Unlike most games I try to play completely blind, I ended up caving and researching BTS information about development before I even finished the first level. The reason I wait until after is so that I can play the game and form an opinion on it divorced from knowledge about a troubled development cycle that would cause me to feel sympathetic and grant it a higher review score. About halfway through the first level, I dropped my controller and did as much research as I could about what the hell happened here, I was THAT baffled (you can read a bit about it here: https://thewumpagem.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/the-enter-the-dragonfly-investigation-part-ii-interview-with-joel-goodsell/)
I'll start by saying things I like. I really like the idea behind the cycling breath power-ups. Joel Goodsell said in the above-linked interview "The original games did a great job with forcing the player to change up charge vs. breath attacks with clear enemy visuals, and I wanted to continue deepening this aspect of the Spyro franchise." I never really considered that enough to put it into words enough to praise this aspect, but with this philosophy, I think this was a really smart way to try and deepen Spyro's gameplay.
I also think the game LOOKS pretty good! Some models like Hunter and Ripto look pretty awful, but for the most part, Equinox did a really great job approximating the designs of just about everyone to give them a higher poly count without actually having any of the assets on-hand. Environments look really nice as well.
Check-6 did their best trying to approximate the controls of the Insomniac trilogy, which I appreciate. Many things feel close enough, like the gliding, jumping, sprinting, and I even like how climbing is actually faster here than it is in the Insomniac games. I think it's an improvement. But mainly, Spyro feels extremely sluggish if you're not constantly sprinting (funny, because I said the same exact thing about Wrath of Cortex, which this game shares many similarities with). Unlike Wrath of Cortex, though, this game feels unfinished in the sense that it's extremely unoptimized, full of bugs, AND has barely any content that distinguishes itself from predecessors.
This game TRIES to run at 60 FPS but usually falls more into the 30-45 range. I'm not usually a stickler for framerate, I think a game should run at whatever is most consistent, but they apparently had to scale the game back A LOT to try and reach a more acceptable frame rate, and it STILL doesn't maintain a solid 60. I'd rather them have just capped at 30 if the game was going to be this inconsistent.
Most of the content in this game is just really disappointing and lackluster. It's not just that this game can't distinguish itself from YoTD with its content, it just barely HAS content period! My jaw genuinely dropped when I saw there was only 7000 Gems, 90 Dragonflies, and 9 levels excluding the final boss arena (which you can clip through the floor and access immediately in the first hub area, if ya Gnasty). On one hand, that's not even half as much content as YoTD had. On the other hand, it's less game for me to play, so I'm grateful. On my third hand I just grew out of my torso, they also increased the amount of Gems per stage to like 700-800 per, which is REALLY excessive because these levels are gigantic. They're so big that they literally have entire sections of level in multiple levels that are just long, winding hallways. I didn't realize what the point of these were until it suddenly clicked that these exist to waste your time so the game can finish loading the next area without a loading screen.
The camera being on the right thumbstick now feels WRONG. L2 and R2 are used simultaneously for a defense move I really haven't been using at all because of how unnecessary it is. The buttons individually don't seem to do anything. The camera centering button I talked about in YoTD that made camera controlling a lot smoother and faster has been completely removed, and replaced with an inventory button. This is stupid because you can only have 5 things in your inventory at once, and most of the time, you're just going to be dropping things off at the Crystal Dragon statue or the NPC whose item you're supposed to deliver as soon as you get it, so why do I need to be checking my inventory often enough to need a button dedicated for it?
The rest of this review is just going to be spent listing all the glitches and Jank I experienced in a single playthrough. Sonic 06 somehow has a reputation for being a buggy unplayable mess, but I've already experienced more glitches before even finishing the game than I did completing 06 with every character:
-I headbutted a wall while falling and ended up being able to walk on nothing multiple times. There was also time I just headbutted a wall while running and ended up sliding across the whole screen unable to move stuck in the headbutt impact animation.
-Remember when I mentioned that the hallways in levels exist as loading zones? I wouldn't have realized this if I didn't run too quickly through one of these hallways and got to the next area only to find that none of it had loaded in and I just fell through the floor.
-Multiple sound effects are poorly mixed. There's one where Hunter's talking about UFOs where it sounds like he's trailing off midway through the voiceline, and then the next textbox is back to full volume.
-If you switch the game between natively supported 16:9 and 4:3 mid-game, the HUD elements will stay where they are until you exit and reload a level. If you start on 4:3 and change to 16:9, the HUD elements will stay centered as if you're still playing on a 4:3 TV until you enter a new area. If you, for whatever reason, switch to 16:9 on a 4:3 TV by accident and load a new area, your HUD will be rendered completely off screen.
-Switching to widescreen also messed with some layering and stretched out textures in the skybox in Crop Circle Country. The two moons layered on top of each other and became ovals.
-You can just clip through the power-up-gated fences you need to use to progress through the game without the correct power-up. You can just charge into the gates and you can go through to the next area.
-The honeybee enemies in Honey Marsh just keep infinitely spawning out of the honeycombs you need to destroy for a dragonfly and they wouldn't fly. So they just kept getting dropped into honey and dying instantly.
-In the last third of the game, pausing or opening the Atlas at any point for me caused the left earphone audio to stop working and be replaced by a beeping sound effect that persists through the whole level until you leave the area.
-The Riptoc wizard enemies in Thieves Den layer too many sound effects while they're alive, so the sounds will keep playing for a while after they die. Also, using the guard to deflect their magic attacks is extremely inconsistent and makes no sense. To send the magic back towards them, I had to turn AWAY from them.
-I randomly clipped through a drawbridge in Jurassic Jungle. I guess various platforms and bridges like these have actual physics to them? So they'll wobble when you land on them. Really obnoxious to put in a platformer with strict jumps like this, but I landed on it in a weird way that caused me to just fall through and die.
-Probably the funniest glitch I experienced. In Dragonfly Dojo, there's a bit where you (apparently) have to freeze the baby dragons to platform on them to grab the kites. Not only did the baby dragon ice blocks not work as platforms when I hopped up on them, I accidentally clipped into a Riptoc at the same time that I froze him and we both ended up frozen. I couldn't move at all and I couldn't pause. I actually softlocked the game by attacking an enemy too close. A similar bug happened randomly after collecting a dragonfly in Jurassic Jungle, where I just lost the ability to move with the analog stick or d-pad, couldn't charge, jump, or flame. I could pause this time, though, but I have no clue what caused this.
-When you do get the kites, they shrink and start flickering in the baby dragons' hands.
I'll start by saying things I like. I really like the idea behind the cycling breath power-ups. Joel Goodsell said in the above-linked interview "The original games did a great job with forcing the player to change up charge vs. breath attacks with clear enemy visuals, and I wanted to continue deepening this aspect of the Spyro franchise." I never really considered that enough to put it into words enough to praise this aspect, but with this philosophy, I think this was a really smart way to try and deepen Spyro's gameplay.
I also think the game LOOKS pretty good! Some models like Hunter and Ripto look pretty awful, but for the most part, Equinox did a really great job approximating the designs of just about everyone to give them a higher poly count without actually having any of the assets on-hand. Environments look really nice as well.
Check-6 did their best trying to approximate the controls of the Insomniac trilogy, which I appreciate. Many things feel close enough, like the gliding, jumping, sprinting, and I even like how climbing is actually faster here than it is in the Insomniac games. I think it's an improvement. But mainly, Spyro feels extremely sluggish if you're not constantly sprinting (funny, because I said the same exact thing about Wrath of Cortex, which this game shares many similarities with). Unlike Wrath of Cortex, though, this game feels unfinished in the sense that it's extremely unoptimized, full of bugs, AND has barely any content that distinguishes itself from predecessors.
This game TRIES to run at 60 FPS but usually falls more into the 30-45 range. I'm not usually a stickler for framerate, I think a game should run at whatever is most consistent, but they apparently had to scale the game back A LOT to try and reach a more acceptable frame rate, and it STILL doesn't maintain a solid 60. I'd rather them have just capped at 30 if the game was going to be this inconsistent.
Most of the content in this game is just really disappointing and lackluster. It's not just that this game can't distinguish itself from YoTD with its content, it just barely HAS content period! My jaw genuinely dropped when I saw there was only 7000 Gems, 90 Dragonflies, and 9 levels excluding the final boss arena (which you can clip through the floor and access immediately in the first hub area, if ya Gnasty). On one hand, that's not even half as much content as YoTD had. On the other hand, it's less game for me to play, so I'm grateful. On my third hand I just grew out of my torso, they also increased the amount of Gems per stage to like 700-800 per, which is REALLY excessive because these levels are gigantic. They're so big that they literally have entire sections of level in multiple levels that are just long, winding hallways. I didn't realize what the point of these were until it suddenly clicked that these exist to waste your time so the game can finish loading the next area without a loading screen.
The camera being on the right thumbstick now feels WRONG. L2 and R2 are used simultaneously for a defense move I really haven't been using at all because of how unnecessary it is. The buttons individually don't seem to do anything. The camera centering button I talked about in YoTD that made camera controlling a lot smoother and faster has been completely removed, and replaced with an inventory button. This is stupid because you can only have 5 things in your inventory at once, and most of the time, you're just going to be dropping things off at the Crystal Dragon statue or the NPC whose item you're supposed to deliver as soon as you get it, so why do I need to be checking my inventory often enough to need a button dedicated for it?
The rest of this review is just going to be spent listing all the glitches and Jank I experienced in a single playthrough. Sonic 06 somehow has a reputation for being a buggy unplayable mess, but I've already experienced more glitches before even finishing the game than I did completing 06 with every character:
-I headbutted a wall while falling and ended up being able to walk on nothing multiple times. There was also time I just headbutted a wall while running and ended up sliding across the whole screen unable to move stuck in the headbutt impact animation.
-Remember when I mentioned that the hallways in levels exist as loading zones? I wouldn't have realized this if I didn't run too quickly through one of these hallways and got to the next area only to find that none of it had loaded in and I just fell through the floor.
-Multiple sound effects are poorly mixed. There's one where Hunter's talking about UFOs where it sounds like he's trailing off midway through the voiceline, and then the next textbox is back to full volume.
-If you switch the game between natively supported 16:9 and 4:3 mid-game, the HUD elements will stay where they are until you exit and reload a level. If you start on 4:3 and change to 16:9, the HUD elements will stay centered as if you're still playing on a 4:3 TV until you enter a new area. If you, for whatever reason, switch to 16:9 on a 4:3 TV by accident and load a new area, your HUD will be rendered completely off screen.
-Switching to widescreen also messed with some layering and stretched out textures in the skybox in Crop Circle Country. The two moons layered on top of each other and became ovals.
-You can just clip through the power-up-gated fences you need to use to progress through the game without the correct power-up. You can just charge into the gates and you can go through to the next area.
-The honeybee enemies in Honey Marsh just keep infinitely spawning out of the honeycombs you need to destroy for a dragonfly and they wouldn't fly. So they just kept getting dropped into honey and dying instantly.
-In the last third of the game, pausing or opening the Atlas at any point for me caused the left earphone audio to stop working and be replaced by a beeping sound effect that persists through the whole level until you leave the area.
-The Riptoc wizard enemies in Thieves Den layer too many sound effects while they're alive, so the sounds will keep playing for a while after they die. Also, using the guard to deflect their magic attacks is extremely inconsistent and makes no sense. To send the magic back towards them, I had to turn AWAY from them.
-I randomly clipped through a drawbridge in Jurassic Jungle. I guess various platforms and bridges like these have actual physics to them? So they'll wobble when you land on them. Really obnoxious to put in a platformer with strict jumps like this, but I landed on it in a weird way that caused me to just fall through and die.
-Probably the funniest glitch I experienced. In Dragonfly Dojo, there's a bit where you (apparently) have to freeze the baby dragons to platform on them to grab the kites. Not only did the baby dragon ice blocks not work as platforms when I hopped up on them, I accidentally clipped into a Riptoc at the same time that I froze him and we both ended up frozen. I couldn't move at all and I couldn't pause. I actually softlocked the game by attacking an enemy too close. A similar bug happened randomly after collecting a dragonfly in Jurassic Jungle, where I just lost the ability to move with the analog stick or d-pad, couldn't charge, jump, or flame. I could pause this time, though, but I have no clue what caused this.
-When you do get the kites, they shrink and start flickering in the baby dragons' hands.