Blog:TyrantRex's thoughts on Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage

Note: This isn't a proper review, but rather my thoughts and opinions on the game!

I recommend listening to this while reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3bSIvyJHfo

Background
So marathoning the PS1 Spyro trilogy in preparation of the Reignited Trilogy remaster, which won't come to Switch right... ANYWAYS... Spyro 2 is actually the one Spyro game that I played a lot as a kid so this is more of a revisit.

The Game
Starting with the presentation because most of the time I have no idea how to start these, it's overall mostly the same as the first game with some minor improvements here and there, mostly because of some asset recyling. I'm 90% convinced that Spyro's character model, Sparx, the gems, and quite a lot of other graphic assets were outright copy-pasted from the first game. In fairness though, it's the PS1 era, some asset reusing is more forgiveable and even kinda expected. The bigger improvement is the "Level of Distance" technique, it is much better than last time and you'll rarely notice objects changing in polygon counting.

The other asthetic change is the artstyle theme. The first game had mainly a fantasy theme almost like a fairy tale which made sense given the setting, however since this game is takes place in a different setting they could go for a different theme. It is still mostly fantasy locations but slightly more natural or realistic which I do like more. The game also introduces a lot of new characters and has actual NPCs besides the save point fairy which is welcome even if some are annoying.

If the first Spyro is a solid foundation with some rough edges that need polishing, this is the sequel that polishes those rough edges, fixes most of the problems, and improves the good parts. Yeah... this game fixes most of the problems I had with the first one, except for one thing, the controls. For one thing the slight stiffness of the controls due to Spyro having to turn around before changing directions is sitill there. One thing I completely forgot to mention in the first blog, Spyro had a dodge roll move in the first game that was completely useless which was removed here. Ironically, this game has plenty of situations where you'd want to use that dodge roll, mainly in the form of enemies firing projectiles being more common.

The first big improvement is with Gem collecting. My issue with Gems was that despite them being satisfying to collect they didn't actually do much (or anything) for actual progression, Spyro 2 solves that with Moneybags. As a character he's annoying, he's a con-artist constantly scamming Spyro, but he's more useful as a game mechanic. Whenever you find Moneybags you need to pay him Gems to unlock a level, get new abilities, or open paths in levels, this means you actually DO need gems to progress in game. Something I found smart was to put Moneybags in the very first level of the game, having the bear scammer asking for Gems to progress is a good way to subtly tell the player "keep getting more Gems in case Moneybags shows up again".

The other big issue I had with Spyro 1 was the main collectibles, you just find them scattered around the levels and just need to touch them. This is fixed here, now you actually have to do objectives to get the main collectibes, Orbs in this case, which is a lot more like in Jak and Banjo. This makes the Orbs more rewarding to get and gives levels more depth because there's more stuff to do in each of them. It also helps that aside from a few minigames here and there, most of the Orbs objectives are still done through regular gameplay rather than random gimmicks, I like this because it keeps the game focused on the core gameplay while still having some more variety to each level. The only problem I have with Orbs is that often an NPC gives you the objective to get the Orb, however if you fail an objective and have to restart the mission the NPC repeats the same dialogue.every.single.time.which.gets.annoying.fast! Sure you can skip the dialogues but you'll still hear the first few words -_-.

There's another REALLY dumb design choice with orbs (which doesn't affect me because 100% completionist in collect-a-thons), the game doesn't actually tell you that you need Orbs. Around the midway point you need 8 Orbs to open a door which isn't a big deal, but then out of nowhere you're told that 'you need 40 Orbs'' to fight the final boss! '''There's very little stopping players from progressing while ignoring Orbs, then all of a sudden you need lots of them to finish the game?!

A new addition is Powerups, they're in every level and are unlocked by killing enough enemies. Most powerups are good to use and often required for Orb collecting, most of them are timer based but the timers are always generous enough that it's not a big issue. The Super-Headcharge returns a Powerup... it still sucks. In fairness the dumb confusing jumps over bottomless pits are gone, but the thing still isn't fun to control.

Boss fights are another improvement. In the first game you just chase them and hit them a few times, here they're proper bosses, there's only three but they're all fairly good and the final boss is quite good. Bosses are the one place where the useless dodge roll would be the most useful, I get hit a lot because the boss fires a projectile which I couldn't dodge because the rotation animation wasted nearly a whole second. Other than that small annoyance, bosses are good.

As a whole, Spyro 2 does most of what the first game did, fixes most of the problems, keyword being most *cough*Supercharge*cough*, and adds some new idea to increase variety without losing focus on what the game is about, that's exactly what I want to see as a sequel. This is the Spyro game I played the most, and I still find it very good, obviously there's some nostalgia affecting my opinion there but even without nostalgia this is just a very solid game for its time that I fell has aged quite well.