You know those last two Harry Potter books where it's supposed to be all dark and edgy because they "grew up with the audience" so Harry Potter and his wizard friends are teenagers with romantic subplots fighting a war and there's death but in the end, you're just experiencing something that's worse than the previous adventures because the writing sucks now and the story is still about wizards named Hornswoddle Prissipants? This is the dragon version of that.
What a deeply embarrassing nightmare of a game with a deeply embarrassing story that hits every single tired beat. After being trapped in a magic time statis rock with his goth gf Cynder for several years so that they can sneakily change the art style, Spyro is A TEENAGER now which means this game has to have Spyro flirt with Cynder, who now has dragon boobs and a wasp thin waist since she also hit puberty, while the game takes an agonizingly long time to finally get to Malefor and get this thing over with. Spyro's ability to transform into "Dark Spyro" when he's feeling strong emotions makes a return in pivotal cutscenes and it's still a stupid idea. At one point Spyro weepily says that he can't fight Cynder because "he'll have nothing left to fight for" while they run Mark Hamil through about 50 different voice filters until he's undecipherable without the subtitles. There's also a level where Spyro and Cynder walk into a village full of cheetahs and literally every single cheetah is the same character model just with palette swaps. They do the Dumbledore funeral scene with Ignitus the Red Fire Dragon and all the dragon ghosts are also all just the same character model. All of the budget went towards Elijah Wood as Spyro, Mark Hamil as Malefor, and Gary Oldman as Ignitus and it shows.
The only reason you'd own this game is either because of childhood nostalgia or because you own an HD version of the game and therefore own a collector's item. There's free flying and it was impressive at the time, but since this game's art style is so weird, Spyro and Cynder's bones just break every time these poor bastards fly around in their environment with their paper thin wings until they hit an invisible wall. The combat is back, and it's just as bad as it was in the previous two games. The one saving grace is that they gave just enough of a shit that Cynder has a completely different move set with different breath abilities, but that's really it. I'm glad I get different color breath attacks depending on which dragon I choose. I'm glad Cynder has "Fear" as a breath.
So glad we only got three games of this nonsense before they rebooted Spyro a second time and, instead of having a cult classic where the games don't sell but at least the kids on Deviantart love it, they got a minor cultural phenomenon that would immediately sell millions of copies and toys. The Legend of Spyro walked (and fell face first) so that Skylanders could run and Toys For Bob would grow enough as a studio that we'd get Spyro Reignited. The Legend of Spyro is a weird time capsule and I'm glad the series has moved on.
What a deeply embarrassing nightmare of a game with a deeply embarrassing story that hits every single tired beat. After being trapped in a magic time statis rock with his goth gf Cynder for several years so that they can sneakily change the art style, Spyro is A TEENAGER now which means this game has to have Spyro flirt with Cynder, who now has dragon boobs and a wasp thin waist since she also hit puberty, while the game takes an agonizingly long time to finally get to Malefor and get this thing over with. Spyro's ability to transform into "Dark Spyro" when he's feeling strong emotions makes a return in pivotal cutscenes and it's still a stupid idea. At one point Spyro weepily says that he can't fight Cynder because "he'll have nothing left to fight for" while they run Mark Hamil through about 50 different voice filters until he's undecipherable without the subtitles. There's also a level where Spyro and Cynder walk into a village full of cheetahs and literally every single cheetah is the same character model just with palette swaps. They do the Dumbledore funeral scene with Ignitus the Red Fire Dragon and all the dragon ghosts are also all just the same character model. All of the budget went towards Elijah Wood as Spyro, Mark Hamil as Malefor, and Gary Oldman as Ignitus and it shows.
The only reason you'd own this game is either because of childhood nostalgia or because you own an HD version of the game and therefore own a collector's item. There's free flying and it was impressive at the time, but since this game's art style is so weird, Spyro and Cynder's bones just break every time these poor bastards fly around in their environment with their paper thin wings until they hit an invisible wall. The combat is back, and it's just as bad as it was in the previous two games. The one saving grace is that they gave just enough of a shit that Cynder has a completely different move set with different breath abilities, but that's really it. I'm glad I get different color breath attacks depending on which dragon I choose. I'm glad Cynder has "Fear" as a breath.
So glad we only got three games of this nonsense before they rebooted Spyro a second time and, instead of having a cult classic where the games don't sell but at least the kids on Deviantart love it, they got a minor cultural phenomenon that would immediately sell millions of copies and toys. The Legend of Spyro walked (and fell face first) so that Skylanders could run and Toys For Bob would grow enough as a studio that we'd get Spyro Reignited. The Legend of Spyro is a weird time capsule and I'm glad the series has moved on.