I got this game for half prize, which is pretty much what it's worth.
The story in Dawn of the Dragon consists of cut-scenes where the characters are filmed close-up. The cut-scenes can be long, but they are skippable. The story is fairly mediocre, and when you only get fragments of the back-story, it is not that enjoyable. The graphics are also pretty mediocre for artistic design. It has its charm, but one thing the team failed at, was the expressions. When a dragon named Ignitus talkes, he might look happy even though his voice is gravely serious. And Spyro's expression always makes him look… stupid. That he looks so silly is sad, because it overshadows the good voice acting done by Elijah Wood.
Spyro is good at times, but I can't name one single aspect that I think is great. The gameplay is mostly based on combat, which is based on button-mashing, random remote swinging and some elemental attacks. There are some combos, but there is hardly any reason to use them. Combat is repetitive with a lot of the enemies occurring again and again, but with the elemental attacks, it is survivable. The rest of the gameplay is based on flying (you can't fly as freely as you would like, but flying is probably the best part of the game), climbing branches on walls, and missions like "go get that object and place it there). Not exactly any puzzles there.
The difficulty is set to very easy most of the time. Some enemies can be hard, but all over the world there are red and green crystals, so you can almost always run away and get some more life and mana before returning to battle. I say almost always, because at one point you suddenly can't any more. At three occasions you can't. The first one is good, because it's challenging, but not impossible. But the second one is where it gets impossible. Suddenly you are up against to real biggies. They are both strong (so strong you can't block their attacks) and have a lot of life. They also have a giant reach, they can jump pretty long and they never flinch when you attack them. You won't stand a chance unless you have your fury meter filled before the battle. But if you have, they will be easy, because in fury mode, you're simply unbeatable. The last one is the final boss fight, which is disappointingly easy. Most of his element attacks are easy to dodge, and when you're using standard attacks on him, he might miss you even though it should be impossible on such a long range. He often drop small crystals. All in all, he's just not that hard.
The game has good music, good voice acting and a plot that should result in an epic story, but it is not as great as it should be. If you're not that perfectionist and you need a game only for the purpose of killing some time (which is why I bought it), it might be worth it. It will keep you occupied for ten to fifteen hours. However if you want a good game, and you're not a big Spyro fan that can forgive the mediocre quality just like Sonic fans can forgive new Sonic games, then its probably not a game for you.