The beginning of Spyro's downfall...
Gameplay 5/10
The objective of this one is to find and capture all baby dragonflies(They say they're baby dragonflies, but they just seem to me to be childish adults, I guess the people who made this game didn't know that dragonflies go through growing up stages like caterpillars.)with this lame power called bubble breath. They runaway when you try to get them, and I swear someone in this game said they're just shy, but they don't seem shy when most of them make make teasing sounds when you're trying to catch them! And its hard to get them sometimes because, even if your bubbles connect with them it goes right through them, which as you may have guessed makes it longer to catch them then it should. You can also get dragonflies from side-quest, such as killing 'blah' enemies, playing mini games, getting things etc. Now other than this-game-only bubble breath, like the previous games you have fire breath, charging and ramming his head into things, jump, glide, and swim. The new abilities are ice breath, lightning breath, and wing shield. Honestly, the sliding mini-games were fun, the drums were just ok memory and repeat, and the one with the platforms would have been good, if you didn't get stuck, or a bunch of platforms disappear for a bit if Spyro turns or glides, or fall through a platform every few seconds. The ones where Spyro drives something were nice, except the choppy frame rate made it a bit harder to drive and hit something. And the speedway ones... You always have a low chance of wining 1st place. There is only one boss you can fight in this game, Ripto, and you fight him three times. The fights against Ripto are difficult and yet simple, because it takes awhile to get his shield down so you can attack him, while you're doing that he shoots things at you, but sometimes Spyro jumps or moves slower then he should so you get hit. And you do have a lives and health system, just like in the previous games Spyro's pal Sparks(Who is a dragonfly) is your health bar he changes colors to indicate your health, feeding Sparks butterflies that come out of harmless animals that Spyro kills will heal him, the special butterflies in bottles give you lives. The use of portals starting disappearing in this game, you get to levels by some type of transportation, and you only use portals to get back to the castle place, or to go to some of the mini-games, or entering Ripto's Lair. And loading times are ridiculous! I remember many times I had to wait five minutes to get somewhere, and sometimes the animation on the loading screen would keep going but when the text on the bottom stops retyping you have to reset the game or you weren't going anywhere. And sometimes when you come near a wall or a barrier of some sort, all the solid parts disappear and you'll float in empty space for bit until you jump or attack, but if that doesn't work you have to reset the game.
Graphics 3/10
The graphics are horrible, plus with so many glitches and bad frame rate. The graphics are the same as they were on the PlayStation, but except the frame rate was better on the PlayStation games. And I think the animation is worst then the PlayStation games, most characters mouths won't stop moving long after they're done talking, and at lest half of the enemies hardly move. And sometimes just talking to a character freezes the game, so again, another place you may need to restart. And sometimes characters and enemies body parts go missing for a bit.
Story 4.5/10
The game starts off with a celebration for... Well dialog makes it hard to tell whats going on, and Hunter is screaming because a balloon of the Sorceress scared him... Wait, wut -_-. So I'm guessing they're throwing a victory party for Spyro- Wait no, they're having a party for the baby dragons because today they're getting dragonfly companions! So... Why the hell would they have a balloon of lady who wanted to kill the dragon hatchlings?! Well anyway, Ripto and his bodyguards, Crush and Gulp, crash their party. Ripto saying something about putting his bodyguards out of work and them back to Gnasty Gnork's land. And then he waves he scepter, to send all the dragonflies to his lair because apparently dragons are useless without their dragonflies! If thats true, then why do none of the adult dragons ever have any with them? So with continuing bullcrap, Ripto screws up and scatters them across the realm. Then he gets out of there, while Spyro tried going after him and fails. So Bianca sends Spyro off on his way to go find dragonfly babies, and to get his new breaths he has to get these runes and give to dragon spirit in a statue, no explanation on who he is or where he came from. Other then that there is not much to the story, everyone but Spyro, Sparks, and Ripto. Have no large part in game. The only thing I found funny is when you go fight Ripto again, he starts to same thing he before but then stops himself, and breaks the fourthwall by say something like:"Oh I better say something different, I don't want to sound like a cliche video game." This is a minor detail but this where Hunter and Bianca's relationship is forgotten completely. I felt Hunter, Bianca, the Professor, Crush, and Gulp could of have bigger roles in this game. My favorite level has to be the Jurassic Jungle, robotic dinosaurs! *cough* Well I found it interesting that the thieves with blue furry cloaks who stoles dragons' precious things wanted help from Spyro who runs them over/flames them, but what bothered me is Spyro had no problem with that...
Sound 5/10
First of all, the new voice choice for Bianca is horrifying, she sounds like an annoying high school prep girl. And the voice acting in this game is bad. Most of characters voices sound like their voice actors didn't even try, or sound like they didn't had any direction. And accents were done badly, especially the Asian ones in dojo level. But the music was good as usual, by Stewart Copeland. I don't remember what my favorite song in game is.
Overall, its a very glitchy, glitchy game. Like they didn't even test it. Obviously this was horrible start for Spyro on PlayStation2, also probably because Insomniac Games stopped making Spyro games. I felt like they could had improve graphics, fix all the major and most of the minor glitches, done better with the story and characters, better voice acting, and had better loading time. As a big ORIGINAL Spyro fan, I found this game very disappointing, even when I first got it. And I'm going tell you this now, every Spyro game after this became less, and less like the original Spyro game trilogy. So I'm going to say don't play unless you like to how crappy it is, and whatever you don't buy it!
~Thank you for reading my review, please rate and again, arigato~