THE LEGEND OF SPYRO: THE ETERNAL NIGHT (2007) REVIEW

The Eternal Night of anger and frustration.

PS2 version reviewed.

The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night is an action adventure game published by Sierra Entertainment and developed by Krome Studios for the Playstation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.

Just as a side note, while I haven't played the Game Boy Advance version of this game I have heard it is a truly hidden gem and one of the best games on the system. I'm being serious! Go take a look on Metacritic.

GAMEPLAY
This game is simply way too hard and it really hurts the game, as well as the player. I mean, this franchise's target audience you'd assume would be kids and younger teenagers, but the game is probably too difficult for some, and then doesn't really do enough to interest older audiences, so it ends up pandering to no one. I'm not surprised to see this game fail to sell very well because of things like this.

When I mean the game is hard and frustrating I really mean it, I'd almost describe it as if you play as the NPC and the NPCs are the playable character because they've got stun moves, knock back moves and can often hit you before you hit them. It really feels as if Krome saw people complaining that the first one was too easy so stuck their middle finger up and made it way too frustrating instead. It isn't just the combat that's frustrating though, some platforming segments have you miss platforms you seemingly reach and at one point there are these really annoying crab things that scuttle around that you have to hit in slow motion - it takes far too long to do and the only thing it succeeds in is further agitating the player to the point that is feels like that's all Krome wanted to do.

Some bosses I can understand get used again in games, if you want to redo a boss once then I'll be alright with that, but this game is frighteningly lazy in the boss department. If you've played A New Beginning then you'll remember the Ice King boss who was recycled again later in the game as the Electric King. In the Eternal Night you have to fight the same boss with different names again, not once, not twice but five times. That means you'll have faced the same boss seven times in two games. That is just so awfully lazy. In fact all the bosses from the previous game are reused under different names in this game and only two of the bosses you fight are new.

One of the new bosses has a move that drops explosives on the battlefield randomly which means you have to rely on luck to avoid them. The boss also gets in some other enemies to help fight against you, this is really annoying because the boss won't move onto the next cycle of attack until these enemies are dealt with and sometimes they back into the boss who you can't hurt outside of a small window that isn't triggered until the other enemies are dealt with - otherwise if you get to close to the boss he will hit you and potentially knock you out the arena and you have to start again.

That particular boss can also defeat you in one move with the help of the extra enemies if you get caught in an unlucky combo. Incredibly this isn't the only part filled with annoying rubbish like that, some enemies can also dispatch of you in one unlucky combo too in moments throughout the game, such as the hounds that can jump halfway across the universe to hit you, the scorpions that can block all your moves then stun and defeat you or the cavalry units that can take away half your health and stun you so the rest of the enemies around can finish you off.

It seems Krome ignored the problems people had with the first game and decided that all they needed to do was up the difficulty. There is still no level selector, hub world or anything. If you want to play a certain level your'll have to replay the whole game, they did add collectables, but they're an absolute pain to find because if you even miss one then that means a whole new play through. Not to mention that some of these things are health and mana upgrades, which you really need in this game, considering some enemies can defeat you in one combo. I really do mean this though, I played the game without the full upgrades and the final level was incredibly hard and frustrating, while when I played through again with the upgrades it was actually fairly easy. To some extent you have to wonder why such important things are so hard to find and hidden away.

In terms of gameplay though, this is pretty much the same as the last game really, you even have to relearn all the powers but this time you have different finishing moves, and that's it really. The only big addition is the ability to slow down time, but that's only really necessary during a few forced segments. Having to relearn all the abilities comes across as lazy, even if they are a little bit different from before, but when the story goes on to explain that there was another purple dragon who had more than these four abilities you can't help but feel even more so that this game missed the mark.

They move the order you gain the abilities around this time and electricity is last, rather than second. The thing about this is that unlike the last game where fire was the best element, electricity is by far the best in this one and you only really get to use it for one and a half levels. The game is so very frustrating before you get electricity and actually much more fun after you get it, it's almost like playing two different games. Perhaps if they'd given you electricity earlier then the game would have felt more balanced.

I also can't help but feel that Krome played Okami and wanted to do something similar, I mean there are some uncanny parallels for a game releasing within a year of the other, the celestial eclipse that will help power evil, the slowing time mechanic, the decision to force players to relearn all the abilities, the parts where you create your own platforms to progress on. I can understand trying to go the direction of such a great game, but Okami still does everything so much better and does so much more that the comparison just seems unfair on Okami quite frankly.

I actually enjoyed the pirate fleet level. The rest of the levels were either annoying, frustrating, boring or recycled stuff you'd done before. The little bonus trial segments to unlock a new feature for any future play through was nice, at least if you're willing to put yourself through it again. Really though, the feature you get probably makes the game quite easy, even if the game does get somewhat so if you've got the full upgrades for health and mana as well as electricity.

STORY
A very middle of the trilogy story, and while it does flesh out the world a bit, it doesn't really answer or even contribute as much as it could to a potentially really cool world.

GRAPHICS

Looks the same as the last, which is okay I guess. But with the PS3 and Xbox 360 out it's a bit odd that they didn't bother with the new consoles, perhaps that's what Krome's aim was though, to make people so angry and frustrated that they'd break their PS2's or Gamecubes and run away to the PS3 or Xbox 360 where this game couldn't hurt them anymore.

SOUND
Rebecca Kneubuhl and Gabriel Mann deserve so much praise for the score yet again, some of the pieces are amongst the best I've heard in any game before, Black Powers, Well of Souls and a few others really are spectacular. It almost makes it feel worthwhile having to slog through so many painfully annoying segments in the game just to hear the wonderful music.

VALUE FOR MONEY

Now the game would probably be around 6 hours long, but it will probably take longer because of some poor checkpoints and very annoying segments.

OVERALL
A New Beginning was an acceptable start for a franchise that looked like it had potential, but sadly, instead of being innovative and taking the franchise forward The Eternal Night only takes steps backwards with an almost identical formula just with far more annoying, frustrating sections in between. Not to mention you've got the Spyro license and the only thing taken from it is the purple dragon, why cast aside such a great licence with so much potential on such a poor effort?