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Originally recorded: November 15, 2020
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And that makes two games down, one to go. I'll be honest, I didn't really worry about not finishing the game with this stream, but I am surprised at just how much time I ended up wasting again. And the weirdest part is that most of my struggles came from weird side-missions again. Granted, the first one felt like it was caused by a glitch more than my own incompetence. Still, there was plenty of time to finish what was left in the game itself.

The final fight with Ripto is going to be the gold standard I'll be judging Year of the Dragon's boss battles against. While Crush and Gulp were fun, Ripto took things to the next level with multiple stages, a compelling strategy and even a couple of unique power-ups. Best of all, I wasn't even annoyed by the fact that dying sent me all the way back to the first phase. That's a hallmark of a good boss fight, as far as I'm concerned.

The post-game minigames in Dragon Shores were okay. The shooting gallery and the roller coaster were good, but considering the other two amounted to a cinema and using the aim to hit a bulls-eye three times, I guess it sort of evened out. I don't know why I was expecting the theater to be more than just a gallery of the game's cutscenes, but I guess a small part of me was expecting a unique cutscene to be involved as well.

I gave the game a 9 out of 10 in-stream and frankly, I'd stick with that. The game was a substantial improvement over the original, fixing most (if not all) of my issues with it and not really introducing much in the way of noticeable flaws. 3D platformers -- especially collect-a-thons -- have never really been my favorite genre, but maybe if more of them ended up like Ripto's Rage, I would feel differently.