Found out about this game only a year or two ago and how a lot of people see it as somewhat of a hidden gem of a game on the original PSOne. After finally playing through it, I definitely get it, even if I wasn't necessarily wowed by it like most were. Still, it's a very fun Spyro clone with The Muppets. Levels are really well designed to loop around and there are 1 or 2 side challenges that you can find in each level that grant you extra collectibles. The 24 levels are also really well varied and have a lot to love about, not to mention that all levels are also made better by the absolute banger of a soundtrack this game has. The game also rewards completionists pretty well with a trove of fun extras for replaying levels to find special coins. The big downsides about the game would have to be that all the boss battles are pretty underwhelming, and while most of the game is easy, the can be surprisingly brutal if you die during a level. You can pick up items to grant you extra health slots, but if you accidentally die or mis time a jump, you permanently lose the health upgrade, and it doesn't respawn ever again even if you reset a level. Collecting the extra coins, while fun rewards await, is incredibly tedious since they can only be obtained via replaying the level again and defeating the enemies where as before they would drop dark magic, now drop coins. This means you'll be playing levels twice at the minimum to completey 100% a level, many MANY times if you continually die in one or fail to find every enemy on your first go around. The ending is also pretty bad and underwhelming, but you do get a pretty cool song for beating the game. Still, I pleasantly enjoyed myself while playing through the game and definitely recommend trying it out. I think they'd even be able to tweak some things and make the game better if they decided to give it a remake or remaster for modern consoles.

Reviewed on Mar 07, 2023


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