Once again, fantastic game! I grew up on this one more so than the original Spyro the Dragon (namely because I was a kid and thought Ripto looked cool...)

I had a lot of the same control issues I had with Spyro the Dragon carrying over into Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. However, this did not stop child me from playing it over, and over, and over again. The characters were all very compelling and it made me fall in love with story telling all over again, each time I played it. The dialogue was witty and humorous, Ripto was truly deplorable in the best way, and Spyro as always was so cool.

Even despite constant dragon racism towards him.

That aside, 4/5. Solid game. Would play many times over, again and again.

This game is brimming with even more personality and expressive animation than the first. I love the storyline and the new, charming characters of Avalar. Much more than the first, the game feels like a Saturday morning cartoon in the best way.

The game also fixes a major issue I had with the first game, in that you could not veer left or right too much while gliding or else you'd just barely miss the platform and eat shit. They expected you to glide straight with little room for error. So this game adds the Hover maneuver so you can do a tiny little double-jump mid-flight to give yourself a little bit of extra verticality to make a jump if you're about to miss. They removed the roll, though, which I didn't get much use out of in the first game, admittedly. But the boss fights against Gulp, Crush, and Ripto, I could've imagined SO many uses for the roll to make those fights a little easier. Also, I felt like I had to wrestle with the camera way more often than I ever had to in Spyro 1, so I had more control issues with this game in general than I did with the first game.

Overall, I think this game sort of suffers from adding TOO much. You not only have to accomplish the main objective of a level, but you also have to find every gem and do every sidequest for Orbs. Many of them are very easy, but enough are obnoxious to the point that I didn't have fun doing them. It just made me wish the game could be over already.

Dragon Shores was a very fun completionist/post-game reward, though. Reminded me of the first time I unlocked the Museum in Modern Warfare 2, where you just get to mess around and have fun after stressing for the whole game. It's not as great a reward as Gnasty's Loot, though, just as Spyro 2 wasn't as great as its predecessor to me.

Yeah, so… Spyro 2 is fucking awesome.

Starting with the negatives, I swear this game’s draw distance is worse than the first game’s. It’s not a big deal, but I found myself gazing into empty, white voids far more often than in the original game. Also, not all of the mini-games are winners (looking at you, Bombo the Stereotypekeeper).

Aside from those issues, the game is an improvement on the original in practically every way.

The controls are a little tighter. Steven Copeland’s soundtrack is even better. The visuals (despite the draw distance issue) are more stunning than ever. The characters are a bit more fleshed-out, with Spyro now having a whole team of friends backing him up and a new archenemy in the form of the titular Ripto, a fun-sized tyrant who tries to be threatening, but hilariously misses the mark every time. Also, Tom Kenny voices Spyro now, which is great.

The biggest addition, however, is the missions. Like all great collect-a-thons, Spyro 2 now has missions that reward you orbs for completing certain tasks, similar to the Jiggies in Banjo-Kazooie and the Shine Sprites in Super Mario Sunshine. These missions come in the form of races, side quests, minigames. While, again, not all of them are great, most of them are, and the game provides plenty of leeway with the collectible requirements to allow you to skip anything you don’t wanna do. All of these help throw in some much-appreciated gameplay variety to break up the usual platforming that the first game introduced, making Spyro 2 feel like a true evolution of its predecessor.

A lot of people hate the focus on minigames in this installment, but I found myself loving almost every objective that others hate. “Trouble with the trolley, eh?” No, not really; it only took me a few tries to beat, and I had a great time while doing so (apparently, Spyro fans have never played a Donkey Kong Country game before, and thus have no idea how to react quickly to railroaded obstacles). I beat the turtle soup mission fairly easily. The hockey one gave me trouble at first, but once I figured out that I could stun the other player, I quickly developed a winning strategy. I dunno, all these missions are fun as hell in my opinion.

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage! is great 👍🏽