Customer reviews:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb Spyro
Comment: Insomniac Games pretty much apexed on the Spyro series with this game. No wonder they never personally continued with it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Grandson loved it
Comment: My Grandson loves all the Spryo games. He had them all but this one. I had a hard time finding it. I looked for months. His birthday was coming up and I finally found it here. The game was a playstation 1 game. When he opened his present he got so excited that he ran to his room and didn't care about anything else. the game was brand new too. I so wished I looked here first. I will next time.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: the best
Comment: Me and my roommate cannot afford the new consoles so we go back to the 90'sand play games that we loved from our childhood. This was an amazing game that provided nothing but hours and hours of fun. There is just soooo much content in this game and at points it is very challenging. One problem with the game is that some of the other characters are not the most developed so their controls are a little funky and take time to get used to. It is probably one of the best games ever created for ps1 so I highly recommend you buy it. My social life did come to a little bit of a halt for about a week because of this game but it was worth it and stuff is on track now.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: a surprising disappointment
Comment: Many people believe the third time is officially the charm. When a game finally gets everything right as far as gameplay, graphics and music go and delivers the ultimate experience. Other times game developers disregard the things that were most enjoyable the first couple times to put more emphasis on other areas of the game (in this case, the fantastic bonus stages).

Why so many people believe Year of the Dragon is the ultimate Spyro game is a total mystery to me. I believe something went wrong with the level design because several of the stages are flat out boring. Maybe Insomniac was under the impression during the creation of this game "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" or maybe people are confusing the fact you have a bunch of playable characters besides Spyro as something of an additional bonus to enhance the gameplay, but I have to disagree strongly. These extra playable characters definitely aren't enough to put this game over the top I'm afraid. Nice additions perhaps, but nothing spectacular.

No, it's not an example of me getting tired of Spyro either. I've played the first two Spyro games quite a lot. I must have completed the first one at least 20 times, and Ripto's Rage 10 times. I'd play through them again right now if I could.

There were some minor flaws with the first two games, but they honestly didn't mean anything to me. Certainly nothing to distract from the incredible gameplay and graphics that were so revolutionary in the development of 3D gaming at the time. I now feel a bit guilty for complaining that the very end of Zephyr seems boring to me because comparing that little area near the end of Zephyr to many of the areas in THIS game... let's just say, I had *nothing* to complain about.

To me, the most exciting kind of 3D platformers are the ones that are positively LOADED with tons of little things to collect such as what the first two Spyro games delievered. You know, things like colorful gems scattered around the stages, a nice variety of enemies to take out, little things such as trees and grass included into most areas of every stage with special care and consideration for detail. Adding these minor details actually make the graphics and gameplay better because they leave a lasting impression.

Year of the Dragon feels flat in comparison. To say I'm a little disappointed would be an understatement. I'm *very* disappointed.

After all the hype that Spyro's third installment is supposed to be the *ultimate* Spyro adventure by the majority of the gaming community, I was expecting to be blown away completely by this one. I was expecting this game to blow away the previous two by leaps and bounds. Instead, many of the stages are quite ordinary and bland in Spyro 3, and to be totally honest, many of them feel exactly the same, or have that "been there, done that" feeling. Year of the Dragon is quite similar to Ripto's Rage as far as atmosphere goes, but feels inferior most of the time for reasons that could have been avoided had Insomniac worked harder on making the levels better. Insomniac instead gave us a game that does nothing truly noteworthy to separate itself from Ripto's Rage.

It's disappointing. Rushing through large areas of empty land *just* to finally come across a few scattered gems here and there, or enemies spaced out in such a way that it takes a while to arrive to them... these are the kind of things I dislike about most 3D games.

Spyro the Dragon and Ripto's Rage avoided most of these boring problems since both of those games did just about everything right. In these two games, traveling your way through the many stages was always exciting because there was a ton of things to collect or destroy along the way (with detailed areas around every corner). Not to mention when you entered a level covered with water or ice in the previous two Spyro adventures, it actually FELT like a water or ice stage.

If it takes me several seconds just to ARRIVE to something while playing Year of the Dragon, that tells me the gameplay is a bit on the boring side. Year of the Dragon falls victim to this I'm afraid, on more occasions than I was hoping for. Many times you will run up and down hills, platforms, and other areas and come across *nothing* the entire time. This is a problem to me because this kind of thing didn't happen very often in the first two games. There was always something to do in the first two games no matter WHERE you turned.

When the levels felt boring in the beginning of Year of the Dragon, I just thought the game was leading me gradually to more impressive levels. But once arriving to world 3 and STILL feeling bored and disappointed, I realized the level design was just below typical Spyro standards this time around. Not to mention all the home worlds are so ordinary they become boring almost instantly.

Do I still like this game more than most video games I've played? Absolutely. It's STILL Spyro, you're STILL going around collecting gems and dragons, you're STILL having fun controlling Spyro's movements and taking advantage of his fun abilities, but I don't know... I get the feeling Insomniac didn't put as much care into this one that they did with the first two games (which are both classics in my opinion). The game DOES have a few interesting stages on the same level as the ones in the previous two Spyro games but there's a bunch of average ones along the way.

Besides Insomniac not bothering to make the levels impressive or particularly fun, there's a couple other problems.

The object is to go around rescuing baby dragons (many of which require the player to attempt something harder than usual in order to achieve). However you get the feeling you're just repeating what's already been done in the very first Spyro game when, if you recall, the dragons would actually talk to you after you've freed them and say funny things. The dragons in this game are babies and they don't talk, and it's not nearly as much fun freeing dragons this time around.

This isn't a BIG complaint, but a mild disappointment and a nagging feeling that all I'm doing is the same thing I've done before, but much better the first time.

The baby dragons ARE cute, and they sometimes do funny things after they've been freed such as spin around, scratch behind their ears, and basically do things puppies and kittens do. If you're an animal lover like me, you'll fall in love with the way the baby dragons act. It's adorable and a nice touch.

I don't know if most people noticed, but most of the bonus games consist of constant shooting. Shooting, shooting, and well, MORE shooting. One bonus level even morphs the gameplay into a first person shooter similar to Quake as you go around eliminating enemies. Of course this particular one gets quite repetitive after you've blown through a few rooms, and it's not very exciting because it's overlong, but some of the shooting action you come across in the game is quite good (such as blasting away that machine shark in that one game- I love this one). Plentiful shooting throughout Year of the Dragon such as shooting fireballs, cannons, and other things that first appeared in Ripto's Rage, but usually they are pretty memorable so I won't complain about this.

Some of the bonus stages are quite difficult too, such as the boxing one. Just like real boxing- when you throw a punch, your opponent either immediately throws a punch of his own or blocks to defend himself. This makes these boxing games incredibly hard, and perhaps the hardest thing you will discover in the first three Spyro games from the Playstation's first console... but at least it's *fun*.

The skateboarding bonus games are AWESOME. They appear more than once throughout the game, and they deliver a lot of excitement. I'm surprised how much detail went into the skateboarding games as far as the approach you take with the skateboard itself. Not *quite* at the level of detail that Tony Hawk provides or anything, but enough tricks to make skateboarding fun and something you wouldn't mind mastering with time and patience. The biggest highlight of the game easily.

Another highlight are the special characters you play as-

One of them is a kangaroo, probably the best one since he jumps high and has a kick move that's devastating. You have another playable character that's a beastly creature and he has a big club going around pounding things. It's fun, but he moves slow and he's not particularly interesting. There's some kind of monkey that shoots with his little outer space-looking gun. This is somewhat fun, but like I said above, the game REALLY goes too far with the constant shooting you'll be doing throughout the game. The Sparx games are fun because the gameplay turns into old school Gradius gameplay for each of his levels. It's an interesting change of direction (and not NEARLY as frustrating as trying to master Gradius, thankfully).

I HATE playing as the bird though. He flies awkwardly, he's very very boring to play as, and his stages and challenges are just uninteresting to me.

To be completely honest though, I'd rather play as Spyro the entire time if given the choice, but these characters are decent enough overall.

The boss fight at the very end of the game is fun, but the boss is WAY too similar to Ripto with the whole arena showdown battle, and compared to that epic battle this one is over much sooner, and not nearly as memorable. Boss fights overall are a notch up as far as difficulty goes however.

Most of the music in the game is good but nothing compares to the original Spyro (including Ripto's Rage).

Some of the voice acting is questionable. For whatever reason Moneybags doesn't sound nearly as conniving as he does in Ripto's Rage. His voice definitely sounds different. Whoever thought it was a good idea for Sparx to talk needs a spanking, enough said.

Overall this game is NOT a classic which is unfortunate because Insomniac nailed the first two games right on the head and made two classic (and original) platformers. Year of the Dragon misses the mark and unfortunately can't be put on the same brilliant scale. Why so many people claim Year of the Dragon is the best in the series is a mystery to me because even though the levels are longer, they clearly aren't better or more fun. But Year of the Dragon does succeed in the bonus games above everything else.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Possibly the greatest game of all time
Comment: You'd have to look very hard to find someone who doesn't like Spyro games. this one is just as good as the first two, except it is bigger, better, and longer. I recommend you buy the collector's edition- it compiles all three games in one package.

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