Blah blah blah the minigames suck. Everybody says that. They're right, but honestly, even disregarding them it’s still a lesser experience than Spyro 1. The pacing is awful. There's a seasonal theme to the homeworlds, so you’d think there’d be four, right? Nope, just three, no spring. The second homeworld lasts almost half the game. The third one only has four actual levels and the primary collectable is just abandoned. Instead, you need to collect the lamest shit imaginable, nondescript magic orbs.

Then there’s the backtracking. Constant backtracking to grab the last orb or gems, but only after replaying the whole level, and sometimes even the first part of a minigame to get to the second one. Fortunately, you can use the cool double jump glitch to skip some backtracking, but more often than not the levels don't allow it.

Everything that carries over directly from Spyro 1 is obviously good, like the art direction, OST, movement, etc. The writing is a bit more involved, which I'm not too sure about, but it's mostly funny. Everything else just feels like Insomniac did their best to make the game as tedious as possible. Surely Insomniac won’t make a trend of making an amazing first game, ignore what made it great in the first place, and make a mediocre follow up