One thing that's becoming abundantly clear as I play through this trilogy is that the Spyro formula hasn't aged quite as well as the Crash Bandicoot formula. I played through the entirety of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy last year - a faithful collection of remakes just like Spyro Reignited Trilogy - and found that the HD recreations of Crash's PS1 jaunts were either on a par with the originals or even surpassed them. With Spyro, it's a different story. The original Ripto's Rage! (or Gateway to Glimmer as it was known in the UK) was a worthy sequel that I found much to my liking back when it came out, but this HD makeover really shines a light on how mundane the minigames are, and how detrimental they are to the experience as a whole. Ripto's Rage! is essentially the first game, but with an extended move list, a (very) half-hearted metroidvania structure, and lots and lots of crappy but mandatory minigames. You want those orbs in order to progress through the story? Best start playing them minigames! The vast majority of which are braindead, repetitive and just plain not fun.

And again, like with the remake of Spyro 1, something's missing. The Insomniac magic just isn't here. Everything feels watered down, generic and lacking the distinct art style of the original. It's a vague criticism I know, but those PS1 titles were an absolute joy on visual and aural front, and that just hasn't been translated well to this HD trilogy.

Onwards to 3.

Nunca jugué el 2 original así que no sabría qué mejoró y qué no, pero vaya que para el sentido "complecionista" este juego es un embole tremendo. Es mas o menos el mismo problema que tengo con Crash Warped y Wrath of Cortex, que está lleno de minijuegos bastante mediocres, pero los de acá tienen un ritmo super lenteja y ni hablar de los jefes. Lo disfruté mucho más cuando me saqué la mentalidad de querer terminar al 100% cada uno de los niveles, y ahí se nota que el diseño que complementa las mecánicas base sí hay una mejora respecto al anterior titulo, y usar las almas de los enemigos para comprar power ups temporales se me hizo un cambio a favor.

Ya iré a probar Year of the Dragon a ver si es tan bueno como lo recordaba.

The original was my favorite of the Insomniac trilogy, back when I played through those, but I actually think the remake feels the least touched up of the three in Reignited.

It's in little things. It probably would've been too much to expect every NPC get a custom redesign this go-around, but I feel like besides the major players, there's mostly only token updates to the character models, with obviously necessary changes to stuff like the NPCs of Scorch. Animations of characters talking loop more obviously than they did in Spyro 1. The Easter Eggs involving Insomniac staffer/kids are absent (though I guess that'd be a bit weird to preserve as a different company). The reference to Hunter's birthday wasn't updated, so either he's 43 or that one skeleton is flossing in 1999. Stuff like that. I'll acknowledge that it's ultimately nitpicking, but given how much care Spyro 1 (and Year of the Dragon, kinda) got in Reignited, it really jumps out at you if you're looking for it.

But maybe Toys For Bob didn't mess with Ripto's Rage too much because the base game was so rock solid. This is where Insomniac started experimenting with alternate gameplay modes and other odds and ends to spice up the experience of each of the worlds. There's a lot to love here, with the increased emphasis on scenarios and eccentric NPCs - of course Spyro playing both sides of the war between Breeze Builders and Land Blubbers is great, Handel and Greta are a ton of fun, Robotica Farms makes for a fun contradiction, etc. You still mostly have the purity of form that made Spyro 1 good, but you also have a variety of mini-games to spice things up. The boss fights are unilaterally improved from Spyro 1, and while Gulp and Crush are just kinda there, Ripto is perhaps the closest a PS1 platformer ever came to the brilliance of Gruntilda in Banjo-Kazooie.

I got a couple complaints, but the only substantial one is that you have to unlock the new moves. I didn't mind it playing the original version, but replaying it in Reignited after "getting" Spyro 1, it sorta feels stifling, having chunks of the levels cut off because you don't have all the moves. At least in Year of the Dragon, tying level chunks to absent characters makes it feel a lot less arbitrary when you're unable to do everything on your first run. At least that's sort of the joke they're playing up here, with Moneybags coercing you into giving him all your hard-earned Gems.

Dragon Shores is the least interesting of the original trilogy's victory laps, but even then there's some cute stuff, like the Skill Shots, the dunk tank with the most annoying NPCs, and the permanent flame upgrade. Could be worse.

Also, on the subject of the remake, I definitely fall into the camp of preferring Original Hunter. Surfer Dude Hunter's a cute enough take, but I feel like it's juuuuuust a little funnier to have Hunter be just some guy who's a dopey moron. On the flipside, everyone else's redesign does wonders for them, especially Elora. Took her from an easily-disposable character rightly forgotten in later games to... maybe my favorite supporting character? Holy moly.

With the original games, Ripto's Rage was definitely my runaway favorite. But I dunno, I think it's about on-par with the first game on revisit. The flaws are a lot more obvious this go-around, but it's not enough to detract from the overall experience, which I still find quite excellent. Good comfort food game, through and through.

A random story to close this out - I had never never never never never never never never never understood the European name, "Gateway to Glimmer", until this playthrough. Like, I dunno, it'd be like assigning Gen 1 Pokémon the subtitle "Grass Outside Pallet". But while playing this game with my father watching, he made a reference to the overall game world as "Glimmer". Obviously he meant Avalar, but since the game places so much focus on Elora/Hunter/The Professor warping Spyro in to the Glimmer subworld, I get where the confusion comes from. ...still a silly name, though.

…this is literally almost identical to Spyro 1

Like yeah the structure I feel is better and more streamlined. Instead of Spyro 1’s jumbled mess of worlds within worlds within worlds, there are 3 cohesive hub world areas with levels packed inside of them. It’s a lot more streamlined in that sense. Instead of looking for Dragons, you’re looking for orbs, but instead of collecting them like in any collectathon, you always need to do someone else’s busy work in order to be rewarded with one. I mean I’m fiiiiiine with this decision I guess, it’s just not terribly exciting.

Overall like the first game though, platforming is super basic and uninteresting, boss fights suck, music is forgettable, it’s just a very “in one ear out the other” type of game just like the first. Story is a slight improvement in that they added a few more central characters but the overarching plot is still just “bad guy does a bad thing and you need to stop him”. Spyro also gets permanent upgrades to his moveset that includes abilities such as…climbing ladders. And uh…stomping on things. Again, not terribly exciting.

I think at this point I’m just playing these out of obligation rather than actually wanting to play them lol

Hey it's more Spyro. What you wanted me to expound? Well fine. It's more Spyro BUT I ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT??

Yeah I dunno why but this one is way better to me. Maybe it's because I knew what I was getting into with controls this time? Maybe its the level structure and the side quests? Maybe its the weird furry bait faun girl? Something about it hit. I do like the characters in general more this time around. Bumbling would be hero cheetah guy and sexy faun aside there's also the main villain, the titular Ripto, who I delighted in seeing chew up every scene he was in. They make him so cartoon bad guy and his deaign is just short little chaos gremlin that I just wanna smack around.

As I mentioned before, the levels have changed a bit. At least it feels like they have. They're certainly more interesting in theme with there being robots who have farms or like a village with some underwater passages and even a future city type thing. There's also three hub worlds that have some surprises in them instead of just being big ovals with a couple enemies spread out.

In addition to that, levels have side-quests now that have you doing various things for an orb collectible along with the gems you're used to. Some of these quests are simple things like mini games but others are a bit more robust like a mini escort mission or a lengthy trade quest. They add a good amount of variety and expand on what a level has to offer without feeling tacked on or bloated. They're great!

In fact, the only thing not great are flying levels. Sigh. Anyone who knows me and my experience with the last game knows I hate the flying levels in these. It's not even the flying specifically but the timer. Get things to increase the time left but if you flub up even one thing in a level where you move in a way that isn't like most other levels in the game and you start over. WHY. It feels so bad. Also underwater stuff was annoying too. Not as bad but it controls like the flying and the inverted controls for swimming were something I never got used to.

So yeah, they made a Spyro game I mostly enjoyed. The actual game and side-quests are fun and the characters are at least neat to look at and kinda funny. I almost even cared about the story. Flying levels are shit though. Otherwise a solid game and I might even recommend it to fans of the genre. I'm now cautiously optimistic for the third one next year!

Such a great sequel to an already great game and even greater remake of such a great classic sequel.

Instant hours of fun. Super vibey, relaxing to just idle in any of the worlds listening to the soundtrack and admiring the amazing graphical work and art style. The gameplay, while a bit more nuanced with the mandatory collection of at least 40 orbs, is so much better than it's predecessor and it only adds a few layers into the mix. The narrative elevates itself with unique cutscenes separating itself from it's more linear counterpart but still staying true to Spyro fashion.

My only complaint here would be the inclusion of Talismans which really only exist to keep the player within a single world before exploring others too quick beyond the narrative, which is understandable in it's own right given you were mostly allowed to exit into beyond worlds despite whether you had freed all the dragons in Spyro the Dragon... but it also feels kinda useless? I feel like if the requirement to advance was to collect all orbs in every level would have been good enough.

The indication to explore though is welcome anyways, because all the levels in their own right are super satisfying to play through. It's simplistic and straight forward but there's something about it that's just extremely fun and the requirement to grind for all orbs honestly is not a pain in any regard thanks to this.

Spyro 2 was an overall good time. Although I don't find much of a reason to score this one any higher than the first game. Despite it being close to a year since I played spyro 1 I'd like to think that my memory on it is still pretty good. Spyro 2 definetly improves and adds upon somethings from the original although some of its additions were not my cup of tea. Some levels and objectives were not very fun and some of the mini games were just a chore to playthrough like that trolley in breeze harbor. But overall this was a pretty enjoyable game that I can see myself coming back to eventually.

This is a solid improvement on the original game's formula and ideas. There's much more variety and creativity to the level design and gimmicks, so the game feels much more fresh and substantial despite being only a little bit longer than the original. The music's even better, and the platforming has some more interesting twists to it as well. Some of the objectives can be a bit annoying, but they're not too bad. This is once again a very cozy game, that I could definitely see myself revisiting in the future.

4 / 5.
This was much better then I had expected, and I actually had a blast playing it, unlike some moments in the first game, where it felt like a drag to get through certain levels.
The addition of the mini-games located throughout all the maps here is probably what I enjoy most, as they are incredibly fun (for the most part) and provide something the first never had. The boss fights too are quite a challenge, although frustrating at times and are much better then they were in the first game.
I should soon 100% complete this, and I doubt the rating will change but overall, very fun game.