Oh, hey! Didn’t see you there. Sorry, I was just reminiscing about the time when Spyro the Dragon was big. Boy, those were the days. You know, the little purple almost never existed, had Sony not decided to try to appeal to the child audience. How crazy would that have been? The first Spyro game qas quite revolutionary. It made perfect use of the PlayStation’s limitations by, for example, making objects decrease in detail the further you get away from it. Spyro the Dragon was the first game to feature this, and afterwards, many games followed. I still have Spyro: Year of the Dragon lying about, so let’s give it a go and see what I think of it after all this time.

The plot is fairly simple (and quite similar to that of Rayman, might I add). Dragons are magic creatures, from the day they are born. An evil, power-mad sorceress has her henchmen kidnap all the dragon eggs, in order to harvest their magic and becoming all-powerful. It’s kind of messed up. Our favourite purple dragon, Spyro, is the only one who’s able to stop the evil sorceress. It’s up to him to stop her, and to return the dragon babies. It ain’t no J.R. Tolkien, but hey, it’s Spyro.

In one of my other reviews, I said 3D polygons age quite poorly as opposed to 2D sprites. This is because to this day, 3D animation is still in development, and getting better each day. However, when you look at 2D platformers, the SNES, which originates from the 1990s has some of the best-looking games you can find. This is why a lot of SNES games still look terrific to this day, and a lot of PlayStation games might look extremely dated even though they are from a newer generation of games. However, with Spyro: Year of the Dragon, this is not the case. The beautiful and colourful environments go paired with wacky creative character design, ranging from penguins with rocket launchers to cowboy dinosaurs. It’s really weird – I almost forgot I was playing a PlayStation game. Year of the Dragon could almost pass for a PlayStation 2 game. The only thing that brought me back down to reality was that you can sometimes see the gems, that you need to collect, through walls. This is one of the few minor glitches you may come across, but they didn’t interrupt my fun with Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

Whenever people ask me about games with solid sound design, I mention the Spyro games, especially this one. You know who composed the music in the original Spyro games? Steward Copeland. Yes, the drummer from the band The Police, composed the music for the Spyro games. That’s incredible. What’s more, he would actually play through all the levels first to get a good feel for them, so that he could think of a tune that would fit the level just right. That’s what I call dedication. And it shows when you’re playing through parts of the game, the music is really varied and cool. There’s also really well-done dialogue and voice acting, which is always funny. Some levels blatantly use the same music as other levels, which is a bit of a pity, but other than that, kudos to the sound department.

On to what I think is the best thing about Year of the Dragon – the gameplay. And rather, how much Insomniac Games raised the bar from Spyro 2. For starters, Spyro is as fun to control as ever, with his iconic flame breath, charge attack which you can use to traverse through levels quickly, gliding and hovering, and the ever so fun headbash move. The super power-ups are back from Spyro 2, but back then, that was as far as the variety in gameplay went. Here in Year of the Dragon, though, you get introduced to four new playable characters, which all bring a neat twist to the gameplay. My favourite is Agent 9, the crazed-out genetically altered chimp made into a supersoldier. You also get to play as Hunter, Spyro’s cheetah friend. The extra missions you have to complete in order to reach 100% completion, are all varied and fun to play. Like Spyro 2, the game as a whole may not seem very long at first, but the backtracking you need to do to reach some dragon eggs you missed makes it huge. And it’s actually fun and rewarding too! This is partly what I meant with what I said earlier, when I said that I almost forgot this was a PlayStation game. It really is impressive that they managed to fit all that on one PlayStation disc. It’s nothing like Final Fantasy VIII, but for one PlayStation disc, that’s pretty cool.

What I don’t like about Year of the Dragon, though, is that it’s way too easy. The only time that I got challenged was at the second main boss, and that was mainly due to the reason that I had to adjust to it because the rest had been such a cakewalk. Let’s start with the main thing that makes this game so easy. You gain extra lives by torching 10 small animals (a little cruel). These small animals respawn at a hair trigger, so it’s very easy to farm lives. One time, I decided to see how much lives I could get by spending 10 minutes running through one of the hub worlds torching every little animal I saw. After 10 minutes, I had 36 lives. Wow. Then there’s the fact that you can take four hits (five if you decide to do a specific mission) before you die, while pretty much all the enemies die in one hit. You’re so much more powerful than your enemies, which is a pity. The game is still fun, but don’t expect it to be difficult. There is a cheat which is supposed to enable a Hard Mode, but even though it’s legitimate, I never noticed any changes in the difficulty whatsoever. Too bad. Yes, I know that it’s a kids’ game, but the fact that a lot of people claim it to be ‘fun for all ages’ make me feel I still have to be stern about this. This game is just way too easy.

Verdict

Easy gameplay aside, Spyro: Year of the Dragon is a blast to play. The varied gameplay is full of fun and charm, with a lot of different, silly characters joining you in your quest to save the worlds. It’s also bound to occupy you for a good while, trying to track down every last gem and dragon egg. It is basically Spyro 2. But bigger, and better in every way. Spyro: Year of the Dragon is easily one of the best PlayStation games out there.

Pros:

- Varied gameplay
- New characters are all fun to play as
- Backtracking is rewarding
- Looks and plays almost like a PS2 game

Cons:

- Way too easy

This is another really good review you've made. It's got a very good amount of length and it's got a good amount of detail as well. You did a great job explaining your views on this game. Overall, this is a very good review. Keep up the good work!

I don't normally comment on old reviews, but this one is good enough that I had to.

You did a great job expressing how much fun this game is, and actually made me want to play it so much that I'm looking on Amazon for a copy of it now. Yes, I was that impressed by how you made it sound. Your review exudes a sense of joy like we got as kids when we played those colorful games, and I find very few reviewers who can do that. It makes all the difference in a review.

Should you return and find this (I see you've been away for a couple of months), I hope you write some more reviews for us.