Akki Games! Chapter 1 - Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PS4 - 2018)

Hi everybody, Akio here!
It's been a long time, huh? Lots of stuff happened in my life, but all's for the best, I assure you. First off, I'm not dead, so that's a plus. Second, I've been more active on the Italian version of this blog (you can check it out on the side). 
I've also been streaming a lot lately, so people can enjoy my gameplay and talk to me if they wish, and thanks to my streaming I've actually started building up some kind of audience. That's kind of crazy to think about, huh...

Anyways, I'm here today to talk with you readers about this new game I completed some time ago, called "Spyro Reignited Trilogy". I have to be honest here: this is my first time playing the original Spyro games, as well as it's my first time completing them back to back. It has been an interesting and fun ride, that's for sure. 
This review will include a brief synopsis of all three games, as well as a small portion in which I talk about how hard they were to complete and, in the end, after gameplay and technic stuff that you might not care about, a brief summary of what I think of the game as a whole. So, without further ado, let's begin diving into Spyro.

Synopsis

Even though this is a collectathon trilogy, all the games' stories are bound between them in a kind of "lore" that went on and expanded as much as it could with every new installment of the beloved purple dragon. Because of this, this part of the review will keep the three stories from the games with a bit of distinction between them. With that being said, let's begin!

The first Spyro game begins with an interview made to some elder dragons: they're laughing and joking along in front on the camera with no fear of the unknown. At one point, one of the interviewers asks to the eldest of the dragons: "What about Gnasty Gnorc?"
Sarcastic and pungent answers fly out with no fear. Meanwhile, in another place, Gnasty Gnorc is watching them on TV, surrounded by motivational posters and pictures. The answers make him mad, so he decides to just transforms all of the elder dragons in crystal statues. Spyro is the only one safe for some reason, so he has to go around the world of dragons and free all of the eighty-ish trapped beings and defeat the Gnorc. 

Some time after the end of the first game, Spyro 2 (known as "Gateway to Glimmer" in PAL regions and "Ripto's Rage" in its NTSC versions) begins with our protagonist running around the hub world from the first game. There is one problem, though: it has been raining for a while now, so he's pretty depressed about it. Spyro then decides to go back to his holiday place, the Dragon Beaches.

After jumping inside the portal that should have brought him there, Spyro gets instead thrown into a new world that he had no idea existed: Avalar. 

The new characters that meet him will be the co-protagonists of this new game: Elora, the sweet faun, Hunter the cheetah and Professor, the... whatever he is. Anyway, they tell Spyro that they desperately need the help of a dragon, because there is this guy, named Ripto, that got accidentally thrown into Avalar some time before him and started bringing chaos to this world with his two little friends, Crush and Gulp. 

And once more, Spyro has to defeat the new bad guy, while collecting fuel orbs in order to power a new portal that will eventually bring him back home. 

The story is as easy as the first game, but it puts much more enphasys on character interactions and development. These three new characters will follow us wherever we'll go, and each level will also have a particular kind of NPCs to interact with. They usually explain the reason behind all of the enemies going around the levels, and they also can be an excuse to hide a fuel orb behind a simple task to complete for them. The actual resolution of the story is the most straightforward: we just need to defeat Ripto and get it over with. 

The Third Spyro game (called "Year of the Dragon") kinda goes back to its roots, even though it begins right after the end of the second one. The exposition tends to wear off pretty quickly, and we are once more thrown into a game that is mostly gameplay and just shows a teeny-tiny bit of cutscenes when needed. 

The characters from the first two games are (for some unknown reason) sleeping all together on the green hills of the world of dragons. Then, all of a sudden, a mysterious bunny named Bianca, alongside some weird rhinos called "rinocs", appear from underground to steal the dragon eggs that are laying around without an eye kept to them. Right when it all seemed lost, Bianca makes the rookie mistake to walk onto Hunter's tail, waking him up and alerting everybody. Once again, Spyro goes in for the rescue to the other side of the World of Dragons, and just like in the other games, he's bound to recover all of the 150 eggs and bring them back to his world. 

The mysterious thing that builds up some more lore, though, is the fact that dragons used to live on that other side of the world around a thousand years ago, but then disappeared without a real reason. 

Not everything is a step forward, though: many of the little things that made Spyro 2 really different from the first game (such as the cutscenes before and after going into a level, or the many interactions with NPCs and co-protagonists) are gone here, as well as most of the newer cast. 

Elora will be MIA as well as the Professor. The only constant character will be Hunter, but his role is really not that interesting to begin with. The only redeeming factor is that there are many side-characters that the player will be able to control as he/she progresses throughout the game, but the actual interactions will stay few and really not that interesting. 

Spyro 2's story is the most creative and interesting. Those secondary characters mix really well with the world of Avalar, and they also expand a completely functional world in a meaningful way. Spyro 3 comes instead as an expansion of the first game without a real soul, with good but poorly executed characters. None the less, Spyro 3 has the best ending of the bunch, that actually made me smile and say "It's been fun".

Gameplay

The controls have really improved from way back in the 90s. Spyro feels much lighter in every sense of the term, even when he charges with the square button (X for Xbox fans). The Circle button is used to spit fire (B). Furthermore, one peculiar thing about Spyro's movement is how the developers handled it against its level design. Gliding from one point of the map to another is really satisfying, although the next 2 games are much improved in this regard. By pressing Triangle (Y) before landing, Spyro will do a short hop and cover more horizontal distance. This feature, although really useful, is kind of finnicky in this new installment. It doesn't work each time we use it, and the player really has to do it one second or so before landing, otherwise he'll just drop dead on water and such.
Spyro's movement is often rewarded with many collectibles that are scattered literally everywhere. From the usual gems that we know and love (around fourteen thousand in the first game, going up to fifteen thousand in the second and third) to the lives system, which is also still there: from gratifying silver spheres and dragon statues to the easier blue butterflies, there is a lot to love about this life system.
Dying is also kind of hard. The game is a bit frustrating in places when you want to complete it fully (mainly in the circuits, we'll talk about it later), but it keeps being fun while simple and straight to the point. Most of the fun comes from new abilities that Spyro will eventually unlock in the second and third game. The second game has an interesting score system that goes up each time an enemy is killed and activates portals in levels. Unlocking a portal will give Spyro super charges, the ability to shoot fireballs, fly freely or a combination of the three. While the portals are also present in the third game (but without the score system), Spyro gains three extra abilities in both of the games: a headbutt on the ground, the ability to climb ladders and to swim under water.

In short, all of this is pretty good, but the level design isn't always the best. The first game has a lot of huge levels in which the player will need to master the flying and charging mechanics, even for the easiest tasks. It's not hard, but levels tend to keep going for way too long.
The problems are kinda mitigated in the second game. The levels are smaller and there are the abilities and skills that make the game easier to navigate. The third game is the best mechanically, but it keeps failing because of lots of secondary characters that Spyro will unlock throughout the whole experience. The side-characters also unlock portions of levels that are otherwise not possible to navigate and complete with Spyro alone. Sheila the Kangaroo (with lots of 2D and 3D classic platform roots such as the double jump and the stomp), Agent 9 and Sgt. Byrd (with many nods to the whole shooter genre - even though Byrd is really bad to control at times), Bentley the Yeti (kind of a beat'em up and exploration type gameplay, but really finnicky to control) and Hunter the Cheetah (with a lot of nods to a wide variety of genres, mostly the Tony Hawk's series with skateboard sections and really bad shooting sections) will be the ones that will help Spyro in his hunt for the Dragon Eggs.
Speaking of Eggs, those are the main collectible of the third game. The first game will have around eighty dragon crystal statues to collect, while the second one will have the teletrasportation orbs. Nothing crazy, but it's cool to see some variety.

Last, but not least, there are the circuits: trial and error stages in which Spyro will have to take down a variety of objectives around the maps. They are the most frustrating parts of the game, because the movement will have to be perfect. The third game is the worst, though, mainly in the racing side-missions, that usually make Spyro drift around like a car on ice because of the speed and how the engine handles it. There are also bonus levels with Sparx in the third game, and while short, they are fun and easy to play.
One more thing: the bossfights are usually pretty cool and easy, even though there are two in particular that really stuck and dragged the game for way to long. Gulp and Ripto from the second game are really the worst boss fights of the bunch, and it's really sad, because both setting and patterns are great, but they tend to become easily tedious.

Completionist bonuses

There's not that much to it, but seeing that percentage going way above 100% is always fun and satisfying. 

Having completed the games around 337% (120% Spyro, 100% Spyro 2 and 117% Spyro 3), the player will be burnt out around the end of the second title. The third game tries to mix things up a bit, and while it's fun at first, it wears off fast, mostly because of forced backtracking. There are also ability points and trophies that ask for particular actions from the player, but other than that the only completionist bonus is in the second game, with a simple and easy theater mode.

Tech-y Stuff

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: this game really looks stunningly amazing. The Unreal Engine 4, even though is not the lightest of engines, makes the Spyro universe really pop up and be memorable. The details of the environments and animations make the game really personalized and beautiful in its own way, even though is always fixed on 30 FPS with some occasional dips.
Despite all of that, this game looks and sounds way better than the N.Sane Trilogy did.

Stuart Copeland's revised and dynamic soundtrack makes the trick work, and the choice to go back to the original soundtrack is also a good way to nudge old fans to this new title of the purple dragon.

35 bucks for all of these goodies are really a steal. 

In the end

The strongest points of this trilogy are in the nostalgia factor and in how the game looks. It has its bad moments here and there, but it's fun to play and complete. With that in mind, I suggest you to play this trilogy and finish it if you dig it. It's a piece of history that HAS to be played at some point.

Check out the first part of my streams and the trailer of the game!