Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

The Legend of Spyro series is a complete reboot to the old games on PS1. Spyro is no longer the cute little dragon who runs around collecting gems and doing little puzzles and mini games. Shake that bias that this game is nothing like the old ones and you may find The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning quite enjoyable. It is a combat heavy platformer action game with a small amount of RPG elements.

The story goes that Spyro is a very special purple dragon. Purple dragons are born once in every ten generations and can wield special abilities which other dragons can't. When Spyro learns of his important role he is told that another dragon called Cynder is being used to power up crystals using the Dragon Elders for some evil plot. It's up to Spyro the rescue the elders and stop Cynder. Some of the cutscenes are really quite funny.

Spyro will learn many abilities as you progress through the game. There are four elemental breaths Fire, Electric, Ice and Earth. Both have a standard breath attack and a long range projectile attack. All work pretty well within their own right. You can upgrade these abilities to increase their strength and versatility. There are also fury attacks which damage all enemies on screen. To use these you have to collect purple gems to charge your fury meter. Spyro also has ground and aerial meelee attacks. The game forces you into combat alot and mixing and matching abilities to make your own combos can be quite fun. It may have just been because I played Eternal Night first, which is regarded as much harder, but combat wasn't too difficult. There are a few cheap moments where you get ganged up on, but nothing unfairly cheap.

There are some platform elements and for some reason Spyro's double jump only works if you push it at a certain time. There are also a few flight sections in the game where you have to fly through the air evading hazards. These sections are pretty fun and the game could have benefited from having a few more of them.

The game is actually quite short. I finished it in 5 hours 50 minutes. Those of you with longer attention spans may be able to finish it in a weekend. But the short game is fun while it lasts being surprisingly addictive.

Graphically the game is quite nice. The game is quite colourful and bright and this looks nice. The proper CG cutscenes look a bit weird and low quality, but overall the game does look quite nice.

The music has a lot of dramatic orchestral tracks playing. These compliment the mood of the game quite well.

Overall The first Legend of Spyro game is pretty cool. And sadly there are people out there who are blinding their visions to this game being good because Spyro no longer runs around collecting gems. Forget everything you know about old Spyro and you may find this surprisingly addictive combat heavy action game quite entertaining. The story and cutscenes are also entertaining. It's short length means you could borrow or rent it give it back quite quickly.

Milesprower2k9 Original Reviews