Spyro:  Enter the Dragonfly… This is actually the first PS2 game I have ever played! And somehow, the PS2 remains one of my favourite platforms of all time, regardless of this game being… Well, pretty bad. I will be comparing this game to the PS1 trilogy several times through the review, since that’s what this game obviously tried to be. So it’s completely fair. Onto the review!

The Graphics

A very ugly game. Spyro’s model seems like the only one that the development team put any effort into. Or at least get to put any effort into, but we’ll get to that in a second. Anyway, the rest just looks really ugly, especially when they’re talking. The characters make all kinds of weird movements when they move around, and the way their mouths move when they’re talking… Oh god! Then there’s the environments. When everything’s working as it should be, it’s still very weak. Even though it’s all as colourful as it should be which establishes the atmosphere really well, there’s so much missing. The games from the PS1 trilogy added in all these little details, like flowers and bushes getting scorched when you flamed them, etc. and stuff like that doesn’t happen in this game. Bummer. What’s more, the Special Area loading screen has some kind of… ‘crack’ in it. Some enemies have beam, or ray-type weapons which go all over the place when they’re supposed to shoot the ground in front of them, etc. And the frame-rate is horrendous.

The Sound

It’s obvious that the music was still composed by Steward Copeland, former band member of The Police, who also composed the music for the PS1 trilogy. It’s instantly recognizable. Still, it’s missing something… It just doesn’t sound as adventurous or exciting. It’s not bad, though. No, the bad thing about the sound is the quality of the dialogue of the characters. In Spyro 2 and 3, whenever you wanted to listen to a character, the music would stop to let you focus on the character who’s speaking. That’s not the case in Enter the Dragonfly. Here, the music would keep playing on the same volume when the character speaks his lines, making it very difficult to understand them clearly. The fact that you can hear a light static through most of the characters’ spoken dialogues doesn’t help much, either. Sure, sure, you could just read through the text box that appears on screen, but that doesn’t distract from the entire picture. Spyro actually replies to characters in this game, making for more authentic conversations at parts, but this gets quickly overshadowed by the awful, awful quality of the voices. Still, the sound is the best aspect of this game, if not only for the decent job done by Steward Copeland who apparently was the only one working really hard on this train wreck. There are even some unused tracks for this game on YouTube, which is actually the best music in the entire game! Seems like even the lead producer didn’t even want this game to be any good…

The Addictiveness

This game is very easy to neat 100%, but I applaud you if you have the patience to do so. There are so many terrible things you have to look past, mundane tasks you have to do, and near game-breaking  bugs you have to swallow. It’s just so bad. Even when everything works, the game is bland as heck. Charging through bad guys feels weak and unsatisfying, unlike in the PS1 trilogy. Beating Ripto once without getting all the gems rewards you with Sparx’s itemfinding abilities, but really, it’s highly unlikely you’ll want to keep playing after you beat the game, even for the small extra when you beat the game 100%.

The Story

It’s not like the original Spyro games had such a deep storyline, and Enter the Dragonfly is no different. This time, it makes no sense at all though. I’ll tell you the entire thing. Spyro and friends are having a party in the Dragon Realms for Jack knows whatever reason, but Ripto and his dinosaur minions crash the party to capture the dragonflies. They’re supposed to give Ripto some kind of awesome power or whatever… The spell Ripto casts doesn’t work properly, and all the dragonflies, including Sparx, are scattered throughout the Dragon Realms. Ripto takes off, and Spyro instantly finds Sparx somehow. Now they set off to collect all the dragonflies that have scattered been around the game, and finally defeat Ripto. That’s it guys. Seriously. Every level has their own little storyline, but this is the same thing every time, just like in the original PS1 games. Ripto’s minions are causing panic in the world, and it’s up to Spyro to stop them and restoring the peace.

The Depth

It’s smaller than Spyro: Year of the Dragon. For the PS1. Ouch! There’s one homeworld, from which you travel to eight regular levels, and one final boss level. There are a couple of uninspired Special Areas scattered around the levels too, but who cares, they’re all terrible. There are no mid-game bosses to fight at all. No, Crush and Gulp, the two iconic minions of Ripto aren’t fought in the game. Major ouch! Alright, so this is what really stings; Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly had all the potential to be a next Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. Like Spyro 2, Enter the Dragonfly is very similar to the previous Spyro game, but tried to build on the formula and adding these little things that would’ve made it a better and more fun game to play than its predecessors. However, where Spyro 2 and Spyro 3 where incredible, Enter the Dragonfly falls flat on its bum. And why’s that? Rushed development, probably. It’s such a shame, I heard this game was going to have so much more to it that we ultimately got. It was supposed to have more than one homeworld, more breath abilities, more dragonflies to catch in more diverse Special Areas, etc. Most of the scattered dragonflies just fly away now, and you have to charge after them and use you Bubble Breath to capture them. And why would they run away, anyway!? According to Bianca, they’re just ‘shy’, but that’s bullhockey. Those annoying runts taunt you while you’re chasing after them. I’m starting to think some of them don’t want to be caught.

The Difficulty

The original Spyro games already weren’t hard to beat, but the sequels at least featured a nice difficulty curve. However, Enter The Dragonflies is just a cakewalk the entire way through. Seriously, nothing in your way poses a threat to you or make you feel like avoiding that thing, instead of taking it head-on. Everything hostile to you dies in one flame, and the small guys you fight don’t have flame resistance, so charging has no use instead of getting around faster. In fact, throughout the entire game (which isn’t much), I died only about 4 times. Three times through a glitch. Blah. I’ll explain how they happened, because the only tough time I had with this game was because of a glitch. I got  hit once by an enemy with a beam-projectile weapon, and suddenly I couldn’t move anymore, when I should have. Which resulted in me getting hurt multiple times and losing my first life. Another time, I fazed right through the ground and fell into a ravine. And another time, the world around me wouldn’t load at all, so I walked into an INVISIBLE RAVINE. Seriously, they’re the worst. This game gets its difficulty from its broken-ness.

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly could’ve been the next Spyro 2, in that it would’ve kept the previous game’s formula, but expanded on every aspect. More levels in more than home world, more breath abilities, and more game modes. And for a first try from a new company after having gotten the rights, that would’ve been really impressive. Instead, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly was so rushed, that all we got was a broken mess, with ugly characters, abysmal sound quality and a ridiculously small and easy game. It’s a good thing A Hero’s Tail came afterwards to purge the name of the franchise.

Pros:

-          Some good level music by same composer as the PS1 games

Cons:

-          Borderline game-breaking glitches

-          Nasty character models and movements

-          Loooooooooong load times

-          Terrible voice quality

-          Could’ve been a great game, if it wasn’t rushed to be finished