Title: Spryo Reignited Triology
Developer: Toys for Bob, Iron Galaxy Publisher: Activision
Release Date: September 3, 2019
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One
Reviewed on: PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows
Price: $25-40 USD
Growing up, my grandmother was the yard sale Queen. Every Saturday, she’d go and search for bargains. One of these adventures led her to a PlayStation 1 that came with a handful of games. She picked it up and gave it to my brother and I.
Three of the games included were the original Spyro trilogy. I think my brother and I wore those discs out. He had a memory card for his saved file and I had one for mine. There were a lot of childhood memories attached to those games.
Close to 20 years later, it gets announced that they are remastering the original three games for modern consoles. Both myself and my brother were overjoyed at the idea of playing these beloved childhood games again.
My favorite was Ripto’s Rage while his was Year of the Dragon.
Plot Synopsis
As mentioned above, Spyro Reignited Triology is a remastering of the original three games: Spyro The Dragon, Spyro: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. All three games originally came out on PlayStation 1.
In Spyro the Dragon, a curse causes Spyro to be the only dragon remaining. Your task is to free your fellow dragons while exploring dragon realms.
In Spyro: Ripto’s Rage, Spyro ends up in a land called Avalar where a man named Ripto has taken over. He must help the locals take back their land in order to get home himself.
And finally, in Spyro: Year of the Dragon, dragon eggs are stolen from a celebration and Spyro is the only one small enough to fit through the portal to where they were taken. It is up to him to retrieve the eggs.
Analysis:
Gameplay
It plays like I remember it. I’ve played through a chunk of all three and they didn’t change it from a narrative sense. You play in a third person point of view and it’s simple. Each area has sub-worlds in it.
Those can be their own unique levels, speed tests, and ultimately the base world’s boss.
These three games held up over the test of time and they still play great. What makes it even better is that the developers stayed true to the original games. There isn’t really anything extra added. They are the original games as we played them back in the day.
Graphics
Compared to modern games, the graphics are nothing to write home about.
But, compared to the previous versions, you can see how much technology has advanced since they made these games. Bringing them into the modern allows old fans to enjoy these beloved games and new fans to discover them.
It’s astounding how much clearer everything is. One of my favorite things to do was to just look around. I took way more time than I needed to in a lot of places solely because I enjoyed the view.
Performance
This is one area where I had some trouble. I got my PC copy via Humble Bundle. When I loaded it up on my desktop, it played well for a bit. But when I hit the first boss in Ripto’s Rage, it kept freezing and refused to go on.
It could have been my computer, I’ve tried it on another device and it worked. But it was an odd glitch.
Beyond that, I’ve had no performance issues between the two systems I’ve played this game on.
Final Score:
I love these games and I love that I was able to revisit them. That being said, they aren’t groundbreaking or revolutionary to their genres. If anything, they’re a tribute to the past.
As I mentioned above, one of the biggest point earners for me with this project was how true they stayed to the original material.
Featured Image: Toys for Bob
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