A Quick Glance at the Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Everyone here knows that I love dragons, but it might be a bit of a surprise to hear that I was never really a massive Spyro the Dragon fan. Sure, I liked the games and had a few of them, but my first Spyro experiences were demo discs and Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, which was one of the worst games of the early series, slow, laggy and taking five or more minutes to get to each level. I never played the newer series, but from what I’ve seen, I’m not missing out on much, although the free-flying in the last game seems cool. Then Spyro got brutally murdered by Skylanders, before being reborn in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

Being 1. not a massive fan and 2. a cheap person, I waited the set to go on sale, then ended up buying the Spyro Reignited Trilogy via the Humble Monthly bundle, alongside the Crash Bandicoot remake and a Call of Duty game.

The 40GB bundle of three games took ages to download, and once it did, I jumped into… the third game. I have no idea why. Probably because I had already played the demo for the first game.

I quickly realised that I was going to struggle. Because Spyro involves a LOT of platforming. Tons of it. There are bottomless pits and lava pools everywhere. And I am playing this platformer with a keyboard and mouse, which I think is hindering me more than anything else. I’ve amazingly only died once so far and that was because I fell off a ledge into a bottomless pit.

That’s fine though. I’ll get used to it. Because it’s really nice seeing original Spyro in HD. They really went all out when it came to making Spyro beautiful. Particularly the landscapes and terrain. It’s all so pretty and sparkly and each area looks awesome. Alright, the black screens which somewhat introduce each game and send you back and forth between Spyro and the other playable characters could do with some sprucing up (they don’t even have a flying Spyro animation, just gold text) but that’s only a little complaint.

The controls on the other hand are quite… finicky. I haven’t found the optimum mouse sensitivity yet and heavens forbid I try to hover. Hovering is by far the hardest thing to do because half the time I either bash into the wall and do nothing or I do a head smash into the ground. I know controllers have limited buttons but being able to have a separate button for Hover would be nice. I still need to try the game with a controller but keyboard and mouse feel twitchy and inconsistent, and I swear there is a delay on jumping.

Also the fairies are kinda weird, telling you random things at awkward times. The most annoying one is the fairy in the first hub world who can change the camera mode for you, but she’s kinda in the way. You can change the camera options in the menu, so why does she ask every time? Another fairy told me how to attack AFTER my first encounter with enemies. Totally useful.

But eh, that’s fine. I’ll get used to the controls eventually. It’s amazing I can even play Spyro on PC (without an emulator) in the first place. And it’s all worth it for just how beautiful these games look now.

So yay, dragons, I guess. If only every other dragon wasn’t so useless.