oh dear, oh boy, oh no. buckle up because this is probably going to be a longer review than usual...
So some preface as to why in the everloving hell I am playing a skylanders game in the year of our lord 2023: I played the first 3 games in the series a LOT in my late elementary school/early middle school days and sunk a lot of money into the series. By the time this game came out, I had my fill of the series at the time (yearly releases do cause quick burnout). As the rest of this series came and went, I was always curious as to how the games were and basically told myself that if I could find a way to affordably check out what I'd missed, that I'd do so and check the remaining games out. Now that the series has been dead for 7(!) years and the power of NFC card character spoofing exists, I finally decided that it was about time to make do on said curiosity and see what I missed out on.
Playing this game made me rediscover in a very short time both why I really liked the series back then and also EXACTLY why I stopped. The fun in skylanders games is a sort of sense of discovery, I'd say. The large roster of characters got me going as to what each character could do, what kind of tools they have in combat, how strong they would be in different situations, that kind of nonsense. Dressing that sense of curiosity towards these weird original characters in the whole toys-to-life genre gave this series a kind of special intrigue to me and made me like the assortment of playable characters, questionable visual designs aside. Having all 36(!) new characters to mess around with as well as my whole army of previous characters to use made the beginnings of this game rather fun. They even added 2 brand new elements with Light and Dark, which was super cool to see ngl. Even though at the end of the day the combat of skylanders is essentially "whoever can do the highest DPS at the farthest range while moving fast is the best", seeing the variety in how each character achieves that is where the fun is IMO. This game still has the arenas from the previous games and honestly that's probably where I could find the most fun.
So now onto the bad. oh my god i couldn't tolerate the writing at all whatsoever. Everything from the dialog, to the situations, the cutscenes, the plot, if there was ever words coming from characters mouths I was cringing the whole way through. It just feels.... corporate? Like they did a bunch of market research into "what does the 5-7 year old boy crowd like" and just regurgitated whatever results came out. Half the reason why I stopped after the third game was because I wasn't liking the direction they were taking the writing, and this continues to go even further in that direction. Luckily, you can skip some cutscenes, but there's also a LOT of stuff that is unskippable and the amount of just nonsensically written cringe I had to go through in this games 18 long levels could be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment. I couldn't even see myself falling for this kinda trash even if I was in the right age range for this. It's written like a bad dreamworks movie, or a shoddily-made cartoon network show. I guess some people could vibe to that kind of thing in a cathartic "junk-food" kinda way but I sure couldn't.
As for the actual gameplay/design itself, it's mostly okay. Levels do go on a bit longer than I feel they should which combined with the aforementioned cringe writing made the game pretty exhausting to play, and they did change a few things in some odd ways. This games whole gimmick is the trap system, where every miniboss and regular boss can be put in these little trap crystal things and you can swap between them at any time while playing. I didn't really use the system too much mostly because while the villain characters definitely are capable in combat, there's not really any way to level them up or upgrade their abilities outside of finding the sole upgrade side-quest every villain has. Combine that with the fact that THE PORTAL HAS AN UNMUTABLE LOUD SPEAKER ON IT that basically shouts loud nonsense at you for no reason at random points of the game if you use trapped characters, which means that I really didn't use the titular mechanic all too often in this game. There are also new characters known as trap masters that not only have absurd power creep (level 1 trap masters were doing as much damage as my old level 10+ fully upgraded original guys) but also are the only ones that can access most secret areas in the game, as only they can break certain crystals in the levels that block off areas, and only they can access the elemental-exclusive areas instead of any character from that element being able to go there like the previous 3 games. It basically undermines the whole sense of curiosity and character discovery when the game basically has 18 characters that it WANTS you to play as. Not only does it essentially render any figures owned before as obsolete but it also makes the other 18 regular new characters feel kinda meaningless? They definitely just wanted you to buy more dumb figures even if you've already invested enough into the series, and I think this game is where they went too far.
Overall, I didn't have a good time here. It feels kinda obvious to say "this skylanders game isn't that good", but I'm still glad I at least satiated the curiosity of wondering what this game was all about. Despite not liking this game very much at all I am still probably going to play the remaining games in the series as I'm still curious about those games, but not immediately after this. It was just a pretty mediocre kids game plagued with writing that I found absolutely insufferable.
So some preface as to why in the everloving hell I am playing a skylanders game in the year of our lord 2023: I played the first 3 games in the series a LOT in my late elementary school/early middle school days and sunk a lot of money into the series. By the time this game came out, I had my fill of the series at the time (yearly releases do cause quick burnout). As the rest of this series came and went, I was always curious as to how the games were and basically told myself that if I could find a way to affordably check out what I'd missed, that I'd do so and check the remaining games out. Now that the series has been dead for 7(!) years and the power of NFC card character spoofing exists, I finally decided that it was about time to make do on said curiosity and see what I missed out on.
Playing this game made me rediscover in a very short time both why I really liked the series back then and also EXACTLY why I stopped. The fun in skylanders games is a sort of sense of discovery, I'd say. The large roster of characters got me going as to what each character could do, what kind of tools they have in combat, how strong they would be in different situations, that kind of nonsense. Dressing that sense of curiosity towards these weird original characters in the whole toys-to-life genre gave this series a kind of special intrigue to me and made me like the assortment of playable characters, questionable visual designs aside. Having all 36(!) new characters to mess around with as well as my whole army of previous characters to use made the beginnings of this game rather fun. They even added 2 brand new elements with Light and Dark, which was super cool to see ngl. Even though at the end of the day the combat of skylanders is essentially "whoever can do the highest DPS at the farthest range while moving fast is the best", seeing the variety in how each character achieves that is where the fun is IMO. This game still has the arenas from the previous games and honestly that's probably where I could find the most fun.
So now onto the bad. oh my god i couldn't tolerate the writing at all whatsoever. Everything from the dialog, to the situations, the cutscenes, the plot, if there was ever words coming from characters mouths I was cringing the whole way through. It just feels.... corporate? Like they did a bunch of market research into "what does the 5-7 year old boy crowd like" and just regurgitated whatever results came out. Half the reason why I stopped after the third game was because I wasn't liking the direction they were taking the writing, and this continues to go even further in that direction. Luckily, you can skip some cutscenes, but there's also a LOT of stuff that is unskippable and the amount of just nonsensically written cringe I had to go through in this games 18 long levels could be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment. I couldn't even see myself falling for this kinda trash even if I was in the right age range for this. It's written like a bad dreamworks movie, or a shoddily-made cartoon network show. I guess some people could vibe to that kind of thing in a cathartic "junk-food" kinda way but I sure couldn't.
As for the actual gameplay/design itself, it's mostly okay. Levels do go on a bit longer than I feel they should which combined with the aforementioned cringe writing made the game pretty exhausting to play, and they did change a few things in some odd ways. This games whole gimmick is the trap system, where every miniboss and regular boss can be put in these little trap crystal things and you can swap between them at any time while playing. I didn't really use the system too much mostly because while the villain characters definitely are capable in combat, there's not really any way to level them up or upgrade their abilities outside of finding the sole upgrade side-quest every villain has. Combine that with the fact that THE PORTAL HAS AN UNMUTABLE LOUD SPEAKER ON IT that basically shouts loud nonsense at you for no reason at random points of the game if you use trapped characters, which means that I really didn't use the titular mechanic all too often in this game. There are also new characters known as trap masters that not only have absurd power creep (level 1 trap masters were doing as much damage as my old level 10+ fully upgraded original guys) but also are the only ones that can access most secret areas in the game, as only they can break certain crystals in the levels that block off areas, and only they can access the elemental-exclusive areas instead of any character from that element being able to go there like the previous 3 games. It basically undermines the whole sense of curiosity and character discovery when the game basically has 18 characters that it WANTS you to play as. Not only does it essentially render any figures owned before as obsolete but it also makes the other 18 regular new characters feel kinda meaningless? They definitely just wanted you to buy more dumb figures even if you've already invested enough into the series, and I think this game is where they went too far.
Overall, I didn't have a good time here. It feels kinda obvious to say "this skylanders game isn't that good", but I'm still glad I at least satiated the curiosity of wondering what this game was all about. Despite not liking this game very much at all I am still probably going to play the remaining games in the series as I'm still curious about those games, but not immediately after this. It was just a pretty mediocre kids game plagued with writing that I found absolutely insufferable.