Review
Played on: Xbox One XReleased: 2018
Introduction
Activision had a tremendous success with their Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, read my review here, and cleverly looked through their franchises and decided to give Spyro the Dragon the same remaster treatment. I was a huge fan of the original Spyro on PS1 and played it to 100% completion twice, once alone and another with my dad. I kind of regret not looking into the sequels: Ripto's Revenge and Year of the Dragon, back then, but my teenage budget was limited to far less than these days. Luckily, I get to play them in this remaster!So, while the remastered Crash Bandicoot games looked amazing, the games felt a little dated and frustrating when it came to gameplay in modern times, so I was curious how well the Spyro games had held up. After all, we're talking 20 years in between the first title and this remaster.
Let's take a look at what I have always regarded as the only true competition the PS1 had up against the mighty 3D platformer and genre defying, Super Mario 64 on the N64!
Much like how the Crash Bandicoot trilogy upgraded these old looking games in a pretty, yet nostalgic fashion, this trilogy gets the same treatment with care. The consistency is key here, as all three games end up looking graphically on level, compared to the old games that saw a gradual development through the years they were made. Like I mentioned, the level complexity increases throughout and Spyro 3 features the most ambitious and large level designs of the three, quite impressive stuff!
Plot and setting
Like most platformers in general, the plot isn't exactly very groundbreaking, it's about a baddie taking over a kingdom, grabbing stuff and throwing it around various worlds to collect. The first Spyro is structured strict in this fashion. Each world has underlying levels, set in its visual theme. These worlds work as a main hub, letting you access its levels through portals. Everything can be completed and collected before moving on, no new abilities are needed or ever given to the player. A straightforward platformer.
Spyro 2 and 3 are built with the same hub world, with visual themes connecting the underlying levels. However, this time around you learn new abilities and levels can't be completed before you backtrack them with the acquired skill. As such, the hub worlds become a little more complicated in completing 100%, before moving to the next, as levels must be revisited as you leave them without collecting everything.
Spyro 3 is even more elaborate structured, with guest characters that are required to complete certain levels too. Boss fights are considerably more challenging in Spyro 2 & 3, as they are laughably easy and simple in Spyro 1.
Collecting all these games together though, really helps ease newcomers into things. Spyro 1 is easy to grasp and requires no specific abilities to complete each level, while Spyro 2 adds these abilities and Spyro 3 dives even deeper, with new characters and more elaborately designed levels. It's a nice and progressive way to play through them chronologically.
Gameplay and features
What at once becomes clear, from the get-go in this collection, compared to the Crash Bandicoot one, is how well and precise the gameplay holds up. The battling against enemies is about either ramming or burning them, it requires observing them to know what to do. Small enemies, with no armour, can be rammed or burnt, if they have armour only ramming works, while large enemies usually just require burning.
You'll quickly learn which enemy needs which type of attack. Spyro can also roll from side to side with the shoulder buttons, required for the more experienced players to dodge enemy attacks.
Spyro's platforming is largely based around the flying mechanics. It's about spotting how you can glide to new areas, by finding increasingly higher vantage points to glide from. Fast paced running is needed on later levels, to make speedy jumps to glide too far off places. Plus, there's also flying only levels, to keep Spyro veterans challenged throughout.
I really appreciate how large they were able to make the 3D levels on a PS1, a cheeky nod to Crash Bandicoot's limited 3D, that never was going to make Super Mario 64 shake in his blue pants. Although the actual visuals are upgraded, it's impressive to see how large the 3D levels were. Their size, layout and scale are untouched.
Video
Much like how the Crash Bandicoot trilogy upgraded these old looking games in a pretty, yet nostalgic fashion, this trilogy gets the same treatment with care. The consistency is key here, as all three games end up looking graphically on level, compared to the old games that saw a gradual development through the years they were made. Like I mentioned, the level complexity increases throughout and Spyro 3 features the most ambitious and large level designs of the three, quite impressive stuff!
The arstyle is charming and reflects this dreamy fantasy land with soft colours and cartoon shaped enemies and buildings. It was a joy to revisit levels i remember from my PS1 playthrough. It's a very pretty game to look at and perfectly updates the sparse graphics from back in the day.
Unlike the Crash Bandicoot trilogy though, the Spyro trilogy has gone for an Unreal Engine 4 powered graphics engine. It's a risky affair, as we have seen various degrees of expertise on the engine. Bandai Namco coming to mind as opting for disappointingly low-resolution boosts for the powerful consoles PS4 Pro and XB1X. Spyro follows this trend sadly, ending up at a rather sparingly 1440p on the X and Pro and it runs 30fps with annoying frame pacing issues too.
Although the levels are beautifully realised in their design, keeping the soft colours and sparse minor detail, I would have liked to have seen more of a visual jump on the most powerful console in terms of resolution or framerate. It ends up looking a little soft when compared to other 4K enhanced games. The frame pacing makes the game look like it's jumping frames every now and then and really should have been launched without this oversight. It has yet to be fixed in patches too.
Audio
Sound is nothing majorly noteworthy, but all the old familiar sounds are here and are instantly recognisable. With a large emphasis on magical and sparkly sounds, also the little egg thief's taunting laughter comes back as the most memorable one! This time around it's all in surround, helping to give you a more spatial awareness as to where sounds are coming from.The music mind you, I always really enjoyed with my experience of the original game. Memorable and atmospheric tracks, that former co-founder and drummer of Police fame, Stewart Copeland made for all the three PS1 games. He made them after he walked through each level to get the atmosphere right for each music track, and they really suit each level too!
This time around it's cleverly remastered and sounds just like how I remember them, albeit with a richer audio experience and more clever use of dynamic volume and reverb when things are happening ingame. You can switch to the old PS1 music tracks too, if you really want to go old school, but like the Halo 1 and 2 remasters, the new music score is done so well and updates it to a better experience to my ears. While still keeping the great background melodies and unique sound Spyro soundtracks had.
Summary
If there are some downsides that need mentioning, apart from the sparse resolution boost on the more powerful consoles, and frame pacing issues, the camera angle is far too close to Spyro. Mostly it works fine, but there are times when you miss an enemy and need to turn quickly, and the camera just ends up showing Spyro's purple butt and the ground below. It gets confusing and results in some cheap damage points or deaths.
You can of course move the camera yourself, but it's mostly tied to the close angle as a default. There're also some nasty difficulty spikes in Spyro 2 & 3's bosses, that I could have done without.
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Spyro's wonderful fantasy world. The art direction and sparse level of small detail, resides in a remastered style that isn't overdone. Bringing easier back those memories of how it originally looked. I was pleasantly surprised that the games played so well and can safely say it's a much less frustrating and enjoyable affair than the Crash Bandicoot remasters were.
Looking back, this is really a trilogy PS1 owners could proudly say, at least fairly, came close to what a fully 3D platformer like Super Mario 64 could have been on the old 32-bit Sony platform. Spyro the Dragon still is, and always was, better than Crash Bandicoot in my opinion and over 20 years later, this remaster proves it.
Recommended strongly to those with Spyro experience on the PS1 and new players that feel the platformer genre is understated on the more "mainstream" consoles that are the PS4 and XB1. It's probably some of the best budget and playing platformers, you'll get this generation, outside of Nintendo's Switch.
