With the exception of the graphics, there really isn't anything all that special or unique about Spyro the dragon.
PROS:
- Over 30 vast and visually impressive (for the Playstation) graphics.
- The story unwinds on the system.
- The amount of hidden items increases value greatly.
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CONS:
- Gameplay is too simple.
- Music tracks aren't always seamless.
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Gameplay: 7 - The overly simplistic gameplay prevents Spyro the dragon from becoming one of the best 3D platformer games for the Playstation, but it should still to be a great deal of fun while it lasts. Honestly, the real problem here is that the gameplay is just so simple; the just about the only thing you will be doing throughout the entire game will be jumping (and gliding) across floating platformers suspended above seemingly bottomless pits and flaming/headbutting your enemy AI, it's just nothing that we haven't already been offered from other superior titles. (E.g. Super Mario 64) But overall it's still quite a lot of fun to play, it's just not enough fun to reach the heights of some of the best platformer games that were released around its time; such as Banjo-Kazooie.
Sound: 6 - Spyro the dragon's music tracks are well-exacuted but aren't always neccesarily seamless. In fact, quite a lot of the time, the music track feels like it pauses every millisecond or so and then returns back to normal, then pauses again for a very breif moment, and then it restartes, and thus the cycle continues on. It's a good thing that Insomniac fixed this somewhat minor fault in the music track for Spyro the dragons one sequel: (which I personally thought was an improvement) Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer/Ripto's rage.
Graphics: 9 - According to Gamespot, this was the first proficent, fully 3D platformer game for the Playstation, and they are probably right about that. Each and every realm you will come across throughout the game is vast and visually impressive, especially for a game that was released back nearly twelve years ago. But with the exception of the graphics, there isn't really anything all that special or unique about Spyro the dragon, although it may be the first video-game for the Playstation One to be completely 3D, it isn't really the best I've seen on the console.
Value: 8 - Although the main part of the adventure takes about seven hours to finish, there is plenty of extra gems and dragons to find that increase the games lasting value to up to 20 hours and perhaps a little bit more or a little bit less, depending on your skill.
Overall: 7.5/10
With the exception of the graphics, there really isn't anything all that special or unique about Spyro the dragon in just about any conceivable way. Although the graphics are impressive for it's time, it is slowly weighed down by the games overly simplistic gameplay, awkard music track problems and a few other minor bugs, but luckily it doesn't weigh the game down completely, and because of this, I would have to say that if you are looking for the kind of challenging, physcologically complex game that will quite possibly stay in your game collection for a long time, Spyro the dragon is good for a weekend rental at best. But if you are just one of those crazy Spyro fanboys who just wants to collect every last Spyro game and complete it one hundred (and twenty) percent, you should definitely consider buying this title.
Thank you for reading my honest review of: Spyro the dragon.