Lancey's review of The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night.

The combat system is well-thought-out, the controls are extremely tight, the level design is explorative and rewards looking for paths off the main road (rewarding such exploration with life crystals), the story is fantastic (as to be expected of The Legend of Spyro trilogy), and great sprite-work all throughout. Also, somehow very cinematic for a GBA game. Back on that combat system part, what also makes it so enthralling is the many different uses you can make of the varying breath attacks and experiment, coming up with your own combos and effects. A couple of negatives include deviations from the main console versions' story that detract from Cynder's development and her relationship with Spyro, as this version mistakenly refers to her as Spyro's sibling and also changes things from *her* having to fight Spyro in Fellmuth Arena to it being Ignitus, which keeps the player relatively detached from her throughout and making it less impactful when you play as her in the sequel, Dawn of the Dragon (great game btw). And that's on top of an extremely frustrating hard mode, but completing the hard mode is all the more worth it for that sweet, sweet Dark Spyro mode (think Super Sonic but Spyro... and, well, dark), and if you're skilled enough at the game, then the difficulty makes the experience much more rewarding (unfortunately, I ****, so that can't apply to me, and it was much more painful than pleasant or fun). I know I ragged on it a bit in the second part there, but really, Cynder's development and the unpleasant hard mode (which is worth completing anyway for Dark Spyro) are really the only negatives I can come up with for this game. It's neat perfect. Anyone with a GBA is doing themselves a disservice by not picking this bad boy up. Truly, the last great GBA game and a testament to stellar 2D game design, and all that combined with a great story.