Game:

Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000)

Duration: 0:00

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Originally recorded: November 19, 2020
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You know, I'm going to be honest with you: I really didn't expect to make it all the way through the second world in this stream. Yet somehow, I still managed it. Granted, with that new power-up, my capacity to complete stages on the first go has gone up significantly, which in turn means that I'll be spending way more time in each area from here on out. In other words, expect my stage progression to go down substantially, while my "completion" rate is about to skyrocket. Backtracking will be the name of the game next time, that much I can promise you now.

As the game continues, I'm beginning to notice that some of the cryptic stage design from the first Spyro is beginning to creep its way back into Year of the Dragon... and I'm not liking it one bit. It's occured to me that Year of the Dragon was clearly positioned to be an attempt at recreating another game from Universal Interactive (and also owned by Activision these days): Crash Bandicoot: Warped. The problem is that while Crash Bandicoot's progression was effectively a straight line, adding features and iterating on poorly received ones, Spyro's progress was more of a zig-zag. As far as I'm concerned, the first game had several issues baked into its gameplay... many of which were just outright tossed out by Ripto's Rage. But in order to make the "definitive" Spyro game to cap off this PS1-era trilogy, aspects of both of the previous games needed to be present. At the very least, understanding that has allowed me to make peace with some of the more... questionable... design choices for YotD.

On the plus side, the extra characters so far have been a blast to play with. And it's pretty cool that they don't remain exclusive to their own worlds... even if that means they make the scourge of backtracking omnipresent. These characters add an extra dimension to the gameplay and help to break up the monotony of having Spyro's full moveset from the previous game unlocked from the start, with no new power-ups to pick up the slack. Also, they give the game the excuse to bring back the best character in the entire Spyro canon: Moneybags. The Sparx sections are also way better than they have any right to be -- once you learn the controls, they're actually pretty solid.

The second world's boss fight definitely gave me more difficulty than the first, and unfortunately, I learned that the game will eventually take pity on you if you die too many times. Kind of wish there was a toggle for that, though: I really wanted to see if I could've taken Spike down at full strength. Oh well, it's something I'll just have to keep in mind for the future.