0.5/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly.

This game is an affront to Insomniacs original trilogy, an abomination that never should have seen the light of day, a shameless cash grab by the folks at Universal. It’s really bad. I could have given it a pass if it at least used the next gen upgrade of the PS2 to make a Spyro game that looked significantly better than the PS1 games; but really, it’s doesn’t even do that. I don’t know. I know this entry in the franchise has a place in some peoples hearts, but I’m pretty cold to it, and after replaying it, I now know why I forgot most of it. Enter the Dragonfly looks, sounds, and plays like an original trilogy Spyro game, just way worse. After Enter the Dragonfly, different studios started taking Spyro in new directions; but this one, save for a few horrible additions and changes, is more or less a classic-style Spyro game. It’s so sluggish and laggy, I really don’t even know why I kept playing it. Glutton for punishment, I suppose? Early PS2 releases of PS1 series sometimes came with growing pains of console transition, so it’s understandable that Enter the Dragonfly has some long loading times and freezes quite a bit. Could also have something to do with the state of my PS2, it’s an old piece of tech. But when you look at contemporaries of this game, there’s no reason it should be as weak as it is. Hell, you look at what Insomniac was doing, the first Ratchet and Clank game, that plays like it’s at least a generation ahead of this piece of shit. So Ripto is back, and this time around, you’ve gotta save the dragonflies, hence the games title. I’m not gonna get into why, because I don’t know. Dragonflies take the place of dragons/orbs/eggs from the first three games, and they look rough. I don’t know why they don’t look like Sparx, Spyros ever-present sidekick and health bar. They’re like the same size, just chubbier. They make these obnoxious out of character noises when you get them, and then Spyro says, EVERY FUCKING TIME, “Hey! It’s (insert name here)”. It’s very annoying. They are unceremoniously littered about the ground, and given as a reward for challenges. Challenges that are straight garbage, I’m not ever gonna get into it. One of its greatest failings is the level design. Level design is one of the highlights of this series, but Enter the Dragonfly’s levels are boring, creatively bankrupt, and very few. There’s one hub world and 8 levels. Granted, the levels are a bit larger with more collectibles than the levels of previous titles, but not even close than enough to make up for their scarcity. They reused whole concepts from levels from Year of the Dragon and Ripto’s Rage, and it just feels cheap and lazy. Everything about this game just screams rushed cash grab, get one more in before the brand loses recognition. Of course, we know now that’s not the way Spyro went, spawning the Skylanders franschise and a successful remaster with renewed interest. But still, all the same. I’ll say the one cool idea that Emter the Dragonfly has is going to the home world of the Egg Thieves from the first game. A lot of potential with that idea. But what we got was a dimly lit, vaguely Middel Eastern, Cave of Wonders ripoff. What a waste. You are granted new breath abilities throughout the game, which is new, and a cool idea. It doesn’t add much to the game though. You just kind of have them and use them at a few different points. It does give the levels a reason to revisit, needing a certain breath power to reach this dragonfly, and so on. Problem is, I don’t want to revisit any of these garbage levels. It’s a relatively short and linear game, so I got through it. But I will most likely never play this game again. I got to the point where you can find the final boss (which is a mess of a boss, and the only one the game features) beat it real quick, and put this POS behind me. Skip this one, unless you’re trying to play all the Spyro games. There’s no other reason to play it.