This is just, the ideal game, one of the best ones out there to me. It's so simple and breezy, but full of little incongruencies that add a ton of life to the moment to moment gameplay, all wrapped up with being one of the best looking games out there. Playing this for the billionth time after having played the reignited version also did wonders for getting me to appreciate how many little moments of friction in this game keep it feeling so engaging and interesting to me. The level design is mostly breezy but with these occasional difficult jumps that require a lot of precision to be able to make, never being unreasonable, but often coming a bit out of left field and adding a bit of tension to an otherwise very calm experience. Even the way Spyro moves feels a bit odd at first, with the player not being able to turn as snappily as in many other 3d platformers, since you're playing as a 4 legged creature. It never feels unintuitive or even weird, but it's different enough to be noticeable, and plays wonderfully into both the more open spaces and those tighter, winding corridors you'll occasionally find yourself in, with the charge ability never leaving navigations feeling at all sluggish.
Since the game is a pure collectathon with very little else focused on, having no minigames or strong combat focus, I like how much has been put into making the act of collecting itself a reasonably varied feeling task without leaning into outright distractions or big pace breakers, with things like the different kinds of boxes adding that tiny bit extra and also keeping things slightly more visually diverse as well. Of course, the bigger way that collecting things is made so fun is just in how cleverly a lot of gems are hidden, with the game making many more attempts to completely obfuscate potential hiding spots, being unafraid to even hide some gems completely out of sight and require borderline blind jumps to find some of them, with the only hint directing you in such a way being "I've looked in a lot of other places and it looks like I could maybe get to that platform over there. These hiding spots never feel outright unfair, but they do force the player to approach exploration in a way that will sometimes need to disregard basic expecations, approaching exploration in a far more open minded way where every unseen location could maybe be another hiding place, even if it seems ridiculous at first. This makes even the smallest of stages feel so much larger, just knowing that what seem like boundaries have the potential of leading to a reward, and it helps that the game is as pretty as it is.
The level design plays perfectly with Spyro's glide ability, which in turn contributes a lot to its aesthetic being so perfect. This is one of the best games for the appeal of "existing in a place and just wandering around" that I can think of. The levels feel sparse and empty, populated solely by enemies and dragons that have been turned to crystal, with each stage feeling very expansive due to Spyro's gliding and charging allowing him to travel long distances relatively quickly, with elements of verticality largely being utilised as a means of being able to travel further distances across long gaps, rather than just for the appeal of reaching higher places. The constant haze in the distance, the varied skyboxes, the untextured blobs in the distance that resemble random structures, all of it crafts a world that feels desolate, but dreamlike and inviting too, and this appeal is further reinforced with the game's use of colour. There are very few moments in Spyro The Dragon that feel content with only utilising a couple of flatter colours, with the ice cavern being the epitome of this, taking what in many other games would often be a largely white location, and adding a lot of greens, blues and purples to the world, with warm oranges weakly beaming out of the buildings, and it's absolutely beautiful. On the other hand, the moments that utilise more consistent, flat colouring are also really interesting, with the two biggest examples being the seemingly endless fields of Stone Hill or the flat desert of Cliff Town, both of which are open to the point of feeling slightly disconnected from the rest of the game, almost as if you've discovered a way to make it out of bounds and now can run around these endlessly expansive places of nothingness.
Everything about Spyro the Dragon feels set out to make the basic act of existing in a 3D environment as engaging as possible, with gems and dragons feeling like a means of getting the player to explore these gorgeous environments, rather than the levels feeling like vessels for collectables, and that difference is one of the biggest contributing factors in what makes Spyro 1 such a uniquely enjoyable game. It's just telling me to enjoy myself while combing through each stage, never letting me get comfortable to the point where I can switch my brain off and stop fully paying attention, but also not challenging me in a way that would majorly impede the act of exploration either. Tree Tops is also one of the best stages in any game and further reinforces my total adoration for everything this does.
Since the game is a pure collectathon with very little else focused on, having no minigames or strong combat focus, I like how much has been put into making the act of collecting itself a reasonably varied feeling task without leaning into outright distractions or big pace breakers, with things like the different kinds of boxes adding that tiny bit extra and also keeping things slightly more visually diverse as well. Of course, the bigger way that collecting things is made so fun is just in how cleverly a lot of gems are hidden, with the game making many more attempts to completely obfuscate potential hiding spots, being unafraid to even hide some gems completely out of sight and require borderline blind jumps to find some of them, with the only hint directing you in such a way being "I've looked in a lot of other places and it looks like I could maybe get to that platform over there. These hiding spots never feel outright unfair, but they do force the player to approach exploration in a way that will sometimes need to disregard basic expecations, approaching exploration in a far more open minded way where every unseen location could maybe be another hiding place, even if it seems ridiculous at first. This makes even the smallest of stages feel so much larger, just knowing that what seem like boundaries have the potential of leading to a reward, and it helps that the game is as pretty as it is.
The level design plays perfectly with Spyro's glide ability, which in turn contributes a lot to its aesthetic being so perfect. This is one of the best games for the appeal of "existing in a place and just wandering around" that I can think of. The levels feel sparse and empty, populated solely by enemies and dragons that have been turned to crystal, with each stage feeling very expansive due to Spyro's gliding and charging allowing him to travel long distances relatively quickly, with elements of verticality largely being utilised as a means of being able to travel further distances across long gaps, rather than just for the appeal of reaching higher places. The constant haze in the distance, the varied skyboxes, the untextured blobs in the distance that resemble random structures, all of it crafts a world that feels desolate, but dreamlike and inviting too, and this appeal is further reinforced with the game's use of colour. There are very few moments in Spyro The Dragon that feel content with only utilising a couple of flatter colours, with the ice cavern being the epitome of this, taking what in many other games would often be a largely white location, and adding a lot of greens, blues and purples to the world, with warm oranges weakly beaming out of the buildings, and it's absolutely beautiful. On the other hand, the moments that utilise more consistent, flat colouring are also really interesting, with the two biggest examples being the seemingly endless fields of Stone Hill or the flat desert of Cliff Town, both of which are open to the point of feeling slightly disconnected from the rest of the game, almost as if you've discovered a way to make it out of bounds and now can run around these endlessly expansive places of nothingness.
Everything about Spyro the Dragon feels set out to make the basic act of existing in a 3D environment as engaging as possible, with gems and dragons feeling like a means of getting the player to explore these gorgeous environments, rather than the levels feeling like vessels for collectables, and that difference is one of the biggest contributing factors in what makes Spyro 1 such a uniquely enjoyable game. It's just telling me to enjoy myself while combing through each stage, never letting me get comfortable to the point where I can switch my brain off and stop fully paying attention, but also not challenging me in a way that would majorly impede the act of exploration either. Tree Tops is also one of the best stages in any game and further reinforces my total adoration for everything this does.