Review NDS: "The Legend Of Spyro - Dawn Of The Dragon" (USA)
By: Dragonlord

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I really don't know how worse they can get with this franchise. It's like a down-hill
course and your breaks have gone out of the window. The story is totally lame. Since
like 3 or 4 Spyro installments ( mostly since they started this new-age crap ) the
story turned into one hell of a cheesy festival which is neither funny, compelling
just utterly bad. The characters are more shallow than a dry lake. They still stick
with the cut-scene (pseudo) story telling which is more of an annoyance than a help.
The worst are though the story graphics. I don't know who drew this crap but all the
characters ( especially Spyro and Cynder ) turn into blocky cubes with a uniform color
on them. Way to turn a good franchise into crap I would say.

In-Game graphics are the same as before and are therefore still nothing to get excited
about. Backgrounds in the side scroller parts are nice while those in the 3D ones are
at best confusing. Of course this console is not the strongest when it gets to raw
graphics power but still there is room for more... especially for PCs ( player
characters ). The controls are just bad. You have tons of movements but they all are
rather similar and the game has a liking to turn your PC straight away from the enemy
you had just been attacking making it next to impossible to turn around since this
already triggers a crap move you have no intention to use. Boils down to use two moves
throughout the entire game ( 3x attack, up, 3x attack... gives a 6 combo and with some
timing up to 10... if you insist on boasting about being a finger acrobat that is ).
Flight sequence plays like the previous games with some additions which though still
makes it a nuisance and a part you like to get through quickly... that said... most
parts of the game are like this in fact. One thing I hated on the flight sequence is
that you have to kill targets as soon as possible to not get filled with arrows and
this means shooting on a 4 pixel thing which is of course always hidden behind your
flapping whatever. Camera is an issue here.

Gameplay wise you can switch between Spyro and Cynder at all times ( with a small
cool-down time to avoid switch-spam-cheating ). In some situations the off-PC can
recharge slowly health ( I assume during flight but not side scroller ). Red gems
heal, green fill up breath and blue give exp. You can power up the elemental attacks
of both PCs at wish up to level 3. There's an element system hence some baddies are
immune, neutral or weak ( 2x damage ). The results are shown on the top screen during
fighting if you insist on using breath... which is only required at some enemies since
they are otherwise ridiculously lasting. Double jump and gliding is back as well as
the all time favorite of game developers with lacking ideas: wall jumping! Side scroller
is therefore mostly jumping your ass off and therefore more suited for finger acrobats
then people interested in some action or puzzle solving. Oh yeah puzzles are next to
non-existent ( making jumping-puzzle ratio nearly 100-0 ). Some obstacles you need to
toast with a specific breath ( attention! the game fails to clearly tell you how to do
this: hold A+B+X+Y ). In total you have therefore 8 possible breath attacks ( 4 per
PC ). 4 had been already too many in former Spyro games ( usual players harvest just
the same attack as everything else is making things unnecessarily complicated ) but 8
is just too much. The main attraction in this game is anyways that you can play as
Cynder and most people ( like me... come on!... new-age Spyro is a douche-bag... Cynder
rules tongue.gif ) are anyways going to max her and leave Spyro as a side-kick for when
you need to regain some health or need to take some damage you don't want to happen on
a poor girlie tongue.gif . Difficulty is also next to non-existent except some
leap-of-faith ( meaning you don't see the insta-kill pits below and you need to hit the
right spot while dropping down ) or controls suddenly going crazy which can send you
back to the beginning of a level... which can be hateful way back ( with loosing all
the exp since the last level change >.=.< ) . All in all that game is done in an hour
( if you skip the cut scenes, are lucky during leap-of-faith and figure out bosses the
first time... which is easy... since the game shows at the start of a fight the weak
spot ). Not only become the recent Spyro games worse and worse they get now also shorter
and shorter. If this goes on Spyro-nTH is only 1 map long :/

So good or not? If you liked the original Spyro and you disliked the previous title on
the NDS you are not going to like this one. If you got warm with the former title it's
more or less the same with side scroller instead of free-roam 3d. Only ( moderately )
recommendable for hardcore fans of the recent installments.