Spyro 3 expands upon the core gameplay loop that I have come to sign on with this series while finally having meaningful variety that Spyro 2 failed at providing me when it came to challenge or go well with the moment-to-moment gameplay loop. For many people, they call this one unfocused with its new playable characters, and if you feel that way, I respect that viewpoint even if I don't agree with it. For me, it still shows its restraint with the playable characters by maintaining the key Spyro pillars of platforming, exploration, and combat, even when it deviates from that sometimes. They aren't braindead easy like Spyro 2, which made me feel bored of it. However, it's important to highlight that it never loses sight of Spyro himself, who is still the one you mostly play as in this adventure.

The level design has seen substantial improvement because it brings back the pure platforming and exploration that Spyro 1 excelled at, while giving the mini-games or playable characters their own side areas. This makes the pacing much better than the previous games and reduces the repetition or padding out the levels. It helps that most levels have a shortcut that loops back to the beginning of each level, which is very handy for backtracking. Speaking of that, backtracking doesn't feel unrewarding anymore as you unlock new playable characters that have their own side areas with plenty of gems and eggs to collect, compared to Spyro 2 where you had to backtrack for just a few gems that weren't much and maybe one boring mini-game. This game also lets you make your own routes to reduce as much backtracking as you can, and that is achievable without any glitches or a cheat code.

The overall story is nothing crazy, but the first time where I didn't fall asleep towards it because Bianca has a decent arc that is cool to witness and the sorceress is an effective villain that I can't help but hate and motivates the player to get to her, which I didn't feel that with Ripto. Top this with the returning characters like Hunter or Moneybags that are even more charming to watch (or burn like Moneybags) and the new characters that aren't boring like Sheila, Sgt. Byrd, Bentley, and Agent 9. Spyro 3 has the best story & cast of characters by a landslide, my only complaint is that I wish Spyro & Sorceress interacted with each other, but that's it.

I do have several nitpicks about this game that do not make it seem like I find this game flawless. Lost Fleet is easily the worst level in the game as it crams in too much content in one level, eventually making it feel monotonous. However, it is not the worst level in the trilogy, but it is definitely the worst one in Spyro 3. The mystery jars weren't fun to get around in Spyro 2 and still aren't in Spyro 3. My final note on this is that whoever designed the yeti boxing can go to hell.

It's no secret by now that Spyro 3 is my favorite one in the trilogy due to these points that I have explained here, but it's also one of my favorite games ever made alongside Red Dead Redemption, Psychonauts 2, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It's the best fast-paced collectathon platformer in my eyes that knows how to spice things up without losing its focus of pure platforming, exploration, and combat that I came for with Spyro the Dragon.

I really wish I grew up with the Spyro series like I did with Crash but alas, my only experience during childhood was playing the Spyro 1 demo via demo discs and playing one of those crappy Legend of Spyro games on DS.
Anyway, Spyro 3 is more of the same, levels are fantastically designed with them being fun to explore, having memorable setpieces/gimmicks, standing out thematically and shit is satisfying to collect.
To address the Elephant in the room, this game introduces new playable characters and for some reason this seems to bother a lot of people, not me though, I found them all tolerable enough and they help to break up the Spyro gameplay, plus they're mostly optional anyway, sure they're not as fun to play as Spyro but they're perfectly serviceable in my opinion.
I will say there are a few annoying moments, Yeti boxing in particular is awful but overall I had a fantastic time with this and for once, the Speedways are actually really fun!

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

It's the Year of the Dragon, so I finally played Spyro Year of the Dragon. Just like Crash 3, Spyro 3 relies heavily on bad gimmicks because it mistakenly thinks it needs them to keep things fresh. Unlike Crash 3, Spyro 3 doesn't have incredibly good non-gimmick levels to fall back on. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even noticed the levels feeling kinda lackluster if it wasn't for the gimmicks being so prevalent... they really just bring everything down and highlight the deficiencies. It's really not a bad game, I still mostly enjoyed it, but it's easily the worst and least essential of the trilogy; it doesn't have any aspects that would make me recommend it over the previous two.

First time I played this was at a birthday party for some kid who's parent worked with my dad, I think, I never met him before nor did I ever see him again after. When I got there he was in his room playing Spyro 3. He must have just gotten it because he was at the start. I watched for a while then he asked if I wanted to play. I took the controler and never has any other video game hooked me as quick as Year of the Dragon. I played the entire time I was there. When the boy and all the other kids left to sing, blow out the candles, and open presents I stayed in the bedroom playing this game. I didn't stop till I had to leave. I immediately asked my parents if they would buy it for me. This the first video game I obsessed over. It is still to this day one of my favorite games. A masterpiece.

Normally, when I play through a game, I will accumulate about two and a half pages worth of notes on whatever game I am playing. These couple of pages are usually filled with things about the game that I find interesting, as well as any meaningful ideas I find interesting; I find that writing down interesting findings helps me remember the games better later on, as well as help me better write the reviews for them. Spyro: Year of the Dragon has barely a page for its entry. This is not because I think it is a bad game, not by any means; it is honestly a great improvement over Spyro 2. But, that improvement doesn’t necessarily come from a place of innovation, rather a correcting step backwards; a step that was definitely needed, but in the process, creates an experience that is very much more of the same.

What I have come to realize is that Spyro suffers from what I like to call the Tomb Raider dilemma. This is a dilemma where the first game in the series comes out the gate near perfect, and it leaves the developer in a situation where they don’t really know where to go. Either, they do more of what works and risk being criticized as derivative, or they try new stuff and risk alienating the players. Spyro 2 attempted the latter and, for the most part, failed; it ended up being an experience that just lacks the sense of flow and progression that the first game had, and replaced with boring and infuriatingly bad mini games and side quests. Conversely, Year of the Dragon corrects the additions made by Spyro 2 by having its side quests function within the realm of the games core mechanics, rather than them having their own proprietary controls and mechanics. The primary form of these changes comes from the new playable characters; there are five of them in total, and while each of them do play differently from Spyro, they aren’t too dissimilar and the objectives of their stages/quests are the same as the rest of the levels, that being to collect gems and save dragon eggs. Compare this to the mini games from Spyro 2 like the ice hockey and or crystal popcorn section that don’t follow the core gameplay loop and are really jarring in conjunction with the rest of the game. Though there are still a couple of mini game type challenges that made their way into Year of the Dragon, they control way better than the predecessors and are overall more fun; the skate boarding challenges are a great example of this. But, these improvements are not without drawbacks.

Year of the Dragon is a big game, it is bigger than Spyro 2, and it is much bigger than the first game; and because of how this game streamlines and uses the Spyro gameplay loop, it is really noticeable just how big this one is. Spyro 2, despite its bad game design choices, still distracts you from its increased run time by having you do different tasks; but here in this one, it is very much noticeable. The new characters do help slightly with variety, but their sections are so few and far in between, it feels like an eternity before you get to play as one of them again. Because of this, and the prior mentioned streamlining, a lot of this game’s levels kind of overstay their welcome. Personally, I felt really burned out by the end of the game because I felt like I just played a longer version of Spyro 1, which isn’t a bad thing per se, but nonetheless that's how I felt. Additionally, none of the levels reach the peak that they should, there is no real crescendo if you will. Spyro retains all the abilities he gained in Spyro 2, yet there is no level that pushes the player to utilize those abilities in interesting and creative ways; the game is just content with giving the player easy as all get out levels throughout the entire game until it is just over. There is a slight difficulty spike in the final world that I enjoyed, but still nothing stands out. I don’t think I could name a level from this game that isn’t one of the new characters' home world missions. It all just adds up to a game that just doesn't do a whole lot

I know the general fan consensus is that this is the best game in the trilogy, and I can understand that, but for me it's just ok. I think overall Year of the Dragon is a good game, not quite as good as Spyro 1, but definitely better than Spyro 2. It just doesn’t do anything that hasn’t already been seen in the previous games, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetic. It is more of the same, albeit a good more of the same.

Best game of the trilogy. Baby dragons are cute. Surprisingly enough, the music is actually somewhat decent. There were still some dumb tracks though, like Bentley's theme.
Again, some bullshit challenges/minigames keep me from 100%ing this.

I liked the new characters. Bianca is great and so are the playable characters. I enjoyed playing as them for the most part. Kept things fresh. Although they all moved so damn slowly. They could really have done with a speed increase.
Sadly, I didn't do any of the Sparx missions before beating the final boss so I didn't get any of those Sparx upgrades. But after trying out one, I am kind of glad that I missed them since I thought the first Sparx mission was pretty bad.

Considered one of the best games in the series... But not for me, the game isn't bad, even in certain parts I prefer it more than the first Spyro, but I don't know, after playing Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage (which for me is the best of the trilogy), I thought this game was just good, like the stages are shorter,
but strangely you don't have much of a challenge which bothers me after playing the second title which always had an objective to be achieved, they came back with some things from the first game like going after the animals that steal eggs and that run faster than Sonic and chests that need a key to be opened,
the speedway stages didn't change much, but they added races that at first I thought was meh, but after understanding I really liked it and I'll miss it when I replay Spyro 2, the stages vary in quality, some are good, others are so meh that they almost take my mind off desire to play (like the infamous Lost Fleet),
And another criticism I give about the stages is that almost none of them have a varied theme, like the game has two snow stages, one good and the other just ok, are there different challenges for each one? There is, but I found it a bit lazy on the part of the developers, I think what makes this game the "best of the trilogy" is the possibility of you playing with other characters,
which is cool in idea, but in execution it's basically minigames in disguise, there's nothing special about it, I thought Sheila was ok, I really liked the little bird (which looks more like a penguin), I thought Sulley with the stick was cool and I hated the monkey, and the bosses are an improvement compared to the second game, being more challenging, but I hated the last boss,
I thought it was simply HORRIBLE to fight with him, I almost wanted to play cheat to defeat this disgrace straight away, but I would only cause damage if I used weapons that cause damage and these weapons are horrible to shoot at him, it seems that I'm more lucky, it made me miss him from Grunty from Banjo Kazooie (or even Ripto from the second game).
And this was the only game in the trilogy that I didn't do 100%, I didn't feel like doing it.

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.