SPYRO: ENTER THE DRAGONFLY - REVIEW A BAD GAME DAY


Review by Marcelo Espinoza

Spyro is a series I grew up with alongside Crash Bandicoot, Tekken, Rayman, and many others. Insomniac made the original Spyro trilogy, and they made those games well. 

However, when the Spyro franchise went through the same thing as the Crash franchise did, Check Six and Equinoxe got ahold of the series and made Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. Being the first non-Insomniac Spyro title, I'm sure all fans of the purple dragon will say it CLEARLY shows. 

This game was rushed for the holiday season of 2002 and boy, is it obvious. 

Many things were cut, so instead of 25 levels being in the game as planned, we got 9 (counting the final boss), and while Spyro's number 1 antagonist Gnasty Gnorc was originally supposed to team up with Ripto, Ripto himself barely even has that much screen time in the final game, let alone Gnasty Gnorc, who was cut entirely. 


Apart from cut content, the presentation of "EtD" is abhorrent. The framerate likes to jump around a lot, which can get really distracting, and the loading times completely break the pacing of the game. Sure, the Gamecube version's load times are slightly faster, but the PS2 version's are downright unbearable. Some of the physics are wonky, like the gems sometimes spawning upside down (and constantly changing values) and some of the enemies sliding around weirdly after defeating them, and the game's so broken that on special occasions certain enemies will just freeze and not attack you! 

Speaking of which, this game is REALLY glitchy. 

It's not very hard to cause some of these glitches to happen, such as clipping through certain walls, swimming in the air, getting out of bounds, and the biggest one of all... using those three specifically to get to the final boss early; you don't even have to play the game to get to Ripto. 

WOW. 

The ironic thing is I used to like this game as a kid, and I'd justify it with "hey, it's a Spyro game! It's gotta be good!" but, as I came to learn, not every game is perfect and Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly? It just wasn't treated with respect; it could've had great potential, and now it's far, FAR from perfect. 

So my advice? 

Skip this game, whether you're a Spyro fan or not. I completed this game 100%, and it was utter hell doing so; it's NOT worth it.


Big thanks to Marcelo Espinoza for his review and for keeping Review A Bad Game Day alive! 

You can follow him on Twitter @DestinationMarc and subscribe to his Youtube channel.

Review A Bad Game Day was created by 1MoreCastle.com.

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