The final game in the PlayStation trilogy of Spyro games. For me personally this was my favourite and a wonderful send off from Insomniac to the little guy.

While the jump from Spyro 1 to Spyro 2 was pretty big, very little changed for the third title. The biggest change was the addition of non-Spyro levels: characters like Sheila, Sgt. Bird and even your faithful companion Sparx now had their own levels. I found these enjoyable and a welcome break from controlling Spyro. My favourite addition however was the skateparks. I spent hours in these things competing with friends to get the highest score.

It was a shame the Spyro games following this paled in comparison, but boy did the first 3 games deliver.

A game that goes absolutely off the rails in the best kind of way. While Spyro 1 was a very simple game that focused on one thing, and Spyro 2 was a more well-rounded, filled out experience, Year of the Dragon throws as many ideas as it can think of into the game, stuffing it with a wild amount of content with reckless abandon, sacrificing cohesion in favour of an unpredictable game that always has a curveball waiting for you. While undoubtedly less consistent than the first 2 entries, feeling less finished than them as well, I can't help but appreciate this kitchen sink approach a lot for how many weird and wonderful moments it leads to, and it makes the game as a whole an absolute joy to play.

The style of side objectives that the player experiences is the biggest point of deviation from the 2nd game, and results in the most divisive element of it as well. The 2nd game largely utilised Spyro's basic movement options and had the surrounding elements contribute to the individual tasks that you needed to do, with the behaviour of the enemies and environment being the main factor that provided variety, with the couple of exceptions such as the trolley of Breeze Harbour being very rare moments that stood out a lot. In contrast, Year of the Dragon messes about with gameplay styles a lot, not only having 5 other playable characters that control differently, but adding some vehicle sections in for good measure, with further gameplay styles often found within that. The Agent 9 missions especially feel emblematic of this approach, being a 3rd person shooter in his own level, but then having every other instance of him in the game take on a different control scheme, with one being top-down, one being a rail shooter, and other one being a Doom inspired FPS. His missions are also emblematic of the fact that Year of the Dragon is not afraid to put the player through some janky nonsense, as most of those missions are very rough to control, regardless of how neat it is that they exist in any capacity. This is echoed through the entire game, as while there are some places where it works well enough for what it needs to do, for every cool skateboarding or submarine section, there's a barely functional boxing or slide section close by.

This focus on minigames and similar side objectives ends up being a cause for a lot of the core approach to individual level design to be changed as well, taking one step further away from cohesion since in all fairness, it would probably be extremely hard to naturally incorporate most of these additional setpieces into the one stage without leaving huge chunks emptiness all over the place, but still being compelling despite this. Now a lot of the extra objectives are separated by portals, with the main stage being made more linear and straightforward, with most deviations being additional, longer paths rather than small aspects of the level that sneakily hide a few extra gems or the like. While this isn't my preferred approach to these games, it has its own unique properties that make it appealing in its own regard, especially with how it ties into the game as a whole having a far more surreal, dreamlike quality to them, rather than the unbridled whimsy of Ripto's Rage. Little thought has been put into how these stages within the world itself, the inhabitants just exist in these themed locations and it's treated as normal, you're told how certain areas function and events that happen even when it's clearly playing out differently to how it's been described and it all feels very disconnected in a way that ends up wrapping around to being a very similar atmosphere to Spyro 1 in places, only this time the world feels more populated. While the stages don't invite a similar sense of needing to explore the boundaries of the space you exist in, many stages are still able to feel extremely expansive, as if you're only able to see a small slice of something far greater, but this time there are a few more instances of something completely different jumping out at you as well.

Everything about Buzz's fight especially stands out to me in this regard, with landscape being hellish, further supported by the music and the strange, grotesque design of Buzz himself. It's intimidating and lacks a lot of the usual lighter feel that the game has, but is also the first boss and nothing in the game comes close to this again, with even later boss fights being in more mysterious arenas as opposed to surrounding you with mountains and lava, not to mention that the boss designs themselves are far more "normal" despite being imposing nonetheless. I also love what they did with Moneybags in this game, transforming him from a greedy roadblock into someone who's downright malicious in his attempts to squeeze every last gem out of Spyro, no longer just being content with blocking doors, but actively imprisoning animals and even trying to peddle a dragon egg, being far more smug about the whole ordeal as well, blatantly mentioning that he's being paid off by the sorceress as well. His presence also contributes to the Sorceress being a far more insidious force in the story as a whole, providing many more tangible examples of awful stuff she's doing, and while she still isn't as fun or interesting a Ripto, it's appreciated and continues adding that slightly darker edge to what's otherwise a really bright and charming game.

While this game is far less cohesive and is packed with a few sections and ideas that are genuinely insufferable, Spyro Year of the Dragon makes up for it by using its disparate elements in a way to craft its own unique feel, one based on its own incongruencies and constant need to expand outwards, rather than refine which ultimately leads to an experience that works so well because of its inconsistencies, rather than despite them. The worlds are so bright and charming, there's more weird stuff to spice things up than ever before, so much about the game embodies the PSX jank that I'm so fond of, I just adore it even if it doesn't lean into the same collectathon appeal that makes me so enamoured with the first game.

Year of the Dragon is the best Spyro game

It manages a mix of quality and quantity by combining the best elements of 1 and 2

It has the fast-paced collectathon gameplay of the original-while doing 2’s concepts a lot better

Levels in Spyro 2 comprised almost entirely of minigames, which the levels are based around, and a lot of them could be frustrating

The game also used an arbitrary extra collectible-Talismans-to unlock the first two bosses-before settling on orbs for the third

There are only 64 orbs in the game, compared to 80 in the original

And when defeating enemies, rather than being awarded with gems-it instead powers a power up gate

Oh, and there’s also some insanely pointless backtracking as well

Spyro 2 isn’t bad-but it’s uneven

Spyro 3, fixes everything

For starters, 3 has 150 eggs to collect-and none of them feel padded out

Yeah, there’s some lying out in the open, some double minigames, but they’re not overdone

Minigames have their own sub-rooms, and are generally closer to the normal gameplay

Racing, skateboarding, all a ton of fun

Backtracking meanwhile, is kept to unlocking new characters, who have their own areas in prior levels

Spyro 3 is just a very cleanly-designed game, it’s fantastic

My absolute favorite of the 3 main games.
The variety of characters you get to play here is phenomenal and the objective of rescuing these eggs where the hatchlings come out to make some goofy stuff ist just adorable.
Just as in the 2nd game I love how Spyro's abilities are still there. He learned them in the previous games and so he still knows them, without it really making the game much easier. It feels so natural that Spyro still has all the knowledge of the earlier games and uses them from the beginning. A concept that so many other games tried to excuse with "amnesia" or other things in that direction.
Definitely one of the best series overall and one of my absolute favorite games ever.

I hope it's not actually just me when I say this, but I feel like every kid starts out their video game career by owning a few games and just playing the first few levels, starting a new game, and playing those levels again and again. Then one day someone asks "Why don't you try going farther in the game," and your little dum dum doo doo gooey child brain goes "That's an excellent query." Then you actually try to finish a game and when the end credits roll your mind is blown. Games have endings? They can be beaten? And I, wee little Joe-boi, have the power to beat a game? This was the game that blew my mind. Spyro: Year of the Dragon was the first game I ever beat. One of 2 games I beat before beating games became regular for me, the other game was Over The Hedge for the Xbox.

i had every Spyro game as a kid but for some reason this one is really present in all my memories of Spyro. something about this one stuck like glue in that I can pick it up and play it expertly years later. why is that? i dont fuckin' know. it's pretty good though!

Besides Sly Cooper, Spyro has to have the most consistent trilogy in terms of quality. even when the devs were running out of steam they still brought it home with a REALLY fun game. There are still accursed minigames but they arent honestly that bad (minus the fucking boxing one.) they still bring a lot of imagination and well-timed comedic moments, which is impressive since this was the era that your ps1 disc drive would sound like it's having a hernia trying to load any line of dialogue in most games. Insomniac are pretty good at this shit! Easily the best platformer series of the PS1/N64 generation.

Fixes most of the Spyro 2 issues like bad pacing, lame collectables, and the backtracking is better designed and much easier to skip. Seriously, you can skip all the backtracking with a youtube search and a couple minutes of attempts at most. The new characters are more interesting to play than Spyro 2's minigames, the story, world, and characters are more developed, and the levels are overall more fun. Still has some annoying minigames and it probably wasn’t the best idea to add FIVE new playable characters, (maybe add two or three and develop them further), but it’s a good final entry in the series. Wish they made a fourth one that was an actual game. Toys for Bob if you can hear us please save us Toys for Bob

Hey, I played this one recently enough that I have its completion date listed, cool. I'll cover this and the remake separately.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon was the first Spyro game I played. I played a little bit of it at a friend's house in middle school on his PS One, alongsite Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash. I think I've mentioned before that before my family owned game consoles, we used to rent them (mostly PlayStation 2s) from Blockbuster, so I have a lot of extremely scattered nostalgia for various PlayStation games. Before you get too excited, said PlayStation titles were all for the PS1 (this being right after the PS2 dropped, PS1 games were most of what we had access to) and were all licensed titles (PS1 Harry Potter, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, etc). This would've fallen in a very particular sweet spot, coming after I had regular access to non-computer video games on my GBA but before I had regular access to console games on my GameCube. Thus, this one throwaway visit to a friend's house, in which I played a little Hot Air Skyway on CTR, the first few mini-games of Bash's story mode, and a couple levels of Year of the Dragon, constituted the last possible time I could have that mysterious, magical experience I always had, playing PlayStation games at a time I couldn't have regular access to them.

This is getting off-topic, but I don't really see any other opportunity to mention this on this website - I think the PS1 has my favorite video game bootup sequence. Something about that low, digital bass note on that white logo screen, the ambient beats, the shift to the pure black screen with the colorful alternate logo while the bass note sustains itself, and the digital chimes kicking in, becoming the main notes... I dunno. To me, there's wonder behind that opening. Like, I associate that sound with the rare experience of renting games (well, the back half of that, given how PS1 games boot up on PS2), so there's always the promise of, "you're about to go on a strange and marvelous adventure, the likes of which you've never been on before". It's... hard to explain, I think, but I think people who grew up with the PS1 in their lives in some way understand this. I of course love the GameCube's bootup, and the PS3 goes the easy route of starting with an orchestra tuning itself, but those don't replicate the same emotions I get from the PS1. Maybe I'll never again feel that way, and maybe that's okay.

Anyway, back to Spyro. Like I said, we played a little bit of Year of the Dragon that day. I wanna say my friend (good kid, hope he's doing all right) started a new save to show off, but I also remember us playing specifically Sunny Villa, Sheila's Alp, and Icy Peak? Definitely remember the hockey game, and how much of a silly juxtaposition that was in the middle of the standard adventure. It wasn't a LOT, but it was enough that the experience stuck in my head (even if it'd take me years to remember the specific game we played) and that it colored a lot of my fondness for Spyro overall. Probably not much of an exaggeration to say that this single day is why I'm more of a Spyro fan than a Crash fan; yes, CTR kicks ass, and Crash is excellent overall, but... I dunno. 6 times outta 10, I'd rather be playing classic Spyro than Crash.

With all this said, this is probably my least favorite of the original trilogy. The Sorceress is far and away the least compelling of the original three villains (Gnasty Gnorc sucks, but he's at least funny), and her fights kinda drag on and on. Also, she's trying to suck the magic out of these dragon eggs so she can live forever, but she was around when dragons were booted out of the Forgotten Realms Worlds a thousand years ago? Sure you need the extra juice, Sorceress?

The game also constantly gets distracted from playing Spyro levels, so if all you want is to scamper around as the li'l guy, you're gonna have to wait your turn. These days I know why - Insomniac was struggling with new things to have their quadrupedal protagonist do, so they distracted the point by inventing new characters and gameplay modes (notice how all four new animal friends are bipedal? Or how you first get playable Sparx AND Hunter in the same game?). And I don't mind too much, since the friends are all fun to play as and are over and done with fairly quickly. But it's not hard to see why Insomniac was happy to step away from the series at the end of this game.

I'm... sorta torn on Super Bonus Round, too. I kinda love it as a do-or-die, one-last-time encore victory lap, showcasing some final combinations of mini-games and power-ups. But ending on another Sorceress fight? I guess that's what you SHOULD do, reprise the final boss, but...

Ah, well. The core of it is still a ton of Spyro goodness. Even moreso than Ripto's Rage, there's a real "anything goes" sense to this title. Like, there's a world where everyone talks exclusively in haikus, apparently as some sort of compulsion. There's one sequence that's just straight up Insomniac recreating DOOM in their silly fantasy platformer, complete with a first-person perspective and a UI change. There's a shout-out to Tomb Raider, a 2D platformer segment, and you have to keep Nancy Kerrigan Polar Bear from getting kneecapped by Rhynocs. Why? Why not?

Actually, on the subject of Rhynocs, whaaaat the hell even are those guys? In the grand tradition of having weird gobliny blah-thingies as your 3D platformer enemy minions, now you have a buncha rhino-lookin' guys. What's their relationship with the Sorceress? Why do they keep showing up in post-Insomniac games??? Ah, whatever, they're fun little weirdos.

This has kinda been a rambly review, but the main of it is that Year of the Dragon is a great game, even if it's not my favorite in the series. I think it makes for a great ending for the original trilogy. As many bones as I might make of Super Bonus Round and stuff like that, I like the very very end of it, hinting at budding relationships and future adventures. That little message at the end of Insomniac themselves thanking the player and bidding them farewell, implicitly acknowledging that Insomniac themselves were gonna step away, is a nice little good-bye, closure the likes of which you don't really see anymore in major game releases. I dunno, there's something sweetly poignant to all of it. It's a game where the very start and the very end are some of my favorites in any video game, relics of things that no longer are what they are and can never be what they were. I think, even if these aren't our favorite things, these are the things that are most important to remember and to hold onto going through our lives.