The final great Spyro game ever created
User Rating: 8.5 | Spyro: Year of the Dragon (Platinum) PS
Of all the Spyros this Spyro has the fondest memories as well as offers the most to do. It plays similar to previous Spyros except now you can head stomp and swim and such, and you can also play as other characters who have their own levels and abilities. You still go to worlds and collect gems as well as dragon eggs this time, and fight various enemies, only this time there are added elements like locked chests or hidden challenges inside of levels such as catching egg thieves, skateboarding, or helping the local natives out. You must collect all the eggs and gems in a level to completely beat it. The unlockable friends are pretty fun to play as, especially the kangaroo and penguin, who has missile launchers. The yeti and monkey aren't quite as fun to play as since with the yeti you just move forward slowly and slaw enemies with a club and as the monkey you pretty much just shoot in a straight line and his levels are set up frustratingly. After you clear all the portals in a world and collect a set number of eggs, you fight a boss to progress to the next world. I found all the bosses particularly fun and challenging, mainly the second one. The worlds are pretty unique and level design isn't quite as repetitive as the first two games making each level seem unique to its chacters and enemies. There are some especially fun and well designed levels such as the ninja levels, the tomb explorer levels, and the ice world. There is a lot to do in each level such as the black portal challenges, finding all the gems, as well as working around money bags who takes your gems to unlock things. The time challenges aren't quite as difficult or frustrating in this game, although they are kind of boring and could have been taken out. As a Spyro game, this has the most to offer and simply most fun.
The graphics are the best of the series and the same music continues to work well for the series. The voice work is pretty well done, especially Tom Kenny as Spyro.
The replay is pretty solid since you can control more than one character through different levels, and the extra challenges, as well as spark's world. Once you have all the eggs and gems, you can enter the final secret world and go through a few interesting challenges to finally beat the final boss and then you have skill points, which once you get all of those you find out what happened to each character at the end of the game. Once you have all this, there isn't really much to do unless you want to replay the game, but the game has a lot to do and is far from being a quick playthrough. Certain levels do feel pretty short and simple though. Overall this Spyro has the most to offer and feels the least repetitive. There is probably the greatest variety of enemy types, level variety, and challenges in this game than any other Spyro. The ability to play as characters other than Spryo for certain levels and areas adds to the fun as well as maintains the Spyro feel with tight controls and abilities. This Spyro is my favorite and is the final Spyro before Insomniac stopped making Spyro and it just went downhill from here.
