This is Not the Spyro You Know and Love

Let’s face it, Spyro is one of the icons of gaming. To take on the task of making a new Spyro game should have been seen as a great honor by Toys for Bob but instead turned into a cash grab where you will have to spend around $100 to even see 100% of the main game. That is just poor form, and this is not even talking about the lacking gameplay on rails or the annoying bits about the game which further drag it down into mediocrity.

I had some friends over to get a feel of how others might see the game and the first couldn’t stop talking about which of characters she wanted to play and then brought up a good point. The starter pack has characters from different packs and types so when/if you were to buy those packs, you would then have doubles of those characters which is rather pointless. I can see the whole tradeable card game aspect where you trade your doubles and such but at $7 per character that’s an expensive investment.

Massive Investment in Mediocrity

In fact, the $100 price tag above is based on the price of the game $60-70 and then the additional characters you will need to buy to open all the areas of the game. There are eight types of characters (32 of them in all): fire, water, air, earth, magic, life, undead and tech. In the game, there are areas that require specific character types to open. Since you get 3 characters in the starter pack, you then need 5 more at $7 each, or an additional investment of $35 roughly to open all the areas. That puts the total price at right around $100 for a mediocre game. There are also adventure packs which give you a new area, adventures and challenges along with a new character and two magic items that have some benefit for the character that equips them.

Yes, the game is aimed more at children and getting new fans, but it has been executed extremely poorly. First off, the parents are going to remember the massive price tag. Second, the gameplay is so limited that I can’t see how this would ever make new fans. The character statues are cool, but far from any type of collectible quality (more like mass produced plastic) so they won’t accrue any real value over time and will end up becoming a useless pile of junk because, hopefully, this game will not sell enough to warrant another.