the camera control this game was being released around the same time but dollshock1 was being introduced with its ingenious and ergonomic twin analog sticks obviously the left one's good for movement but people still haven't figured out that the right one would have been great for camera work yeah you use the back shoulder buttons to move the camera and they are slow so here's a hint although it's not that good triangle is for looking around and uh the spiral of his head is kind of in the way band he doesn't want to look beyond a 180 cone and so it's annoying to use but hey it can be used as a de facto centering camera button if you hold it for three fourths of a second kind of delayed but it's practical and well better than nothing they do add dedicated center camera controls in the later games but i'll talk about major control changes between the games when i get to them back to the other end of a controller if you've only purchased the black bar original release of a game and not the green bar greatest hits version then there's no analog support at all so you would have to settle for the eight directional d-pad to explore these fully fready environments it's not bad i mean the game was mostly designed with this in mind but i'd rather be water boarded by the cia than tried 100 any 3d spyro game for d-pad only so yeah the controls got better over time but the gameplay here is still fundamentally solid even if you have difficulty performing basic movement and functions because you're new to games or develop spontaneous butterfingers like me it still feels intuitive and fun to control i remember brian hastings in particular he's now our chief creative officer focusing on the camera and controls for spiral and his goal was to make it as fun to just run spyro around in circles as it was to play mario 64. and we i remember looking at mario 64 with brian he pointed out that hey just running around in a circle with mario is fun just climbing up those first few trees and doing flips off the tree is awesome that is fun factor the creators took a step out of nintendo's playbook and made sure spyro was fun and satisfying to control and built every level perfectly in two of his abilities so what do you do with his abilities these games have a pretty standard collect-a-thon format you got hub worlds that have multiple levels that you can get to by going through these portals and dang the two sky boxes is a nice effect oh and the seamless transition for when you enter the levels seeing this oh yeah yeah and then just you diving straight into things awesome man i wish they kept that seamless transition in every game but oh well each level has a set amount of gems to collect with each gem color representing a different value there may also be other things like keys for chests challenges side collectibles level specific collectibles for their challenges and of course the quintessential main collectible which switches from game to game throughout all of this there's an interesting dichotomy going on of a gameplay that's a constant in these games your main offensive options are either to flame or to charge so things will require you to do either or for example wooden containers can be flamed or charged but metal ones can't be flamed only charged big enemies can't be charged only flame but small enemies can be flamed or charged unless they have armor then only charged what if an enemy is both big and armored well then you're really screwed nah there's always a way to take them out always question why are we playing as this puny little puffed magic dragon looking wiring instead of an awesome formidable large-bodied incarnation of destruction well one this design and direction was fitting for a mascot platformer which were at peak hot at the time and two it's what saved his scales so in the first game the story about these medieval creatures in their medieval heavy settings starts with a tv interview with the dragon elders talking about the dragon realms its economical standing and also this one guy we exiled to an offshore landfill that orc gnome hybrid him nasty nork i'm making a call-out post on my twitter.com yo mama so ugly they pity poster on once reputable magazine covers for easy justice points nasty north yo face so deformed i bet multi-billion dollar corporations try to mine it for uranium you're so dumb your skull is so thick and has its own gravitational well you're lucky i have to keep it pg for public broadcast so i can't exactly tell you we can put that great ace of yours nasty laid back in his pro gaming chair oppressed by society was not amused [Music] oh my god he decides to unleash his apocalyptic level spell that i assume he's been working on and then just pull out of nowhere because that would make the magic in this world op he turns all the dragons into crystal statues but thanks to his small stature it missed our title character aren't there other adolescent dragons well see an early lay before the next wave of dragon eggs where are all the female dragons in all this now no maybe the other kid dragons went into hiding i don't blame them since nasty transformed all the treasure into more of his militant kind but when others would see danger spyro saw opportunity for glory and adventure looks like i've got some things to do so yeah free all the dragons defeat all the norcs get all the shiny things and stuff accomplishing this you venture through six fantastical worlds of the dragon realm artisans peacekeepers magic crafters beast makers dreamweavers and nork nexus each one's practically is and are filled with unique and well-designed levels that are all very adventurous and memorable due to their distinctiveness and or particular gameplay flow in situations sometimes you're traversing a big peaceful open field and sometimes you're traversing in the dark wondering how to get past the big metal belly guys in tight hallways sometimes the terrain is being manipulated by druids or even the sizes of the enemies by fools sometimes you're traversing inside caves filled with unkillable giant spiders so you just end up going around the long way through squabbling magic users until you come back later to murder them all with power-ups sometimes you're dodging cannon fire and then using their weapons against them or maybe you're fighting enormous beasts that still go down in one hit even though these annoying dogs from an earlier level took two i would have made it where these guys took three hits and you could probably kind of stun lock them into each hit which would preserve the fun but to keep the challenge i probably introduced the threat of being blindsided by quick flanking and or arranged enemies yeah that's one cool thing about this game that says it apart from the rest the enemies so many games in the platforming genre have a time usually just had enemies that would just follow a strict path that's in your way or maybe would be lying straight to you or shoot some projectile if you got close enough spyro focused on enemies that would react to his presence now don't get me wrong there are a handful of games that are already doing stuff like this like in mario 64 but spyro took it like 50 steps further like allowing some enemies to have like unique scripting interact with the environment work together or even in fight that's always humorous to watch the primary focus of the game would be interaction with the enemies to the best of my knowledge that had never been done before no no no i'm not hyping them up to like like if they had like crazy advanced a.i that would deploy complex squad tactics on you but i'm saying that they feel like real entities acknowledging you as a threat to their well-being instead of just feeling like a stale obstacle that just wanted you dead adds a lot of character and charm to this game something that the series has and drove also with extremely rare exceptions every level has different and unique enemies specific to it all with different behaviors and maybe even some unique killing conditions at first the levels feel nice and relaxed but don't worry they'll start racking up in difficulty before you know it magic crafters heck halfway through peacekeepers is when things really start to heat up misty bog one of my favorite levels is a hard one the wildlife is more dangerous than minors themselves let's see if you can clear the infamous frog room without getting hit you're not tree tops that one bullcrap jump you are definitely not going to find out how to clear within a timely manner on a blind playthrough unless you run this red thief's butt down the moment you see them it's fade on sight bro seriously look at this [Music] how is anybody supposed to figure this out especially since you got to go up a path backwards at one point today's cool tip is on spyro it's on the treetops level where we'll be showing you how to get to that last platform that's so tough to get to that was quite a ride spyro you've learned a lot since you were a young glider yeah well you could have found an easier spot to get stuck there's a quicker way if you try to make a tight 270 degree right turn on the first ramp but whatever it's still bullcrap almost as bullcrap as the supercharged jump in haunted towers where you think you gotta go up here but no it's over here and there's no gems on that pad to even hint you to go there there are only like a couple of clues signifying that the secret even exists no wonder they considered it harder than the treetops one you've become a master of the supercharge great work in every single instance where you can super dash there is a secret place you can get to i almost forgot to mention supercharge arrows on the ground supercharge what supercharge you charge super fast you can break through anything hard to control but awesome there's also a super flame that breaks everything for a short while that you get for friendship fairies where was i oh yeah hard levels toasty the first boss stage i already mentioned the annoying hounds that take two hits which makes you very easy to get countered infinitely more challenging than the pause itself it just a sheep on stilts i love that yeah the bosses in this game are kind of lame they feel more like big normal enemies and that just that you just need to hit like two or three times while avoiding very easily avoidable attacks my favorite levels include stone hill clifftown dry canyon not so much a fan of that last one anymore but i'm liking wizards peak the more i play that dark passage nor cove with its ships and headbutting explosive barrels back at the enemy twilight harbor and its dorito guns yeah the final level of this game the nordics have had enough and are busting out the big guns or just guns period woodline fn fals i believe natto's answer to the ak-47 during the cold war though not that prevalent since it didn't see much action yeah i'm a bit of a gun nut no i ain't that happy or really surprised when they replaced them with splatoon gear and reignited okay i need to stop or else i'm going to end up talking about every single level in this game which would make for a good video on its own but but come on i love them all and i appreciate that they really paid close attention to the aesthetics of each stage even considering color theory and what moods the color palettes would elicit the visuals are nice and the music wraps it all together yes one of the best things about this game is its soundtrack it's unique discernible consistent atmospheric kinda catchy and as music just overall good quality i can't even begin to tell you how many late night college essays this ost got me to power through the music got good bass nice melodies and heck even the instrumental samples used from the bells and chimes too especially that electric guitar rift feel iconic to this game i love to find more music that sounds like it i mean i swear i've listened to some that sounds similar but i don't have any names so please comment if you know any also if anybody can point me where i could find these original samples like the guitar rift and whatnot like not ripped or recorded from the game but like actually the original samples that would be extremely baller i know the music was composed on a kurtzwell k 2500 x keyboard and i know about the atmospheric sample packs like distorted reality one and two but i want to have those iconic sounds i would also like to know the legality of using them before music if i ever make a game on my own maybe it's a little call back to this inspiration or whatever now that i think about it did copeland make some of these samples himself the most fun part of the process is uh being able to be in there like this and i get a phone call and i can shout at my staff don't interrupt me when i'm working oh yeah the music was composed by stuart copeland best known for being the drummer of the police i didn't know to force even hats as a position step one is to beat the level now for a ten-year-old kid this is no problem but for me yeah so then once i'm on the level and i've got a general attitude for the game i have to within the atmosphere of that level have a lot of different changes happen but stay kind of in the atmosphere then i go back and i look for how to make those inner complexities more complex and to have uh deeper sub layers and things that don't really hit you the first time but hit you the 16th time so that it can survive repeated listening and he did a great job too just take a listen to this bop [Applause] [Music] what the heck was that well yeah here's a funny fact one of the tracks used in this game was repurposed by copeland from a 1999 live action knicks show the amanda show which i knew it i knew it when i was really young i think i like caught an episode of it at a friend's house or something i don't remember but i recognized that its theme was not only from spyro but from wizard's peak specifically i wasn't 100 sure and i couldn't confirm back then but i knew it i knew executive producer dan schneider dan schneider where was i oh yeah the world of the game yeah remember from the beginning of this video when i mentioned this brand new 3d engine good for exploration yeah believe it or not spyro is technologically innovative but in order to explain how i'll have to attempt to explain how graphics work now forgive me an insult correct me in the comments if i am off but basically from my limited understanding of the subject graphics specifically 3d polygonal graphics work by mapping out geometric shapes using mathematical equations utilizing that depth granting z-axis and slapping a texture on them i'm sure there's more at play here than what i'm talking about but each of these equations needs its own little processor and graphics cards are chock full of them the more graphic processors a system has the more polygons and other effects can appear on screen when the amount of polygons begin to exceed the amount of processors you'll start to run into performance issues like how a frame rate drops because the processors are pulling double duty the problem with large 3d environments especially during this early 3d period was that they needed a lot of polygons and therefore it was easy for too many polygons to appear on screen to avoid this some games use the fog mask so they can render what's only near to you without it looking gearing other games just had a relatively low amount of polygons throughout the whole level for example in mario 64 like the levels typically had less polygons than mario's own model and other games just used a lot of tunnels and segments to load in other areas and or to keep your view obstructed the engine and spyro was like hey what if we have the objects and environments that are close to the player be rendered with more polygons and detailed textures while objects and environments that are far away in the distance subtly swap out to models that only use a few polygons with flat colors and or gradient textures maybe even have multiple layers to make the differences less jarring not only did you have these big long views where anything in the universe could be seen from afar but also he created an engine where you could have detail on the objects that were close engine to draw the environment has broken down into seven different little renders that work on different levels of detail of the environment to try to keep this you know the fact that you're seeing tens of thousands of polygons into something more manageable the real trick is that in every transition we try to do is a fade or a morph transition something for it you're not gonna see it now the world feels really open without the visuals or the frame rate suffering and really expands the scope of the gameplay hey what's on the other side of that river why don't you glide there and find out it felt like you could just go anywhere especially if you're at a high vantage point this technique is known as level of detail and is still used in many games to this day oh look you can see the sparkle of uncollected gems in the distance that's a very helpful visual flair i forgot to mention but having you collect every single one of a game's most common collectible is an odd choice i mean it's fun to smash things and round them all up but it's easy to miss a few and have no idea where to even begin to look for them especially if they're intentionally hidden i remember spending anywhere from 30 minutes to a whole hour on some levels trying to get them all like look at this i didn't know i can just glide behind here our next tip for you is in the peacekeepers world cliff town if you jump off glide around to your right you can glide behind the building you first started it and collect the gems there now you can try to use an online guide but do you know how hard it is to find the specific gems you're missing not an easy experience i'm looking at you mario odyssey with your purple coins at faithfully coming spurts another thing you got on your agenda in this game is reclaiming the stolen dragon eggs from these opportunistic blue dudes i know they are just plainly called thieves or even egg thieves but my sister called them blue dudes one time when i was young and impressionable so that's just what i had canon the mask even though there are some that are different colors as implied the quintessential collect-a-thon main collectible of this game are the crystallized dragons if you can even call them a collectable army you don't really collect them as you all you gotta do is walk up on their little pedestal which causes them to break free of their petrification and they'll give you some advice or exposition or something then find the balloonist he'll transport you to the next world what about nasty nork i'm going after him find dragons first that's all i can tell you yeah that's right they're all voice acted which is really cool but since there are like 80 of them some are more talkative than others thank you for releasing me thank you for releasing me thank you for releasing me thank you for releasing me oh thank you for releasing me thank you for releasing me oh my gosh are you all serious they're not replaying the same voice clip they're using different voice actors and told them to say the exact same thing couldn't they add some variations on that phrase like thank you for saving me thank you for freeing me thank you for getting me out of there thank you for the revive my dude can you give me some kentucky fried chicken on the way home their little pedestal then becomes a checkpoint which you can interact with to save the game or rewatch for talking for some reason i never thought i'd be rescued especially by such a little dragon uh well what i mean is i always believed in you spyro you gotta believe [Music] another thing i like is the voice acting it's actually really good not that stilted well for the most part and of course we have a main star of a show the true voice of spyro where's nasty nork oh tom kenny where's nasty nork i'll torch him okay okay okay the first guy was carlos alas rocky most known for the voice of a taco bell dog and rocco from that old nicktoon rocko's modern life but he was only in the first game turns out people didn't really like spyro's character in the first game sounding all nasally and having that forced 90s attitude even though they tried to avoid that exact result i think we went through about maybe five or six versions you know where he was like really really young and had an idol up in the nose and then he was like really cooler and older and actually recorded something like that but then they found out he was too mean so then we just kind of did a mixture in between the two where it's kind of like he's really kind of a go-getter kind of guy and kind of tough but really kind of nice but since people still didn't like it they went with tom kenny in the sequels and with the voice and personality change they made him more humble and soft-spoken but still retaining a fiery side and because of this it felt like his character matured in between games is this rain ever gonna stop i've forgotten what the sun looks like or at least that's the way you can interpret it as to not be weirded out by the changes anyways if you've been around a voice acting block you may know tom kenny from such roles as the other guy from rocco's modern life miscellaneous characters in some movies and um eventually he would end up giving a rather minor role voicing some what was it [Music] yes it's all connected all these coincidental links made me realize how close we were to potentially getting a spyro cartoon on nickelodeon during the turn of the millennium it was just one elevator pitch away from happening but y'all just couldn't do it could you dan schneider dan schneider you may have noticed the yellow glowing bug following spira around picking up the gems well that sparks sparks the dragonfly spyro's best friend who's been around with him since forever and i never switched up never forget that he's not just there for the sake of it because i mean having a dragonfly as a best friend is kind of it's kind of sad but he's an in-universe way of you having item magnetism i think that's the term and is also your health indicator based on his color golden glowing means full health and no worries blue means you took an ouchy green means you need to find some health and if he has disappeared the next hit's going to kill you [Music] also he won't be there to pick up gems for you meaning that you'll have to do it yourself which is surprisingly difficult and unsatisfying getting them just feels empty without his zinging snag nice i think it's implied that he uses some innate dragonfly magic or some crap to shield you from fatal blows all ranging from headbutts to gunshots in order to get more health you gotta feed sparks butterflies which spawn whenever you kill fodder which are the prevalent little harmless creatures you find all over the place that are all different depending on the level why do butterflies appear whenever you kill an innocent animal [Music] you know i had no idea for the longest time i just accepted it because it was a good gameplay loop and the fodder made the world feel more alive but as it turns out it's surprisingly based on an ancient norse myth which was likely inspired by the scientific fact that butterfly [Music] [Music] oh yeah that's that good good hey watch these mad skills yeah i almost forgot to mention the flying levels or i guess more commonly known as the speedways in these stages you're able to fly around instead of just gliding inverted flying controls inverted flying controls i can't change them i can't change them mayday [Music] the objective is to clear four sets of obstacles before the time runs out maybe even going for the best time you can muster they're usually laid out to be done in a particular order but you can try to break the order in order to find the fastest optimal route since the order you're supposed to go in kind of loops in and around itself breaking it and still keeping an optimal time is not out of a question and feels often encouraged i used to not really like these but after a while something just clicked and i actively attempt to get the fastest times i can on them my best times for these i believe are on the reignited trilogy if i recall correctly i think an actual flight engineer or someone from nasa helped with the flying controls so yes overall you smash flame and explore around 28 levels through six different worlds until you reach nasty nork himself spoiler alert i guess for an m game that's not really working a spoiler too but look i know the bosses up to this point mostly sucked the best one probably being metalhead and though i personally like dr shintmore but bruh this final boss battle is a letdown even in comparison to those imagine being the final boss but it's mostly chasing and you running away like a wuss because you have less help than any other boss [Music] and if you got all the collectibles up to this point you can explore the final bonus level nasty's lube which almost was called nasty's booty oh yeah which has this unique mechanic of you being able to fly from the highest most point of your last highest jump which by the way you'd probably make so many levels designed around that concept overall this game has fun gameplay amazingly whimsical magical worlds to explore expertly crafted levels phenomenal music and just being a good time from start to finish that still holds up really well to this very day if you ever feel like playing it i highly recommend that you do it is my favorite video game period and even without that nostalgic bias it's still undoubtedly great and paved the way for many games to come although i have unbridled praise for this game i will acknowledge that there are some valid criticisms that can be levied against it one is that it's not that long though i kind of disagree that that's a problem it'll take you around four to eight hours mostly six if you're going for a casual playthrough or if you're like me going for that hundred percent and knowing what you're doing probably more so eight hours if you don't know what you're doing that's average for most single-player games of this nature plus it's fun to replay from a fresh file even though it offers no incentives or bonuses for doing so meaning that there's no inherent replay value i think it's as long as it needs to be anymore it'll probably feel like it's dragging which some people say it already does that's the main gripe i see people have this game despite many levels trying to add new twists and ideas some may say that the levels can get repetitive and boring which yeah this game does need some breaks that aren't just me getting up and getting back to it later i guess the flight stages are the closest thing to this but they're band-aids to a broken bone it's like you're constantly playing which while fun can get tiring like you're not even safe in the home worlds except ironically the ones set in enemy territory personally i like the focus on pure core gameplay here although i can't agree on it getting exhausting after a while especially if you're trying to get most of it done in a signal sitting like i was from this review still it's a great experience for anyone just wanting to have some adventurous fun it can also act as a great introductory game for people wanting to get into gaming especially kids offering them a sense of wonder and adventure all the while offering challenge to those who want it or a casual fun time for those just wanting to cruise through it this game was an excellent start to a series and it had plenty of room and potential to grow on more things could have been added to his concept and that's what the sequels attempted to focus on in 1999 came spyro 2 ripto's rage or gateway to glimmer if you don't know what a freedom tastes like some people may argue which subtitle is better but i could literally care less as i find them both equally adequate and intriguing but i slightly like the ripto's rage more as it's the original name and is a pure alliteration uninterrupted by a lowercase having function word my english minor now shining through anyways i've been mostly looking at stuff from perspective of the first game and the series overall but i really need to talk about how the series evolved the biggest change from spyro 1 to spyro 2 is that it feels less like you're venturing into new territories and more so getting intimately involved in them and their unique conflicts we got prominent characters frequent cutscenes npcs and a brand new villain riptoe an entitled tyrannical little piece of work with anger management issues mixed with short man syndrome i hate dragons warning it can get a little feisty now you despicable little creature i'll kill you whoa little red dude you can't just go around dropping the k word like that you're going to get us pissed yellow circled of death not in my e-rated game man the 90s was violent you see nowadays you gotta say that you're gonna gaming all game ending myself jokes aside i love ripto he's freaking hilarious definitely the best spyro villain although i think the upcoming sorceress is a close second because just with how brutal she is fun fact ripto's name comes from how the kanji or katakana or characters of a japanese version of spyro's title looks like it spells out ripto the japanese version of spyro i would like to take a moment to talk about what just might be won the worst localization jobs of any game ever for some asinine crown eating reason the japanese localizers of the first spyro game decided that the country of formula one racing and sonic the hedgehog would not be able to handle the somewhat fast-paced nature of this game claiming that it made the motion sick so because these sony suits were not able to hold their lunch while looking at a couple of moving polygons they decided the best course of action would be to completely butcher this game for their market they ordered it to have a stretched out overhead camera and for the charging to be only as fast as a normal trot and also not being able to freaking jump out of a charge yeah that one caught me off guard the most now there are a bunch of other minor tweaks and additions that i wouldn't mind like spyro making vocal noises every once in a while and there being a bunch of tutorial signs besides the literally unplayable perspective and tarnished game flow the strangest thing in this localization is well sparks only being green this is because you're supposed to go out and find dragonfly eggs so that you can then hatch and raise a superior dragonfly using this dreamcast ripoff looking accessory which i don't think ever caught on and stay japanese only need ideas but why would i want to do that because well we'll give his game play it's unplayable if i was a dev i would have been like rebel dev i would have added a secret option saying game style with two choices that of being bad and good yeah spyro never took off in the east though not for lack of trying i mean look at all this anime [ __ ] speaking of butchered things that i've hate excuse me for the sudden microphone now grade in three two one ugh i hate how they redesigned ripped odin reignited he looks like a gremlin instead of some overly smug pissed off looking pipsqueak lava dyno like this design just looks like he just wants to gnaw on my bones while this one actually looks like an egomaniac which is exactly what ripto is anyways back to spyro 2 it's raining and spyro wants another vacay so he rushes towards the dragon shores portal but gets intercepted by these freedom fighters in the land of avalor looking to get a dragon to fight off the dragon hating ripto who they accidentally teleported here and now he wants to take over because he can and he's a meanie he doesn't like calling a personal army to invade or anything he was cut off from his home world of the nick of time so he only has his two giant goons crush and gold so instead he just goes around causing conflict faction uprisings rebellions and civil war in order to destabilize the region for greater control which is scarily accurate to how modern wars played out anyways you team up with the professor a smart mole guy experimenting with portal technology elora a cute goat girl i'm a fun you dork oh sorry who's mainly the level head of the group and finally the guy you're gonna have the most run-ins with for the rest of the franchise hunter the thick-headed sports junkie cheetah you're a dragon you got a problem with that pussycat i think they were just going to give them some kind of surfer dude bro personality but i have no idea what they landed on hey spyro check out this cool cave i found let's play a little game i really hate to say this but i can't tell if he's slowing the head or condensatingly acting like i am the monkeys have escaped from the avalar zoo and i've been sent here to catch him but they keep throwing coconuts at me and it hurts trey what's wrong for text boxes shut up i'll acknowledge it in a minute oh and i almost forgot zoe she's a fairy who acts as your checkpoints and talks nothing but tutorial stuff you probably already figured out on your own well you get tasked with going to all the worlds of avalor collecting each of their talismans which essentially means get to the end of a level don't worry the levels aren't really linear there is still other stuff to do and of course a web of gems to collect gameplay-wise this game is a sharp step up spyro feels as good as control as ever with some additions i very much welcome now you're able to do this hover at the end of your glide which feels like a godsend so many jumps in spyro 1 i was like man i wish i could grab ledge guess it sucks a lot of attention out of a platforming but i don't think it'll carry you because now some glides are more insane yeah i don't get too cocky with your gliding you'll still need skill jumping out of charging no longer has a height penalty so that's awesome and great for the flow here's a habit you should develop to get the maximum distance off of a single jump while standing still press charge and then press and hold jump a split second after now there is an exploit known as the double jump which you can get by jumping and then i think pressing jump again while also holding charge i i don't know i never pulled it off and honestly you don't really need it except for maybe speed runs and other exploits one thing they did mess up is the fact that you can no longer rely on this short headbutt motion you can get by quickly tapping charge yeah it seems like a minor complaint but let me tell you it was great for smashing metal stuff near ledges and small platforms without putting yourself at risk i guess you can just head bash now but you don't get that till way later in the game oh yeah that's another new thing in this game learnable moves in every hub world you can learn a new move that'll allow you more access to the levels these being in reverse order head bashing climbing and swimming underwater yeah spyro can swim now so water is no longer a hazard yeah let me tell you about swimming and most 3d platformers heck video games in general being underwater more often than not sucks as you get slowed down and the controls get really cumbersome especially as you try to navigate a completely 3d space up and down included well not with spyro holding charge underwater turns you into a little torpedo smashing everything in sight and shooting out into the air like if you are a dolphin i really like how spyro can swim now the way that he dives down it's very natural and i love it that there is no breathing gauge or anything like that so just keep down there and enjoy the ambiance and i love it how you can just shoot out of the water it feels really good and while i don't think it's perfect it is definitely one of the best underwater controls in all of gaming in my opinion also there's no breath meter or countdown possibly because sea dragons i guess so you can stay underwater for as long as you want i think the main purpose of you having to unlock these moves is to make you revisit levels in order to get to that one part you couldn't before which meh i'm not a fan of it oh come back to the first level after i learn how to climb just to do this single 15 second challenge no thanks how about i skillfully cheese it instead uh they made this export more harder and reunited but it's still possible well if they haven't passed it by now though you can probably still do it using this technique instead speaking of abusing glitches and exploits uh this was the first out-of-bounds glitch i have ever pulled off i can't believe i actually found this as a really young kid like seven or eight blew my feeble low mind i understand that there are people who like to go back to old levels of new abilities to do more stuff in them but i think that only works well with like large interconnected worlds like banjo-kazooie i presume and well the entire metroidvania genre mainly if the ability repurposes old environments with new gameplay opportunities traversal options and new areas that expanded instead of just do a minute long challenge or grab a few gems you couldn't get to spiral levels feel like and this was especially the case at the first game that you should just be one and done with them if you're like me on the matter i recommend just doing all the levels as much as you can and just before the final boss or after the final boss in spite of theresa's case just revisit them all in order just before going off to the final bonus level also here's a pro tip from me personally go to colossus before you go to idle springs you'll need to be able to swim underwater 100 that place and to do this recurring challenge that happens all throughout the level and there's not enough gems to get me upgrade beforehand so despite it being nearer just go to the one on the island these two portals should have been swapped here i mean they're intently trying to trap you into revisiting it so freaking any whatever yes you will need to buy those new moves yes it's about time i talk about this notorious character moneybags he's a living breathing paywall denying you access to places and things until you cough up enough gems his function is to ensure you're actually collecting the gems as you should be doing anyways i think there's only like two gem checks and spyro one so he's that but more prevalent and is entertaining to listen to say spyro you see this wall here i bet you're dying to know what's on the other side if only i had a few more gems i might be able to remember how to lower the wall i used to not really know why people hated him so much i mean he never gave me trouble they're all money bags of player criticism of capitalism and if you like these games in any ways then you must accept this as truth and realize that we live in a society just walk up to him and press a twice is it really that hard for you people to play the game properly sure he's condescending and is obviously conning you in most of his instances but he's not that bad heck this cut scene here shows you his reasoning and reminds you that he's still technically on your side of a fight that ripto has caused enough damage all his meddling has cost me a fortune if it wasn't for spyro i'd be bankrupt if riptor were here i'd give him a piece of my mind i think most people hate him because of his appearance in spyro 3 as i swear he is much more aggressive of his appearances in that game i think i didn't keep count let me jump forward for a little bit he forces you to pay a lot more in that game and if you actually pay attention to what he's saying especially if you talk to him after making a payment like i always knew he was a greedy sleazy opportunist but he is a straight up scumbag in that game like just now that i realize this connection i have to hurry in myself i'm one of the judges for tonight's performance that was my best performance ever i guess one of the judges didn't like it though he threw this egg at me instead of a rose you can't even say that he's on your side of the fight this time because he made a lot of deals with sorceress the villain of that game and forces you to outbid her i do like the new voice actor in the third game he sounds a lot more refined well spyro today is your lucky day the wizards and i have worked out a little deal if you simply pay a small toll no okay so minor spoiler i don't think it will ruin the game for you but after you defeat the final boss of spyro 3 you'll have your final encounter with him where he says he's going to sell a dragon egg somewhere and you got to chase him down this great cathartic release beating out of him every jimmy has taken from you in that game and forcing him into an early retirement when i was stupid young since i didn't really pay attention to the dialogue boxes for the most part i was rather confused on why he was avoiding me like i would have had it where he offered you the egg but i like a price way too high for you to pay at least up to that point and then say he was going to sell off the egg elsewhere if you couldn't afford it which would then make spyro snap i think i'd probably be a kind of a nice fake out back to spyro 2 though the following still applies to spiral 3. the level structure while still fundamentally familiar now feels fundamentally different to progress through the levels now feel more compacted and less open with traversal no longer being the main source of challenge here there is now a focus on well these challenges two or more each level you talk to an npc which is a thing now and uh um ignore please yeah i'm using an emulator so what don't give me that look i ripped my own roms thank you very much it's only illegal if you download or distribute them yeah well i did say in another video that i preferred playing on original hardware rather than attempting to figure out how to emulate i wanted to give these games better representation for this video because i love them so much and come on this looks so much cleaner here we see the virgin original hardware with its analog video output notice the messy blur weird flickering on the static imagery freaking scan lines and how i cannot load past the screen anymore no matter how many times i clean the disc and here we have the chad emulation with its sleek pixel perfection bright coloring and being able to see more gaps where the polygons are supposed to meet and apparently a bunch of optimization hiccups i couldn't figure out how to get rid of no matter what settings i changed i know i could boost the visuals more and i mean really boost them but i'm keeping it at this pixely resolution because it's more accurate to the original playstation output yet still high enough quality will look good on a youtube video even though there are more weird pixels than the original look would have plus it was this emulator's default setting which i didn't change at first so i'm keeping these visuals for the sake of consistency trey we're going on random tangents the missions the level design yeah you got these missions or i guess challenges now and they're given to you by mid-stage npcs the npc at the beginning of a level just tells you what's going on asking for help while magically knowing your name despite you never ever setting foot in these regions before i see word travels quickly in avalor these challenges usually have you doing all sorts of things ranging from collecting a certain number of things to flaming a certain number of things or you doing some sort of mini game thankfully they're not repetitive and very greatly almost every single one is unique to keep things fresh they reward you with orbs which make sure to get as many as you can they're not required at the beginning of a game but you'll definitely need them later in spiral one you just did the same thing in spyro 2 you're now doing at least three very different things from each other we have what we call talisman challenges and orb challenges personally i both like and dislike my challenges for different reasons in my case for them most of them are pretty good they can really test your skill with spyro or just put you through a fun little minigame that will give you a breather from the main gameplay loop my favorites include the windmill platforming the paragliding almost everything in dragon's shores as just basically a big old bonus world that combo power up cheap dog fight at the end of metropolis using the supercharge again even though it's more finicky than the first game and the layout of the tracks is more annoying to navigate the bone finding mission in skelos badlands is great in my book because well as you're going out the level collecting things which is well what the game is about oh no i forgot about this no don't do it [Music] i love the revamp super flame power blowing stuff up with these explosive fireballs is always fun though it's more difficult to aim and not as reliable as the flame first thing you usually do so yeah i do find a handful of them pretty fun though i will admit most of them are mundane at best in my case against them even though they are supposed to be a breather from the main gameplay loop which people were wanting they can bring the level's pacing down to a grinding hole it just cuts into the flow of a level even though they're usually at the end with maybe one in between it still feels too quick though because the levels are typically way shorter now even causing you to backtrack through impossibly multiple times which probably isn't all that bad if you miss some gems and like the first game levels typically loop back on themselves but to me it just feels like padding as said although there are a handful that are fun most of these missions are somewhat mundane with some just being straight up not good either from being too unfun or just overly difficult or both let me list off some of the most notorious missions the hockey one is the one that they were most proud of even though it's just nice and novel at best and frustrating at worst i mean it's pretty shallow and the ai is mean i think people hate on this crystal popcorn one the most you gotta collect more of these things popping out of the ground than hunter and there's like two rounds and the last one is tough as nails you gotta play perfectly to just stay barely ahead of him i mean i got good at it and i find it fun but i completely understand why people dislike it with some calling it the worst challenge in the game another one i find fun that most people say as a contender for the worst is the trolley challenge which is just bonkers through and through trouble with the trolley eh trying to dodge everything coming into view last second making the whole mission nothing but trial and error trouble with the trolley eh trying to collect all these golden gears that all respawn when you inevitably crash trouble with the trolley eh and hearing that phrase a lot ingrained into so many kids where it automatically became a meme whenever you talk about spyro i also can't forget about the infamous baby turtles being suicidal for soup challenges both of them like why are these turtles just walking towards their obvious death is that like is that dinner time magical also why can't i just end this guy and you just gotta charge these things away but it's definitely harder than it looks at least on the second round also that stupid alchemist mission i'll talk about that when i talk about levels specifically people may say that the first game is too easy especially since that game gave you so many extra lives heck if you defeat an enemy you already killed he'll drop a shiny pearl like orb which i theorize is their soul so pick them enough of them and you'll get an extra life it takes multiple norc souls to equal a dragon one unsurprising for an inferior race i kid i kid but speaking of enemy souls enemies no longer drop gems which irks me greatly but their spirit or whatever just flies off to light up one of these powerup gates which can grant you supercharged super flame and vulnerability or go alright so back to the game's difficulty and how lean inspire one was with its retries let's be honest with ourselves the ever two games shower you with just as many extra lives maybe even more so heck kill 10 fodder get a 1 up you can literally farm lives in the home worlds the levels themselves are objectively easier to diverse through it's just the challenges that get stupid hard like i said earlier the levels feel less open and more compact now i'm guessing to make constant backtracking and lapping the map for challenge related reasons less tedious also despite feeling shorter to get to the end the levels take longer to beat well mostly due to missions which i guess is the point something about spyro 1 that i both like and dislike in comparison of the other games is how freeform it feels the sequels introduce more standardization which i like like for example thank you for including the visual timers on the powerups inspire 1 reignited but these elements kind of threw away the adventurous mystery in my opinion once power-ups came from random instances like fairies kissing you or how supercharged is gained by these arrows on the ground or how sometimes barriers will keep you from falling or whatever now these random instances aren't as prevalent now it's like things like you have to go through these gates for the power-ups and now all powers have a cool timer which is okay i mean i don't know it just takes away most of the discovery and intrigue that i really liked about the first game but i still like these new elements levels are now themey i mean despite having the overarching world progression of medieval naturalism and fairy tale whimsy converting to industrial takeover due to nork invasion the first spyro was already kind of beaming but this is when it really starts to become the basis of every world now there's nothing inherently wrong with using popular themes and locations or whatnot for your levels and it executes these themes really well it decides to mix up ideas in some pretty cool ways plus an interesting overarching design of this game has of its own is that almost every level has a counterpart yeah you may not realize that at first and some being counterparts may feel like a stretch but you'll probably catch on when you play breeze harbor and cipher two of my favorite levels i mean they have spyro essentially acting like a mercenary fighting for whoever is allowing him access to the shinies one level has you fending off the worm guys and helping the bird dudes get their air fleet ready for a counter attack and the next one has you helping the worm guys to fend off a full-on invasion of bird dudes these levels and their designs get creative although it doesn't feel like you're venturing into magical forgotten war-torn lands anymore it sure feels like you're being thrown into a crate of the recognizable worlds becoming war-torn but still having peaceful resonance and i'm trying to deal with it so yeah although it does a good job with the level themings my biggest problem with this kind of theming with spyro series adapts from here on out is you know i'll talk about more when i talk about the third game because it goes a little crazy in that game also one cool new change is that the hub worlds no longer have enemies now they appropriately feel like safe havens and have a nice soothing atmosphere aided by this surreal yet tranquil music or i guess better to say ambience [Music] there are only three homeworlds this time around but they do host more stages each we got summer forest autumn plains and winter tundra yeah they're based off of seasons but there's no representation for spring this is so sad can we hit 46 quintillion likes for the marginalized spring peeps well that would be very much appreciative so yes the world and gameplay of spyro 2 subtly yet surely feels fundamentally different than spyro 1 but not really in a bad way as this new direction is still very good in its own right if there's one thing on the level themes really improve upon it's the music although spyro 1's soundtrack is great and even has varying moods most of it just feels like it can just blur together in spyro 2 copeland adds to his unique style with regional instruments and other appropriate sounds that fit the themes of each level including a lot of mechanical noises and ambience which i really dig it's like spyro's signature music is being stretched and transformed of all sorts of cultural flair although i personally don't really like these levels all that much for the reasons i've already laid out they're still really well designed and many of them are of good quality my favorites would have to be colossus magma cone scorch with its cool enemies like these were posting swordsmen and adopted in the ottoman empire and other middle eastern nations around the 1500s i think also censored in a remake oh and this level also has like these two child spies helping you out that are essentially let's see more favorite levels uh robotica farms and definitely metropolis breeze harbor and zeifer i already mentioned those huracans heck yeah besides the garbage mission with the thunderstones this is an amazingly designed and fun to play level with an amazing and entrancing atmosphere backed by possibly my favorite music track in the game [Music] all of this while populated by nerdy monotone spongebob thank you spyro you've deactivated all of the electric barriers we've been guarding this talisman something from the gear grinders please take it as a reward why did they change this in the remake why well apparently nickelodeon freaking copyrighted the sound of spongebob's voice yes part of tom kenny's biological ability is now enslaved by viacom what the crap sadly now i have least favorite levels idle springs is a good level but the atmosphere just makes it feel drab for me and and also i can't charge through the enemies which breaks the usually high paced flow like why do you get bounced back by only some enemies that you're supposed to charge through in this game it's unsatisfying they didn't do that at all in spyro one well except for maybe these guys but they were big that was the point sunny shores was okay but it just rubs me the wrong way especially since you just have to return to it to do the annoying and notorious turtle suicide soup mission fracture hills most people hate it because i'm gonna stick my thumbs in your eyes and hang on till you're dead honestly i don't mind that but what i do mind is the awful and i mean awful alchemist missions where you have to escort this old dude over to hunter to free him of a chronic case of mafia it sounds straightforward but it's literally not as he takes the most nonsensical convoluted path possible he even intentionally jukes you the real kicker is the fact that hunter is literally right next to his house oh this has to be a joke by the devs at our expense rise up gamers also to rub salt in the wound you'll need the head bash for hunter's mission which takes place right after that mission and if you don't have it which you won't because it's in the next world you'll have to do the damn freaking escort mission all over again i advise ignoring the lower level of this stage until you buy that move i almost forgot to mention the flying levels again they're back and they're as good as ever at first i swear as this game goes on the more linear they feel inspire 1 and definitely at least the first speedway of this game they feel like they have multiple beginnings which initially lure you with an obvious path but you can go and create an optimal path or your own or see what goes faster and you know explore and kind of figure it out yourself but it feels like they just started to cheap out on that concept making these levels so much less open and fun like there is a straight path now and you better follow it and you better not diverge through it so yeah i guess like what fun is that oh but you can now supercharge now on these stages is supercharged faster than flying i mean they look similar enough for it not to be worth it but i swear if it charges just slightly faster but i can't confirm i guess i better test it out on these expendable spectators oh look you can talk to one yes that's right there's a hidden npc you can find in each flying level that will give you a challenge which always has something to do with hunter and they're all pretty good guess what the bosses feel like actual bosses you got crush gulp and ripto they're not too hard but they'll still challenge you honestly if you were to ask me i felt like it was too hard at least as a kid then again i swore these fireballs are like four times larger and that his chasing attack was near impossible to avoid as for gulp hitboxes everywhere especially in front of where you're headed yes he literally leads his shots i recommend doing this little dance here to get them all mixed up yeah i hate to admit it but i didn't get past this part when i was younger i didn't beat this game until college when i was scouring ebay for cheap replacements for some of my old scratched up games now spoiler alert for both spyro 1 and 2 although i don't think it will ruin your enjoyment because there's simple platformer games of simple stories ripto is the best final boss in the series he even has three phases that are all creative and challenging that weird final cyborg bird phase is is really tough and i remember it being like near impossible to get hits on them though during this run i was able to get through them on first try so i don't know yeah in the original spyro games the villains at least implicitly were all supposed to permanently die after you've dealt with them but of course in future games but temptation was just too great to just leave them that way especially since ripto is such a great villain now that ripto is game ended you get your rightful compensation and head out to dragon shores and take place in theme park festivities like shooting stuff trouble trolley 2.0 trouble with the trolley eh shooting stuff but more exploding and the love tunnel and if you do all that you get to enter the theater which is just a cutscene viewer and if you've got all the gems and such you can achieve permanent super flame which is now useless unless you're a speedrunner or if you start a new game over that file you can play through the whole game with it although for some reason it wasn't working with me might as well mess around with some cheat codes while i'm at it [Music] i should probably also mention these skill points they are practically achievements back before achievements were a thing they pretty much have you doing all sorts of random or skillful stuff like fly on this far off idol or beat the bosses without taking damage yeah that's a that's a no bueno for me they don't count towards your completion score so i would say don't worry about them if you're doing 100 play through just like you likely wouldn't worry about getting achievements or trophies even though those are technically outside the game these are part of the game itself and do unlock this neat little epilogue and art for some of the scrapped enemies whatever i i don't care for them especially since they're like really hidden you have to like find like a online guy just to get names or an explanation of what i want you to do so overall spyro 2 is a great game that expanded on the first game though in ways that i'm not too pleased with plus although it attempts to address the first game's flaws it also spawns some new ones while doing so still it's a great game with amazing gameplay overflowing with creativity it is an awesome adventure one that i would highly recommend fun fact it took only a little over a year for them to develop this game mostly since they used the first spyro game as a base to work off of it must have crossed their minds that if they were to do that again they would be able to create a third game right before the new generation of consoles started rolling out but this begs the question where could our purple dragon go from here maybe to the other side of the world [Applause] [Music] after spyro 2 came spyro year of the dragon insomniac knew that it had to be released on the year 2000 for two reasons one a new generation of consoles were coming fast and waiting any longer would have seriously jeopardized the game's success and two it would be the chinese year of the dragon come on that's just an awesome coincidental opportunity you just can't let slip by i also think that the idea leaked into the story and theming of this game as well because spyro is going on an adventure to the other side of the world just like how it's believed that china is on the opposite side of north america even though that's not true at all it's actually south america and that's a kinda well anyways in this game an army of rhinox led by this mysterious robed figure tunneled to the dragon realms to steal all the dragon eggs which seems to have multiplied in size since spyro 1. are they supposed to do that is that is that how it works why are you guys just sleeping around outside and have all these delicate eggs just scattered about like don't y'all have houses or castles or caves or well they nabbed all the eggs and took them back to their home world the forgotten worlds the dragon's original homeworld since they're the only ones that can fit through these quick travel holes spyro and hunter plus sparks and zoey venture off to get all the eggs back which yes is your next main collectible look at them hash the moment they come into your possession turns out this land is under the seemingly unquestioned authority of the sorceress who is ordering her apprentice the secretly sweethearted bianca to collect and protect all of the eggs in order to bring magic back to the worlds from them existing i.e [Laughter] not very gucci money in my honest opinion so here we go again going from world to world level to level getting gems doing challenges doing speedways doing bosses and getting that quintessential collect-a-thon main collectible dim dragon's eggs [Music] [Applause] [Music] why do you disappoint me second by second you waste my time it's funny i was going to say how the main objective feels like it went back to how aspire 1 worked but the dragon eggs feel more like the orbs than i initially realized they are mainly just used to open deactivated portals and your main way of progressing is getting to the end of a level so that an inhabitant can help construct a vehicle to get you to the next world kind of like how the spyro 2 talismans worked yeah this game is basically spyro 2 but more while simultaneously trying not to be like spyro 2 if that makes sense [Music] the gameplay is the best it has ever been it plays just like the last one did maybe even a little tighter except with one big addition that i can't believe i underutilized in the past l1 and r1 being centering camera buttons now i said you could use the looked as a de facto center camera button but this works so much better now that's an adequate reason to ask the roles another cool thing is that you start off with all the learned moves from the previous game now i want to say that it completely builds on spyro 2 and introduces new things that enhances the spiral formula and gameplay but honestly i think that's where this game falls flat you'll notice this as soon as you step through the first portal oh no level cutscenes did i really forget to mention those yeah in sparrow 2 since going through the portals were no longer a seamless transition they gave every level a couple of cutscenes for when you enter and leave they're short but they're funny and charming like being there to show you what's going down and to entertain me with some slap stick that's both simple and brutal like jeez he just cold blood and murder that every guy no remorse some of them are really great i recommend just pulling up a compilation of all of them and just watching them all back to back well they ain't in this game and that just stills on to me the big sad i'm guessing it was to make room for the story cut scenes of which they are way more frequent because this game is surprisingly story driven heck i think this game's best quality as a story because it's solid for what it is it mainly focuses on the character arc of bianca of sorceress's apprentice who starts off really hostile but but becomes more reluctant the more she learns about the true nature of her master's plot also she and hunter start bonding like bonding bonding and thankfully it's not out of left field we should help her you're kidding right she nearly toasted you yeah but she was aiming at you say is it just me or is she kind of cute when she's angry besides the story if there's one thing that this game tries its absolute hardest to expand upon from the previous game it's the challenges because they get insane most of the challenges in spyro 2 tested your abilities controlling spyro and you having to adapt to a new gameplay style or a minigame was the exception well that's been turned on its head this time around for the name of this game is variety the variety of gameplay and spyro year of the dragon is mind-boggling now variety in a game can be a really good thing breaking up any monotony and testing your skills in exciting new ways you just gotta make sure to keep everything fleshed out and not to lose focus this game goes absolutely overboard with it it got you skateboarding gun boating dog fighting mole whacking submarining side scrolling strafe shooting slide sliding and just so much more literally variety for the sake of variety that approach typically falls flat on its face because you know the logistics of quantity over quality to be honest with you spyro 3 does a surprisingly fine job balancing all of these things but predictably although there are some really good ones there are a number of ones that just suck but i'll get into my favorite and least favorite challenges in a moment yeah there are some good ones and thankfully they don't always one and done these ideas they'll usually show up twice once to introduce it in another to flesh it out so that's good that's good game design there but let me tell you what really shakes up this game from the rest the cornerstone the faces of the gameplay variety of this title tries to boast are undoubtedly the secondary characters you can play as story-wise i think they were a handful of freedom fighters pushing back against the sorceress and her ever growing control but unfortunately all god captured fortunately they are under guard by our old friend moneybags yeah he'll give him to you if you pay him more than what she's offering and once you release them they beat him up for his greed hold on one more perhaps at least these guys are a majorly focused on asset of this game so i guess i could dedicate a paragraph to each of them first character you free is sheila the predictably australian kangaroo who unpredictably resides in the alps now how many times have i told you not to tease that moose it was billy's idea uh yeah yeah you stupid besides most of the dragons you have to rescue in the first game she's the only character with a major redesign and reignited that i fully approve of mostly because she just started out as a bland boring kangaroo like i mean come on she has no distinguishing features her gameplay i'm mixed on it's fine but could have been a lot better she feels weirdly both pretty fast and too slow i think it's been jumping not having enough horizontal movement it's weird she moves on the ground pretty fast but unlike spyro her momentum doesn't carry over to her jumps which is very detrimental since it's a major aspect of her play style because you know she's a kangaroo jumping is what they do she can kick jump stomp double jump oh excuse me air hop and do a bounding jump oh excuse me again double jump i am not calling it that i'm just going to call them double jump and landing jump respectively that landing jump you activate by jumping as soon as you hit the ground and it sends you skyrocketing too bad it's not as satisfying as it could be because your movement forward is just barely anything at all it feels like i can barely get over these edges maybe if you went twice as far i i think it would be fine hey i just came up with an idea you know what they should have done they should have had it where she keeps the sideways momentum in the jumps including the landing one so that you could go rocketing far off yeah it'll be like mario's triple jump but like on steroids i mean they would be able to make some cool levels for her if they did that the second one is sergeant james bird 9006.8 a british sounding world war ii militaristic flying penguin with many rocket launchers mounted to his shoulders these are the latest military hardware dbx9 rocket launchers state of the art british stupid out there and fun as heck to play probably the best secondary character out of a bunch though could still use improvements he's wonky to maneuver but it's theoretically possible to get used to them and definitely possible to have fun doing it cause come on lock on rockets he has a pathetic waddle but pressing jump sends him airborne and keep pressing it to keep him flapping or just hold it down if you're lame he can fire homing rockets though you'll still need to aim semi-good and you can pick stuff up with his feet look downwards and then drop the stuff on things preferably your fleshy opposition next up is bentley v yeti like sheila also kind of a lame design but he's a yeti and he has this cool transparent club made out of ice now you would think he'll be one of those big and dull types wouldn't you but in actuality to undercut your presuppositions expectedly acquired through prevalent inoculus depictions and trite cliche of such like agony archetypes the verse and multitude of the circumstance is that this fabricated personage exultantly brandishes a relatively unfathomable and commodious vernacular an expansive circumlocation of a superfluous vocabulary constituting bounties and pragmatically superannuated terminology of similars to those word trivia unsolicitly commissions to my established electrical receiving address endearing and their honorific objective of informing my person and the unwitting masses multi-dunius denotations of abstruse language deservedly bearing justifiably inordinate abatement betwixt communicative convention amongst contemporary civilities because ain't no one wanna deal with big confusing dead words only used by pretentious know-it-alls and english scholars with nothing better to do ah the first rejuvenating breath of freedom with the humility of a wounded sparrow i genuflect my noble deliverer uh it was no big deal dude point is he got brains bronze and a cockney sounding little brother he's purposefully slow but can hit hard but says you can already one shot nearly everything in this game with every other character this essentially means it can break containers and smash through obstacles that the others would not be able to bypass if they ever came across them his other ability is that he can do this club spin to reflect some projectiles and yeah despite his apparent intellect he's stupidly basic and uninteresting look at this dude and lastly you mistakenly free agent 9 a coked up lab monkey carelessly waving around a loaded gun check this out wish i could stay but my homeworld's been overrun by rhinox since i've been captured if you happen to see the sore source tell her i'll be giving her dancing lessons real soon what i mean i think he's supposed to be an experiment of the professor and or part of some secret task force of avalor in either case he wants to play like a third person shooter so bad but the execution is just so bad some people swear that this was a guy's prototype of insomniac's upcoming game ratchet and clank and well i wouldn't be surprised for it feels kind of like that but uh worse in literally every way you both move and aim with a left analog stick press circle to shoot and press square to throw grenades if you pick them up triangle will make you enter this uh sniping mode where you can fully look around and zoom into your targets you can also use l1 and r1 to strafe which is clunky but definitely helpful oh and to add insult to fatal injury the vertical aiming is inverted grand overall this plays downright terrible but it's possible to get somewhat adjusted to it i remember coming to like it as a dumb kid but i also remember finding it like nearly unplayable on a later playthrough now with my latest playthrough i'm kind of in the middle of those two extremes but i still overall dislike it thankfully reignited did agent 9 right with the new controls with the right stick s camera and r2 being able to shoot agent 9 becomes really fun to use and actually feels like ratchet and clank but it makes me sad when i remember that they only use this kind of gameplay style for him like once for his home world or not his homework but for like his his level his other three instances are like this bird's eye arena gauntlet this doom like first person shooter section which is let me cite get sidetracked real quick which is one of the worst challenges in the game because it controls like complete crap no seriously this was a console fps before people realize they should be using both sticks to move and aim games like these were notoriously terrible and there are like two good ones maybe three i think pro tip look up in one of the first two rooms and you'll find this full auto power up which should have been a normal pickup they should have given to you at the middle point of a level when you had a bad track and fight through the rooms all over again backwards like why was that not there this is a slog and it's take it place terrible but as i said it plays a lot better and reunited oh yeah and lastly the only other instance where you play sm is in this rail shooter mission which which is cool but you're expected to travel through it normally to get the leftover gems can we get more enemies to make it feel fun to have more normal agent 9 gameplay i guess maybe they were going for a ghost town atmosphere but you still would have gotten that feeling on the return trip yeah agent nine a lot of missed potential in my honest opinion if they wanted to focus on variety in the gameplay and also being completely different to the first two spyro games they probably should have focused more on these characters rather than throwing in so many random challenges that require a vast amount of operations that all had to be programmed in you know what they could have done you know what they should have done i think instead of doing all these random challenges and all that and different controls just for the sake of variety what they should have done was instead of just having a few dedicated levels and challenges for each of these dedicated characters they should have made nearly every single stage in this game be playable as spyro and one other different character think about it maybe one level could have you go through as spyro but there's a bunch of ledges above you that you can't reach but once you reach the end of a level you can go back or loop around as sheila and platform on those higher platforms and stuff like that maybe even have a challenge up there see what i mean turns out they actually tried this concept once in one level enchanted towers a level that i think is one of the best designed in the game i'll get to my favorite levels in a bit but yeah you can play through the level as spyro but you'll notice all this stuff out of reach like on balloons and top of these towers well yeah you're supposed to go back through with sergeant bird looking for golden bones and oh no not again [Music] and treasure in the secret rooms at the top of the titular towers but yeah i remember one playthrough i got confused at this part and i had no idea i completely forgot you actually played as sergeant burton this one and ever since then i kind of have a little bit of a grudge against the chanted towers but it's okay i'm not really a fan of all the enemies you have to spit rocks at that that just that just drags i have a couple of favorite levels in the game the the one of them would be enchanted towers it's one of the ones where you play as sergeant bird and so you're able to get some elevation and just let loose with the rockets and just shooting down balloons and flying creatures so i found that pushing the artistic of what pushing the engine and allowing us to do something really gorgeous but yeah sadly this only happens once and i wish it happened at least once with every character but if i had it my way i would have designed the whole game around this concept but what can you do instead we just got a bunch of phoned in garbage like so much stuff like we'll do i just want to play a spyro what is this what is this what is that you want to know how many vehicles characters and well different play styles this game has you shifting through 21 31 if you were to include minor changes like spyro swimming or flying or the hover tank that can lob shots unlike the other one that can't like well gee why are there so many why can't we just focus on the core gameplay and expanding that like any normal sequel i'll tell you why insomniac didn't want to make spyro anymore they admitted they didn't want to make spyro anymore they believe he already peaked but we wanted to know if there would be a fourth spiral game from the insomniac team spyro was originally intended as a trilogy and that was our goal to make the final chapter the most exciting and i think we've really done that here's an infamous quote from good old teddy price saying why they stopped developing spyro games apparently the reason is because spyro ain't got no hands to wield stuff with which guessing from insomniac games at the time got mass misremembered into we stopped making spyro because he can't hold guns which got me like can't use a gun is that really your big problem that he doesn't have opposable bums to wield stuff with you really think he needs a gun honestly that's that's shorthand for them thinking that they have reached the peak of what they can do with spyro's core concept which i argue is completely untrue you could have explored him having more dragon related powers like maybe after he grows some more he could give him more movement options using magic the the ability to fly all the time heck remember nasty's loot the level with the mechanic where you can fly but only up to a point of your currently highest jump you can make a whole game's worth a level designed around that dynamic also perhaps the most obvious and potential granting idea spyro being able to breathe different breaths yes if there's one thing the post insomniac sequels did right it was trying to explore this mechanic just like having two characters per level they toyed with this ingenious idea only once in one level frozen altars great level one of my favorites where you can only breathe a freezing ice breath that they pull some really smart things with but but it's only used in that level only it's given to you by the snow fairy which i always forget about like i just assume spyro has it because it's so cold or something which like if they didn't have the fairy you people people would probably be asking like why doesn't spider will have the ice breath in the other snow level turns out the reason why this game is a messy mishmash of ideas is well personal theory i don't think i had any foresight on what to do with spyro especially for a third outing like for the whole trilogy i think they just like for the most part have just been making stuff up as they went along coming up with the enemies for all these levels would generally consisted of ellen our animator just making something just making something funny it saves you a lot of time debating and talking about concept art you just like make just make some sense everybody here spends a lot of time participating in the game design there isn't one person that says hey i'm dictating what's going to make this game great everybody puts in their two cents and as a result we get games that are much more varied much deeper and a lot more some of the later enemies that in spyro 3 when we were in the third spiral when we were starting to uh really run out of the standards were a little bit weird now this could have ended in complete disaster especially with a tight single year deadline but they mostly knew what they were doing by this point and not to mention the spyro 2 formula of femi one-off levels and gameplay modifying challenges would be a good haven of throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks i won't lie some of the theming of the levels is actually really cool and they do make great use of ideas while also combining them with what i argue better overall level design than most of spyro 2's levels keyword most because some aspire 2 levels are extremely good and some of spyro 3 levels are definitely not but hey time to do this again favorites and least favorites yay my favorite levels include sunny villa great introduction she sells shores is it's just a better sunny shores enchanted towers and frozen altars already talked about those spooky swamps really interesting i really like the level design and the weird haikus make it really charming bamboo terrace is definitely up there i love the theming and it's just a good level overall i also really appreciate charmed ridges and crystal islands more spyro 1s aesthetics fireworks factory while home to two of the worst challenges in the game it's still an awesome exhilarating level fireworks factory is usually our easily my favorite level because we've got a little matrix scene going on in there where the camera revolves around stop-motion photography they're back dino mines might be my favorite the theming is stupid but it's great it's like a western but there are dinosaurs with guns these guys are going to rock your world if you ain't quick if only we still had the role cold cavalry m1873 single action army revolvers i assume that's what they are since they're considered the handgun that won the west i just noticed that in every level set up to be the last level before the final boss all have enemies armed with guns i've also noticed that in every first level of enemies the small ones are always harmless and just cower i remember one time as a kid just standing in front of this dude for like minutes on in just waiting for him to finally collect the courage to hit me with his pointy pickaxe he got there like do it just do it now least favorites enchanted towers haunted tomb molted crater i'm kind of mixed on them but i still think they're good as levels the secondary character levels are all kind of meh agent 9 being like terrible since he doesn't control good and the entire level just feels like a stop and talk no it is a stop and talk tutorial for a game you're not going to be playing you know despite not liking this games and therefore the levels core general structure as much now i still think every level here is thoroughly solid like not a single bad one though i bet some would argue fireworks factory and haunted tomb sucks but that former one especially when factoring the challenges haunted tomb i'm i i think it's all right i think it's fun i think people don't like it because it's the most forgettable level and also all the environmental hazards that can get annoying wait a minute hold up you want to know which levels i think are actually bad like badly design and all that almost forgot to talk about them again the flying levels they are so mind-numbingly linear this time around like there are no more optimal deviations like there used to be there is no more freedom of choice i only remember like two or three instances where it was possible let alone faster to go off the intended path and go at an obstacle line like backwards or something and like the faint hope that you're got some agency now here's something a little interesting sparks now talks to you here because he can now i guess if you listen carefully you can tell that he's actually making noises for each word and syllable instead of just doing some random engines also each speedway now has a race they're okay but have it i don't like them they're terrible and i hate playing through them over and over again like like they're not hard as long as you take every shortcut and use as many of the boost and rocket stars as you can but they just drag like uh oh i wasn't paying attention and didn't shoot enough mouth rockets and now i'm in third on the final lap yes i better restart and spend five more minutes on this doing the same thing like spyro 2 you can find hunter hidden every speedway and he usually has a mission involving space sheep because that's the theme hey spyro respect the second amendment stay strapped or get clap g those challenges are pretty alright it kind of makes up for the lackluster flying and the flying levels but yeah bam last one done hopefully i'll never have to fly anything inverted ever again okay let's do favorites and least favorites with this game's challenges unlike inspire 2 you don't get these missions by coming across a random npc but by going through one of these challenge portals i'm guessing to help differentiate the area from the rest of the level or keep it separate or probably something to do with the memory space or some other technical design reason but yeah with the large magnitude of new ideas and gameplay styles they are more hit and miss this time around than it was in spyro 2 like last time i want to talk about the ones i didn't like first there are a lot more duds in this game and they hit harder that tank destruction derby thing i want to say that i like it i mean it just sounds awesome but it's stupidly cut throat and unfair the hover tank is hard to control and the enemies all hide behind these freaking pots and seem to always hit you first like i found myself just cheesing them by hitting their little exposed sides if you angle yourself just right these little craps in spooky swamp are basically the alchemist mission all over again but times two and do i really need to say anything more than that [Music] oh you deserve all the pain you're going to get you little waster my limited time on this earth we did this challenge so much the rock stop spawning yeah fun fact in some sections this game has dynamic difficulty i'm guessing it's dependent on your life count and or how many times you're failing missions and how much you've been collecting but yeah i think i've been playing this game on hard let's see i already talked about the doom challenge but but the other fireworks factory challenge no not that one that one's pretty good no this this mini boss battle with the twin dragons just suck you have to be so precise with your shots if they slowly regenerate don't even try to switch your focus to the other one when it gets in your way also you can't just stand on the ground and shoot in one spot because you'll get shot right back skateboarding was a poster pleaser and actually i'm kind of mixed on it to say the least hmm i wonder why they would feel the need to put spirono [Music] hey there's a remake out now yeah looks like insomniac took some outside inspiration for some of their challenges and characters i don't blame them though i mean extreme sports definitely popped in the 90s and also ain't nothing wrong with a little reference or influence the problem with the skateboarding in this game is well the skateboarding in this game it's it's not that fun it is very limited in scope like if you go off a half or quarter pipe like you can only turn left or right and if you go off the ramp well you can basically only flip and roll trying to do anything else will more likely than not not even register as a trick and you will most likely wipe out the first skatepark and his challenges just i hated it i i did not like this i mean no but the second skate part was surprisingly good and fun to skate through like even to the point where i was actively trying to grind the highest score i could muster like i don't know what it is about this skatepark here in enchanted towers i mean it's fun sadly these two maps are all you get with the skateboarding because ted price then had a brain blast and decided hmm rocket boards now this is a fast and fun challenge the rocket board races are definitely my favorite they do kind of drag like the speed rate races but they're actually fun and fast paced and feels like it gives you more agency you might be able to beat me at skateboarding but i still get all the chicks i mean just look at it looks fun to play it is fun to play and it's pretty challenging too another one i'm mixed on is bentley boxing oh boy this is a notorious one you 1v1 that spyro 2 yeti in a boxing match and it's surprisingly technical and the controls also contort your hands with unfamiliarity you have a quick hijab a slower riskier but harder hitting haymaker and a low gut punch you automatically guard low but you can raise your hands from a jab in haymaker but then you are exposed to below blow as said surprisingly tentacle and like a good fighting game plays out like a rapid paced game of rock paper scissors too bad the enemy ai is a psychic and is extremely aggravating to work with reacting exactly when you throw out a punch you can try to play footsies with him slightly going into his reach to bait out attack that you can go back in the counter but the movement is not one-to-one it's like incremental and i hate that you can try to chase him with repeated jabs and pray to your gut punch hits when he puts his hands up and not immediately smack you in the face and heaven forbid you get backed into a corner because you might as well reset wait how did i not know this how did i forget this you can actually walk up and down this is this is in full 3d now i i feel like an idiot now you can do the more reliable jab and sidestep cheese honestly once you get used to it and figure out some strats it it actually gets a it actually gets a little fun if you don't want to deal with the mess though you can just outright cheat by plugging in a second controller because that makes it two-player yes this is the only instance of multiplayer in all of these games and it's with this garbage i haven't tried it myself but it probably plays better with a competent friend who's willing to put up with all these janky controls but but yeah while it's really novel it ain't no esports he's running to the edge oh my god destruction [Applause] that was emphatic that was amazing let's talk about the ones i like now the first hunter mission has you in this fighter jet and you can't see anything because of a crap cam replacement and you die in one hit but it's just dummy fun to go around blowing everything up i think the best hunter mission is the rail shooter one and i kind of like the weird uh the weird uh honey ways motorboat chase i think it's like heavily implied that hunter's gone crazy or something the rocket boards are as emphasized extremely dope or other trendy word i like the puzzles like like this little dog puzzle the little little adorable puppy and this one the growing beans they're nice and they're pretty well designed starting you off with a basic task to learn the puzzle and then giving you more hard puzzles with the stuff you just learned before closing it all out with a subversion i always seem to get a little stuck on the final bean one i swear the mini boss naval battle with bluto is really neat and fun so was the mini boss fight against a sleepy rhinock wizard this 2d section with sheila is cool and all but it should have focused more on verticality with how high you can jump and how much your horizontal movement sucks i love the meanie squish of a whacked mold don't you can i interest you in a game of cat hockey peta approved all of the sparks levels oh yeah you can play as sparks and it's awesome he controls like a top-down gauntlet-style shooter which you would rather want to be a twin stick shooter but it still feels great especially if you properly utilize the strafing the levels themselves are pretty good though i feel like they could have been more to them but but the combatant shooting definitely makes up for it and the bosses at the end of each of them are pretty fun to gun down to you only get access to these levels after fighting the world's boss which yeah you can immediately go back but do you really want to go back after entering a new world no i didn't think so i just found myself doing all of them in succession after being the final boss right before going for that 100 comb through which yes like with the unlockable moves in spyro 2 is a thing again because you know the other characters you've got it free anyways completing one of these will grant sparks a new ability to help spiral with grabbing gyms farther away being able to teleport to levels from a guidebook gaining an additional hit point i wish he had another color to him instead of just staying gold like in the future gba game where he became red uh breaking gym containers which i kind of liked breaking them myself oh and the godsend dubbed the gem finder hold down all the shoulder buttons to have sparks point to the direction of the nearest gem i'd say that this is probably the best ability since it's really easy to leave behind or miss some random straggling gym hitting some wall crevice somewhere it's unlockable in this game which is appropriate but kind of strange since fun fact you had it from the get-go in spyro 2. yeah that's right if you hold down all the shoulder buttons in that game boom there was the gem finder mind blown you are never told that you can do this in the game only in the manual heck you can even center camera in that game like why i wish i knew about that like you are never told this well i think i don't know maybe it was in that tutorial blah blah i skipped that came out of zoe's gob i found the gem fighter and spyro 2 out of complete desperation standing on this bridge in idle springs having no idea where these last gems were and just and just slamming down all the shoulder buttons hoping it would work knowing or i guess now thinking that doing it wouldn't do anything but it did the gem finder is something they implemented in all three games in the reignited trilogy and while i love that i don't really like how it works you just push in the left analog stick to have sparks quickly twirl in the direction which while being satisfying to spam and also retains the game's flow i think it's very cheap and subject to over-reliance doing the all shoulders thing will likely have you stop abusing it and make you use it as a last resort rather than just spamming it while you're playing i don't know either way you get these sparks abilities towards the very end of the game silver usefulness isn't that prevalent well unless you actually you turned after defeating a boss which as said why would you or even how could you know speaking of the bosses let me talk about the music real quick before i forget and inevitably end up in spoiler territory it seems like mr copeland decided to switch things up of his entry swapping out most of that classic spiral all rock infused with cultural flair based on the level theming and experimented with some straight up tetano and electrical stuff like or whatever this highly compressed bass ripping factory noises and even giving us a taste of some old school hip-hop with some of these drum beats while i am highly affectionate of that classic spyro style and it's still there in many places i cannot tell a lie this new direction can undeniably slap hard [Music] [Music] stevie also got some help from his guy named ryan beveridge who was just starting to break into the tv and film score industry i don't know how much of his new direction was because of him or if he did the heavy techno stuff and copeland did the tracks that sounded more like normal spyro or or whatever but hey this is a rather different yet still awesome ost especially the super ominous boss tracks the sorceress and her goons whip up powerful monsters to ambush you while traveling between worlds and you get that world's secondary character to help you out in some way these bosses can be quite challenging but honestly i don't think they're hard at all some would tell me spike spike hard which nah just charge in circles and you'll be fine he doesn't even lead his shots like the other bosses do unless i sucked so hard in that spooky swamp challenge that the challenge rating got knocked way down for this fight somehow which it shouldn't i mean i played a different another level before fighting this boss so scorch scorch is my favorite from the arena being a colossal skeleton to the mechanics being just shooting rockets at him to the background track just being the best boss track here i really like the intro cut scene to each of them adds more insight into what's going on behind the scenes and show bianca's progression and her story i like how unreignited they gave the next world secondary character some speaking lines instead of just being teased in the background really nice touch now strangely enough well hold up big spoiler for the rest of spyro 3 so uh yeah skip here so so yeah the final boss the final boss does not have an intro cut scene even though it has like four cutscenes after it all you get is just time to kick some sorceress butt well that was humorously poignant but spyro it feels like he needed some kind of personal interaction with a sorceress because this confrontation feels kind of flat i mean his interactions with ripto are always really fun and made the fight feel more personal and i mean sure we get to see a lot of her leading up to this but heading up to the fight with her i mean give us something to latch onto to pay off all that build up i don't think spyro even talked to the sorceress at any point in this game man this boss is harder than i remember well probably because the stationary turrets you have to use at the beginning of this fight are terrible fun fact if you own an early copy or the pal version i think the pretty decent final boss music for this fight is different because of a bug or limited disk space respectively sucks for y'all despite this track being fitting to a sorceress scorch had a better track worthy of a final boss theme but oh well and boom another villain dead this time for good as she never reappears in the sequels [Music] yep yep you're just gonna let that happen man turns out there's the super bonus world that you unlock after getting absolutely everything it's got a few good challenges and a classic sonic style secret extra true final boss that sucks straight liquid butt to fight and i hated every second of it it's like the bird form in the ripto fight but like smaller hitbox and it's the entire thing what the heck still no we still don't get any kind of interaction with her she just she just appears and bianca tells us that she appeared after killing her for realsies this time you are then sent off of a series with this slightly ominous yet adorable cut scene [Music] yeah i feel like the normal ending cutscene is better but i guess that's why they put that there so that more players will be able to see it and i mean yeah it's a great send-off it's a sad sight sparks another noble warrior falls victim to the plague of love just look away well i guess we'll have to find the rest of the eggs by ourselves come on spyro take a little break let's watch the show well that was spyro 3 and basically this game was made with the objective to insert as many different yet hopefully still good play styles in an attempt to keep the game fresh varied and unboring i'm sure that's a word as said variety is the name of a game here so they tried every cool sounding idea and concept they could come up with in a timely manner and if they came out with any ideas that they could have or probably should have built the entire game around well they're probably just too far in development where restarting a game of a more focused design was just out of a question and i find that meh but hey spyro 2's formula of themey one-off levels and gameplay modifying challenges was suitable for random ideas for levels and game altering challenges and in the end i believe that they have reached this goal with moderately low success but honestly i think things could have been better for like both this game and upcoming ones i'll reiterate that i believe that they should have focused more on expanding the core gameplay and making the world more coherent i mean you can use theming effectively weaving recognizable cultures geographies and imagery to fit and expand your fictional settings but although they're creating and working with really cool ideas and mixing them all together it feels rather empty and meaningless because you know they aren't concerned with the world building because well as they said they felt like they're at the limits of a series and just want to add in as much creative and crazy and wacky stuff in order to instill a crazy and potentially awesome final impression before of a dump series and go on to better things other than the gameplay and more standardization like what kind of cohesion is there spyro could find himself in a freaking enchanted train yard populated with like platypuses maybe like conductor gear being attacked by like coal miners myth like windmill guns and it would not feel out of place like well yes this approach theoretically allows for endless opportunities when it comes to creating ideas and for fun experiences but it would definitely just feel empty and tiring for a while and there's just a major lack of focus i believe like having a singular theme to base everything on or at least a concrete world to set your stories in would just can actually give you more freedom in like a weird paradoxical sense for example underwater with scrappy americana cartoony mushroomy fantasyland looney toony science versus mystical nature bombastic consumeristic sci-fi one of the great things about ratchet the universe is that it's infinitely extendable and we never put constraints on what we could do with ratchet he's in a completely made-up universe there are no restrictions on for us in terms of what kind of characters we can create because anything goes in a ratchet universe that we never we never try to define it so strictly that we would limit ourselves and so we just keep trying new stuff dadgum even freaking skylanders especially in the cartoon did a good job of setting up a consistent world with heavy fantasy elements the occasional modern or futuristic tech thing or whatever that spyro sort of initially went for oh skylanders i'll talk about them later i find value in creating a consistent sensible fictional worlds even in children's media which i believe is a necessity for a long-running series now this is highly arguable especially taking in consideration spyro's peers and how to add here or i guess not truly adhere to this idea i'll probably dive into this topic in like a standalone video or even in a potential sonic overview in retrospective because hoo boy sonic is a series that prides itself of story and lore while simultaneously ignoring continuity and tossing any world building it painstakingly makes straight into the trash no i am not asking for spyro to have extensive lore or be strictly fantasy i just think that spyro could have been better off like a lot more focus like who knows maybe a fantasy only world with like modern tech and stuff like that done by magical devices or maybe just have like far-off races and far-off lands have like experimental electric and steampunk tech or some of the nature just some to tie everything together you want to know would have been amazing what if like with spyro 1's overarching theme of european child book fantasy and myth what if spyro 3 had an overarching theme of eastern chinese dragon related fantasy and myth sounds like a good idea to me spyro 2 could have been like probably about like other european cultural stuff like i don't know the celts norse mythology greek other places you see where i'm getting at and maybe have like the future games be like based on that stuff merging together or something or going like wild on like one concept or or who knows while i can agree that the wild creativity on display here is really neat going from level to level and getting a novel of something unexpected is predictably going to get old and hollow after a while and if they were ever to want to like tell an in-depth story that would like that would have to involve thematic or environmental consistency then that's going to feel out of place like ooh this bad guy wow evil wizard dragon why don't why doesn't he just create some sort of magical army of robots to appear and take over the world like wouldn't that make sense in this crazy nonsense world wait well that's just my personal gripe of the quote-unquote original spyro timeline in the world and oh gosh it felt kind of cringey saying that and can't wait to dive more into that later now look i'm just kind of rambling right now these things shouldn't devalue your experience with the games and you probably think i'm an idiot for caring so much about something so seemingly arbitrary the world building or consistency of a world of a cartoony kid series that much i i don't know man i i just wish this series could have gone on to better places than where it did so here's the question which of these three games is better some would say three for a large swath of content having plenty of variety perfected core gameplay and the nicest story some would say too for focusing more on the perfected gameplay adding elements the first spiral lacked all the while not going overboard with the challenges and some would say one for it's focused on pure gameplay feeling the best to explore and having genuine platforming challenge if you've been paying attention then well you probably would already know if i have a bias towards that ladder camp seriously though the original spyro is my favorite video game ever not the best game i've played but the one i hold in highest personal regard i have a lot of nostalgia for it and i like his gameplay loop the best out of the whole trilogy although i wish it had the better rounded gameplay of the following games like plus like the hover and the charge jump all of these games are good and i highly recommend them all to everybody i would recommend getting the original playstation versions but that's just a personal thing you'll likely be better off getting the spyro reignited trilogy that came out a couple years ago as i mentioned before i made a video about it around the time it came out and i mostly focused on the differences between the originals which now that i've said everything i wanted to say about the originals well would now make a lot more sense so so check it out now that you're enlightened but if you don't want to tolerate a drop in microphone quality well here's the summary the visuals are fantastically reimagined and the graphics and art style are consistently good i was wondering how they were going to interpret the muppet-faced characters with the original stylings of a spiral concept art despite these praises there are some major visual design elements and interpretations that i think are just not good mostly ripto sparks his weird face proportions and arms and teeth and also the cut scenes they're absolutely better for the most part especially with them adding unique animations and character designs for every single dragon in the first game even though they had a rushed animations of the third game but but things like the pacing background music and different voice direction just just make it uncanny as heck also spyro's character has been dumbed down like spyro lost a lot of his edge and just doesn't feel right [Music] sergeant fern ninety blue six eight awaiting orders sir uh i think you'll have to find your commanding officer for that [Music] sergeant bird 90068 awaiting orders sir um i think you'll have to find your commanding officer for that the music is pretty good it's been remixed and it's good enough but i personally would rather listen to the original compositions which you can actually switch to in the options so that's great the worst part of a remake has to be like the crush fight like the visuals are different i guess to differentiate them from gulps fight but i just found an unnecessary oh and the music for it has been like completely butchered i mean that was one of my most favorite tracks to hear like like wow another bad thing about this game has to be like the numerous glitches and performance issues that occur since this game was rushed to meet that 20th anniversary deadline but they've been patching a lot of things and hopefully it won't be too big an issue for you now also i wish that this and also the insane crash trilogy yeah had like roms of the original games in it just for the heck of it and for preservation in spite of my largely personal vices against some of the reinterpretations and the directions in many of the other parts of the game i think that the gameplay itself is literally perfect spyro has a higher charge jump now in the first game he can now turn his head all around while looking barrel is longer and you can use it in like every game sparks can now point to veneers gem at the press of a button agent nine feels really good now because well the most important overall change the right stick now moves the camera yeah i think i know why i struggled playing the originals again yeah get it it's a great remake of three fantastic games with a retail price of only 40 bucks likely now on sale and having cheap aftermarket markdowns and also now available for every major platform so you have no excuse get it well i guess there is a legit excuse now since well the recent incident i can't feel good recommend anything about directly benefit activision blizzard at least until they undergo some kind of sufficient restructuring to ensure the thing that happened can never come close to happening again hence since i still recommend trying this game out i can only recommend getting it used which is where you're probably going to find the best deals anyways while playing it on the ps4 feels right i recommend the pc version the most it is definitely the best way to experience this game here's my mod list but i know buying digitally equals direct support well fun fact you don't have to buy directly from steam while it's theoretically possible to get an aftermarket key code for this game none of my normal plugs got any at the moment i i actually think they might be getting scarce not even g2a whom i do not recommend not even they are offering it as a standalone well if you want to find one i'll leave that as an exercise for the viewer well that was the legacy of spyro the dragon but if you know anything about anything you'd know that the story doesn't end here and it's going to go straight downhill by the time the original trilogy was completed the ps2 and other six engine consoles were releasing which would allow new possibilities and comprehensible 3d graphics you won't need to like half interpret back then it was about the i think it was about the number of polygons you could display on screen that was all the talk and we what was cool is we could make much more complex models ratchet as a character had more polygons than any of our spiral levels on their own that was the big comparison we made and it was a real eye-opener for most of us because we that was a stark demonstration of the leap in processing power that the playstation had two head over the playstation one plenty of places to take spyro now but insomniac just felt done with the series and wanted to explore new ideas of the new possibilities the next generation of gaming tech will allow them insomniac would end up creating the ratchet and clank series a crazy cartoony yet gritty sci-fi shooter platformer hybrid that just looks fun and rattus heck to play please sony just port one of the ps4 store please please so what happened to spyro did he just become forgotten oh oh no you see insomniac never owned spyro they created them yes but they were under a publishing contract with universal which means that universal owned the intellectual property okay sony was the official publisher but i think the soon to be defunct universal interactive which of course was under universal proper was some sort of intermediary and ended up with the rights so i don't really think it counts as a first party game well maybe yes but i'm not too sure because i'm not really sure about the legal stuff or whatever and also all sorts of names of good money starting to get involved at this point so i'm not going to go too deep into it so when insomniac decided to move on if universal wanted more spyro games to suck money from they had to go and license it out with different developers which is exactly what they did with the results being well less unfavorable to put it lightly in case you're wondering this is the exact and i mean the exact same thing that happened with crash with naughty dog yeah universal owned both of them and the original craters moved on after their ps ones run crazy uh i've finally talked about my favorite games of all time yay but we ain't just gonna stop it there oh no as a high tier spyro fan i have been obligated to play through every spiral game and not just the home console releases i mean all of them so next time we are going to check out the posted zomiak spyro games what's the tone on those gonna be let me give you a hint that's actually going to be a maybe i was going to say subscribe for that but you see as much as i would love to go on to talk about the rest of the series and also make a bunch of overview and retrospective videos on the many other series and franchises i hold near and dear to my heart i've decided that it would be best to move on from doing youtube videos i may feel rejuvenated thanks to my five to six month hiatus big sorry about that but i'm wanting to shift my focus to a different project a video game of my own heavily inspired by spyro in fact and also a bunch of other inspirations and series and franchises that i hold near and dear to my heart i am planning to make a full standalone update video in a week or two about that and also the fate of this channel i'll still try to make the occasional review if i'm liking something enough but don't expect a video essay tier thing full of heavily edited memes like you just witnessed maybe i'll make a quick look on the sequel to the sonic movie or maybe i'll do more mini reviews geared towards youtube shorts instagram and tick tocks or something but i doubt it look i have a big procrastination problem and i can't do both at once someone's got to give anyways thank you so much for your infinite patience and willingness to watch this unnecessarily meaty video to the bitter end if you can spare a like i'd be extremely grateful and if you'd like to subscribe despite the bleak prognosis of the future content here or just want to know about that game project i got cooking i thanky i'm treygamer58 and until next time i will see you next time so see ya [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TreyGamr58

Views: 7,299

Keywords: Spyro, spyro retrospective, Spyro PlayStation, spyro original trilogy retrospective, spyro overview, spyro review, Spyro Original Trilogy, Spyro PS1, spyro reignited trilogy, spyro the dragon, retrospective, spyro the dragon retrospective, spyro 2, japanese spyro retrospective, spyro original trilogy, spyro trilogy, spyro 1, spyro 3, spyro retrospective review, spyro 1998 retrospective, Overviews & Retrospects, spyro video essay, TreyGamr58, TreyGamr, part 1, Spyro PS1 Trilogy

Id: Uyips-ti9g0

Length: 135min 43sec (8143 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2022