The famed purple dragon has made his return! For the first time in nearly a decade, the classic PlayStation icon has come to the Switch and PC gaming systems.
“Spyro: The Reignited Trilogy” was released globally on Sept. 3, while being released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One nearly a year ago, on Nov. 13, 2018. Gaming developer Toys for Bob and publisher Activision did a fantastic job on remastering three classic games and bringing them to all systems.
The trilogy consists of the very first title, “Spyro The Dragon,” which was released on Sept. 10, 1998. It also consists of the other two sequels: “Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage!” and “Spyro: Year of the Dragon,” which were released later on in 1999 and 2000. However, later on in the 2000s there was a rebooted trilogy which garnered a lot of attention itself, but wasn’t as big as the original three. When the Reignited Trilogy was released last year, it was a huge success. Even now, nearly a year after its original release, they did a fantastic job in updating the graphics and frame-rate to play perfectly on the Nintendo Switch system.
If you are a person who has played the original ‘Spyro’ on the Playstation 1, this trilogy is definitely a pure nostalgia trip, and a great one at that.
For those who don’t know what “Spyro” is, I’ll give you a rundown with my favorite of the three, “Spyro The Dragon.” In “Spyro The Dragon,” it all begins with the little purple dragon learning about the menace of the Dragon Worlds, Gnasty Gnorc. The game encompasses several realms of the Dragon World, starting from the Artisans world, home of the artistic dragons. From there, you can travel to the militaristic Peace Keepers realm, the magical Magic Crafters realm, the monstrous Beast Crafters realm and the secluded Dream Weavers realm. As you go along, you encounter many monsters and enemies along the way, ranging from shielded foes to ones that will shock you out of your wings. While encountering those devilish foes, the goal is to regain the treasures and free the dragons from their crystalline prisons, which Gnasty Gnorc put them in. While the main goal is to defeat the Gnasty Gnorc, you have to make sure you free all of the dragons you see! That’s because the more dragons you release, the more abilities you can learn via their speeches of advice. Not only that, but if you complete certain tasks in the guidebook, you can gain different skill points along the way.
Overall, in my time playing this game, I feel like they did a great job in remastering it, when looking back at the original game’s screenshots from back on the PS1. As far as gameplay goes, I definitely feel like it could be a lot smoother on the get-go, as far as just thrusting you into the game with little to no instruction. A huge issue for me was seeing several instances of tutorial dialogue after just using and/or learning said new ability prior to that checkpoint. I saw very little issues with the game’s design and gameplay, which in totality was very smooth when progressing deeper into each game’s storyline. However, one thing that really did bother me when playing through the first game in particular was the camera angles. It was very different and sensitivity-prone compared to other single player games, and because of that, it takes a little while to get used to. On the positive side, the music and art style were perfect for each realm and world as you go along, and it makes the overall play-through experience feel a hell of a lot better.
If you are a person who has played the original “Spyro” on the Playstation 1, this trilogy is definitely a pure nostalgia trip, and a great one at that. For someone new to the series, this is a well-remade classic trilogy that is purely single player, and if you are a fan of those types of games as well as similar games like “Crash Bandicoot,” then this is the game for you. As someone who has played little of the original games, I’d have to say that this introduced me to a story of a character who I heard plenty of before, but had very little interest as I was growing up. After completing the first game, and playing much more into “Spyro 2” and “Spyro: Year of the Dragon,” I will give this reignited trilogy a solid 8/10.
Jeffrey Babcock is a third-year student majoring in communications. JB884128@wcupa.edu