SPYRO: ENTER THE DRAGONFLY (2002) REVIEW

Rushed out the door.

PS2 version reviewed.

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly is a platformer published by Universal Interactive and developed by Check Six Games with Equinox Entertainment for the Playstation 2 and Gamecube.

GAMEPLAY
Most of the levels are pretty rubbish, in fact all of them outside Thieves Den aren't very good.

Bugs are everywhere, crashing, long loading screens and even infinite ones.

Major framerate issues in some areas

It's frustrating really because you can a few sparse elements of the formula that made the Insomniac trilogy so great. Even if some of those things are simply collecting gems and the overarching thing, in this case dragonflies. I highly doubt that this game could have lived up to the fantastic first three games, but it perhaps it could have been a decent edition to the franchise.

One of the very few good things about this game was that Spyro now talks outside of cutscenes, so will actually interact more with NPCs unlike Ripto's Rage or Year of the Dragon where he wouldn't actually talk outside of cutscenes.

STORY
The game actually forgets it requires this part after the intro and I’m not joking. There are three cut scenes in the game, the start, a random one in the middle that was probably thrown in to explain the lack of a Crush or Gulp fight, and the end.

They also fail to capture some of the characters from what little they include about them, such a Ripto in the intro saying Spyro should join him, even though it's evidently clear from the second game that he really hates dragons and would never make such a suggestion. They didn't need to make Crush or Gulp talk either and Sparks just buzzes randomly, despite his buzzes actually lining up with words and somewhat sounding like them in Year of the Dragon.

GRAPHICS

I mean, at least Spyro looks good, they did well there I guess. Although what on Earth happened with all the other characters? Why do other characters wave around as if they’re drunk or slowly mutating into something?

SOUND
Stewart Copeland does it again with another good soundtrack, even if it is much weaker than the previous three I think he did a pretty great job considering how pretty much every other aspect of the game failed. However that final battle theme, it can't have actually been done by Stewart Copeland right? Or had even he given up at that point? It's just Gulp's Overlook theme from Spyro 2 with terrible strings thrown on top.

They reprised many of the voice actors from the original trilogy, if not all the important ones. I'd give it as a bonus point but to some extent it draws back from the experience knowing that it has some connections to the original trilogy because this one doesn't deserve any links to the previous games. No Insomniac no party though, so I think we can keep this game distant from the originals and ignore their attempts to link them.

Many things reused in strange context from the original trilogy

Things that sound nearby are actually on the other side of the map which can make searching for items or trying to find some enemies a pain.

VALUE FOR MONEY
This game is sadly a disaster, and was obviously shoved out the door far too early, don’t waste your money or time on encouraging these practices.

OVERALL
The premise of this game goes as follows: Spyro, after defeating the Sorceress at the end of Year of the Dragon, took to alcohol and drugs as he had no one else to defeat. In his drug induced state, he witnessed the apparent return of Ripto in desperation of someone to take on. If you look at it from this perspective it all makes sense; the wavy characters, the bugs, the bad framerate, the lack of story, the poor level design, the everything. Don’t do drugs, kids.

Really though, thanks Universal Interactive for trying to destroy my favourite game franchise just to push a clearly unfinished mess out for the holidays. I even wanted to like this game but it's obviously a complete failure and can't even be liked in the so bad it's good way. I shouldn't have to be speaking about a Spyro game that way though, and quite frankly it's pretty upsetting that this game exists in the form it does. It hurts to see such a great franchise suffer such a misstep.