Disclaimer: rare long review incoming

This is probably my least favorite Spyro game from the series and I hope to never play it again. Why so? Allow me to tell you.

For starters it took me 2 tries to complete it since as my younger self I couldn't fathom not only the cheeky unfunny dialogue but also the story itself. I had too many question coming from the PS1 era, such as: Who's Red? Who's that pink dragon? Why does everyone talk like what they do is a chore? Why does it feel like everyone hates being there? What happened to the Professor and his intelligence? And most importantly, HOW CAN I MAKE MONEYBAGS SHUT UP?!

Seriously, he's the most annoying ever and you have to talk to him constantly because there’s now a gem shop where you can not only buy upgrades but keys which you need for some collectibles or to fast travel between areas. In fact, he even talks to you whenever you're near his portals repeating the same lines with that smug face, and (spoiler alert in case you were wondering) you never get back at him.

So that’s bad enough at least it’s somewhat bearable if you turn off the audio. What isn’t and plays a major factor are the controls. Honestly, whoever decided to map the run button to circle and the fire button to square should have been fired immediately. I lost count on how many times I messed up hitting an enemy or dashing in the air due to muscle memory. Every time that happened it made me facepalm and at the time of reading this my forehead is probably quite red.

Moreover, the 3D platforming is made even worse by the bad physics engine. While not the worst I’ve witnessed it encompasses a lot of instances which needed more time in the oven: glitchy hitboxes specifically while hitting some enemies, slippery platforms particularly moving ones, getting hit through walls which at least didn’t happen often, or even missing collectibles you clearly go through because the game didn’t load it fast enough.

There are also minigames throughout your journey and while I didn't despise them, there were certain parts that really frustrated me: the Sparx levels for spamming you with enemies in sections where you have to go through fast closing hatches, Blink's platforming considering for how much you have to do of it sometimes with a lot of waiting; and Hunter's inaccurate moveset for both jumps, punches and arrows if you’re not at the right spot. Sgt. Byrd was the only one that controlled well enough to not be a problem and its times weren’t as strict as some may say.

Apart from that, the game in general had an accumulation of minor inconveniences which I could mention but it would make the review twice as long. These I wouldn't have noticed if this was the first game in the series but since it isn’t and the problem wasn’t there to begin with it’s quite noticeable. For example, you’d expect after ramping into a jar or a chest to immediately give you its contents, mostly gems. Well this game sometimes doesn’t do that and makes you turn around, move the camera and step where you’ve just been. Stuff like this isn't game changing but once it happens too frequently it can pile up enough to get on your nerves. Fortunately in the case of gems there are so many lying around that you might as well avoid the chests all together from a certain point onwards.

On the positive side, the presentation itself is very colorful and despite not being a fan of the character design, it looks good enough for its console. Furthermore, while none of the tracks caught my ear and this is a downgrade from how well they used to be composed, some may find them catchy after hearing them enough. Also, not every single joke in the game was bad, some dark gag did make me giggle in hindsight, too bad they didn’t while playing the game considering whatever annoying task I had to perform.

All in all, this was simply an utter disappointment that completely stepped on my good nostalgic memories with a pale version that tried too hard to make fun of itself to the point that it can be summed up in one word: annoying. The only reason I went back and completed it was to lay my curiosity to rest and in that regard I think I’ve done more than enough.

This was one of THE games of my childhood so I was excited to get back around to it and see if I still felt like it held up to an extent when returning to it, and I was pretty amazed with how much of this game feels almost as if it was tailor made to feel like the biggest, most exciting thing ever to a kid. Looking at it now, there’s definitely quite a bit that doesn’t really work too well, and it feels more like a typical 5th gen platformer than something that is uniquely Spyro, but even so, I can see why I was obsessed with this game when I was younger, and it was still quite fun to me this time, especially since I realised that I remembered almost nothing about it whatsoever.

The way that this game mainly stands out to me is with how it utilises negative space in its stages, often having these large, open unreachable spaces that stretch over the horizon, not really having much in them, but providing a sense of scale and sparseness to each world. This trait is consistently one of the most enchanting things to me in a 3D platformer when handled correctly, and it’s done marvellously here, with a lot of the biggest points of spectacle in the stages being these moments where walking through the claustrophobic corridors and gauntlets leads you to a big, open area, often with level boundaries that don’t do much to visually cover up the emptiness behind them, which in turn evokes a similar atmosphere to Stone Hill from Spyro 1, just in far more locations. What really sells the game’s visuals to me is how it does all this while maintaining a sense of lushness and vibrancy to even the most hostile of locations, making places like the swamp still look strangely warm and inviting.

Switching up the structure of the game from self-contained levels to larger, interconnected zones is another way that the game felt so massive to me as a kid, with the relatively seamless transitions making those sudden changes in scenery feel all the more impactful. A more open approach to level design felt like the natural progression of the series as a whole as well thanks to how Spyro’s mobility options have always differed to a typical 3D platformer, and it’s handled rather well here purely in terms of how each areas feels to exist in. Unfortunately, it becomes clear very quickly that outside of the atmosphere, A Hero’s Tail doesn’t really know how to fully utilise the tools at its disposal and dumbs things down a lot in places that could have been where the game shone the brightest. The way collectibles are hidden is the biggest way this becomes so apparent, with the majority of them being more or less directly in sight of the player and just requiring very short, easy platforming challenges to reach them. It rarely feels as if you’re actively exploring the levels as a result, instead doing something more akin to being led down a bunch of paths that are very clearly signposted for your convenience, feeling closer to a theme park attraction than a proper platforming stage in places. This makes the actual exploration of the stages feel very barebones, something that is only saved due to how beautiful they all are and the fact that the occasional instances of genuinely well-hidden stuff feel like fantastic curveballs, regardless of how few and far between they may be.

Unfortunately, I also don’t quite love how certain aspects of Spyro’s controls feel in this game, especially with how jumping works. You have a double jump in this, but it’ll only trigger before and at the exact moment where you hit the peak in your jump, and afterwards will be a glide instead. This feels really rough in the more technical platforming sections, since the typical strategy of waiting a bit longer before jumping again so you can extend the distance will just kill you here instead, setting things up in such a way that you always feel like you’re jumping a bit too early, even if you still get to where you need to. None of Spyro’s moves flow into one another smoothly enough to make the moment to moment experience feel quite annoying because of it. Hitboxes also come across as very iffy sometimes, particularly whenever there’s something you need to pole spin across, as it’s a common occurrence for you to phase through these if you didn’t hit the exact trigger point, often leading to death. Boss fights are consistently a low point of the game as well, consisting of a lot of waiting in between attack cycles for the one moment where you can hit them, often with attacks worked in that don’t feel designed with consistent dodging in mind, leading to some real cheap shots that are irritating every time, even if they rarely lead to an outright death.

While the Spyro gameplay is largely a very pleasant ride, despite its simplicity and problems (it’s a kids game and a good one at that, it’s allowed to be simple), my praise for almost everything outside of Spyro’s portion of the game runs far thinner. Rather than taking the approach of Spyro 2, 3 and even Enter the Dragonfly to a lesser extent, where there was a constant bombardment of weird game modes that would only appear once or twice and make each place stand out simply due to how many different ideas could be packed into each twist and turn, a Hero’s Tail opts to largely contain it to 5 different additional game modes that all make an appearance in each world instead. To give some credit to this concept, a lot of this adds a greater sense of liveliness to the world, with Sgt Byrd’s speedways, Sparx’s shooter sections and Blink’s underground expeditions showcasing different facets of the world, making the skies, the underground and even small gaps within the walls feel populated. Unfortunately, most of these additional gameplay sections play very poorly and break up the pacing in a truly horrible way.

The Sgt Byrd sections are the best parts of the game’s side content, acting as the speedway sections from the previous games, just with a couple of key twists that switch things up, both for better and for worse. The jetpack controls feels a bit different to how Spyro would fly in the past games, but ends up working out nicely, making things feel quick and weighty, with the ability to use fuel to boost further contributing to this. The ability to fire off your homing rocket launchers and have them come into contact with something as long as they’re vaguely on screen is an aspect I’m less appreciative of, as it leads to the player having to think less about routing and how to efficiently grab everything. None of these speedways took more than one or two attempts each and they’d always feel like a bit of a blur, where I’d just fly around and hit stuff aimlessly until I’d eventually win. The most difficult parts of each of these was just finding those last one or two objectives that had been tucked away somewhere, rather than having to understand the stage as a whole. Despite my issues, these end up being quite fun regardless, it’s just that they miss out on a lot of smaller details that made these always feel so exciting in the original trilogy.

In contrast to this, the other 4 main modes all kinda suck for the most part. The turret sections of each world just scream “this was a 5th gen platformer so we needed a few of these”, and feel like a mindless distraction, they feel gimmicky, and unlike the skateboard sections in Year of the Dragon, do not have enough time put into them to feel like a fun distraction, just an obligation and a hollow attempt at spicing up gameplay. The Sparx sections similarly feel utterly skeletal in how little is going on here, just being a bland rail shooter, with the caveat being that he takes up so much of the screen that properly navigating between threats is an obnoxious endeavour. The ball sections start off well enough, with the introductory one being a fun obstacle course with a bit of exploration and moments where the level design gets a bit playful with the physics, but the other 2 appearances of this in the game are far more on rails, either being a janky marble run section that has a tendency to throw you into bottomless pits constantly, or a minecart section with obstacles that come out of nowhere. The Blink the mole sections are where the game is at its worst however. These sections are entirely built around being stealthy, and cycle-based platforming, with each cycle being agonisingly slow to the point where each of these 4 stages will make you spend at least half of the time either waiting for an obvious opportunity to proceed, or slowly traversing via walls, ceilings or by standing on glacial moving platforms. Adding insult to injury is the way that all of these minigames require you to go through them twice if you want all of the collectibles, and while they’re technically harder than they were the first time, the changes are always so minimal that you might as well just be doing the same thing a 2nd time.

This is a game with a lot of issues for sure, but it’s a lovely time nonetheless. No amount of frustrating, tedious minigame nonsense will take away from the fact that the atmosphere and scenery of A Hero’s Tail is downright breathtaking (and trust me, the game really seems to want to see how much dumb garbage it can get away with packing into this). A very cute, pleasant experience that I would recommend to those who enjoyed the original trilogy, it’s not quite as good in my opinion, but it’s got its own appeal all the same, just maybe don’t try going for all collectibles, you’ll enjoy it more that way.