Rank your favorite Spyro games

Paranoia · Aug 11, 2012 6:32 AM

Really original topic. I know.

I'm just kind of interested in seeing the differing opinions of favorites/least favorites out of all the Spyro games. Seeing as this is technically a Spyro forum and all.

Rules: Just give a numbered list of games, from favorite to least favorite. However--you can't rank a game you've never played. For example, you can't just rank Skylanders last cause Spyro's ugly or something if you've never played the game for yourself. tongue Feel free to respectfully discuss yours and others' decisions. Is it ranked purely on nostalgia? Have you played each game recently? What do you like about your favorites?

Your choices are:
-Spyro the Dragon
-Spyro: Ripto's Rage/Gateway to Glimmer
-Spyro: Year of the Dragon
-Spyro: Season of Ice
-Spyro: Season of Flame
-Spyro: Attack of the Rynocs
-Spyro: Orange
-Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
-Spyro: A Hero's Tail
-Spyro: Shadow Legacy
-The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning
-The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
-The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon
-Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure
-AndIguessthecellphonegamesifanyonehasactuallyplayedthem

My personal list:
1. Ripto's Rage/Gateway to Glimmer
2. Spyro the Dragon
3. Year of the Dragon
4. A Hero's Tail
5. Attack of the Rhynocs
6. A New Beginning
7. The Eternal Night
8. Enter the Dragonfly
Haven't played: Dawn of the Dragon or Skylanders, and I don't remember enough about the other GBA games or Shadow Legacy to rank them accurately.

I love the original 3, and it was really hard to rank them. They were some of the first games I played, and I still enjoy playing them from time to time. If I could have a 3 way tie, I would. A Hero's Tail was just a fun game with great atmosphere, despite the voice acting and humor being a little odd. Attack of the Rhynocs was a good time waster kind of game, and a fun handheld adventure. I just didn't like the Legend series. sad A New Beginning was better for me because of the nice locations coupled with the fact that there weren't as many mindless monkey battles. Enter the Dragonfly, was, well, a thing, that happened once; I don't even want to go there.

Nobololol · Aug 11, 2012 11:05 AM

1. Spyro 2 Gateway To Glimmer
2. Spyro Year Of The Dragon
3. Spyro The Dragon
4. Skylanders: Spyros Adventure
5. Spyro Enter The Dragonfly

Gateway To Glimmer is best without a question. I like the level designs and challenges. Also it feels more.connected than Year Of The Dragon. Year Of The Dragon is on second place cause it's really close to Spyro 2 but personally I like Spyro 2 more. Spyro The Dragon and Skylanders are very close to each other. Skylanders isn't Spyro game in my opinion and that's the reason why it loses to Spyro The Dragon. I have played Spyro The Dragon only recently except the demo. Enter The Dragonfly could have been a good game but loading times, length of the game and stuff made it so bad that I haven't played it through. I have played every game in my list except Enter The Dragonfly recently.

36IStillLikeSpyro36 · Aug 11, 2012 1:21 PM

1. DOTD
2. Ripto's Rage
3. Year of the Dragon
4. Spyro uh, one, i guess.
5. TEN
6. ANB
7. AHT
8. tie between the Gameboy games (Season of Ice, Orange, Attack of the Rhynocs)
11. ETD

DOTD is first because i just really like that game. the originals come next because they're great. TEN would probably be higher if playing without the bonus (that i won't spoil) WEREN'T SO IMPOSSIBLY HARD. ANB comes after that because of ALL THE TIMES WHERE YOU JUST FIGHT MONKEYS.

and monkeys.
and monkeys.
and more monkeys.
Cynder's lair is especially bad with this.

A Hero's Tail comes after this (AND THEN MORE MONKEYS) because of the minigames which it's clear i don't like, and also the extremely painful and awkward dialogue.

i couldn't decide on rankings for the Gameboy games. they were fun, and i do remember them pretty well, but they just didn't have a lot that had a lasting impression on me.

after them comes ETD. the parts where it's not obvious they rushed it out many, many years too early, were a lot of fun, but just the loading times are bad enough.

EricChristianOlsenFanatic · Aug 11, 2012 2:21 PM

1. Spyro The Dragon
2. Spyro Ripto's Rage
3. Spyro Enter The Dragonfly
4. Legend of Spyro A New Beginning
5. Legend of Spyro Dawn of The Dragon
6. Legend of Spyro The Eternal Night

Stormy · Aug 11, 2012 3:25 PM

Paranoia wrote:

However--you can't rank a game you've never played. For example, you can't just rank Skylanders last cause Spyro's ugly or something if you've never played the game for yourself.

Ahahaha, you know us well. XD

1. Spyro the Dragon
2. Spyro: Ripto's Rage and Spyro: Year of the Dragon
3. Spyro: A Hero's Tail
4. Spyro: Attack of the Rynocs
5. Spyro: Season of Ice
6. Spyro: Season of Flame
7. Spyro: Shadow Legacy
8. The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning
9. The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
10. Spyro: Orange
11. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly

If you know me at all, it's obvious the originals are going to be first. But it's impossible for me to rank them. Spyro the Dragon had the best music, beautiful worlds, and challenging puzzles that are integrated into regular gameplay. Even though it's the shortest and simplest of the games, I might have to call it my favorite. Ripto's Rage has the most nostalgia value for me (not exactly sure why), some pretty cool characters, and fun minigames. But then, Year of the Dragon has equally good characters and a bit more variety in gameplay with the other playable characters. I just ranked those two equally.

I agree completely about AHT. It was a very fun game overall, but some of the voice acting (namely Spyro's) was just odd. I didn't care for the Blink levels much, either. Playing as Hunter, though, was totally worth those Blink levels. It was a solid platformer all around.

Of the three GBA games, AotR is first. I can't even explain why; it feels a lot more like AHT than the others do, but it's just more fun. Season of Ice felt a little more like the originals than Flame, and it has the nostalgia associated with the first time I saved up all my money and bought something really expensive (my GBA), so it's ranked only slightly above. (This is not very objective reasoning, I know. tongue )

Shadow Legacy is like what TLoS could have been, and the concept of it is awesome. It has reasonably-paced combat gameplay and magic combined with traditional Spyro platforming and continuity and characters from the previous games; what's not to like? They just needed to work out a few glitches, like falling though objects that are supposed to be solid, and work out a better way to display height and depth. I died so many times in that game because I couldn't tell that a platform I was gliding to was actually higher than the one I started from. With some polishing, this game would've been very high on my list.

I haven't played ANB or TEN in a while, but most of what I remember is them frustrating the hell out of me. There are just so many *bleep*ing monkeys that it became needlessly difficult and frustrating. The two games are pretty much exactly the same, but I'm going to say ANB was better because I remember fewer headaches, slightly fewer monkeys, and less angry glaring at my TV, and because, let's face it, evil Cynder was actually pretty badass. Although a lot of people will say they liked TLoS because of its epic story, and while TLoS is obviously more story-oriented than any of the previous games, this does not mean it's a good story. It's that cliche, predictable a-hero-will-rise story we've seen a million times. On top of that, the characters were all either bland (Spyro and Cynder) or annoying (shut up already, Sparx, it's not my fault this game doesn't know how to scale difficulty!).

Spyro Orange isn't a bad game if you like minigames. It's not low on the list because I hate it; it's just a lot more casual and not quite as fun as the others.

And yeah, ETD... lazy programming, lazy animation, lazy writing, lazy pretty much everything except the music. If they had just worked on it for longer instead of trying to rush it out by the holiday season, we probably would've had original-style Spyro games for much longer. sad

bane dragon · Aug 11, 2012 4:42 PM

1. Ripto's Rage
2. Spyro the Dragon
3. Year of the Dragon
4. Seasons (Ice and Flame)
5. TEN
6. ANB
...
...
100. (seriously 7 because I can't remember having played any others except for the AHT demo) DotD

Ripto's Rage is obviously #1 because it took the concept of Spyro, then added to the gameplay and graphics in just the right way and amount to improve it. It also added sparx's most helpful ability ever, the gem finder.

Spyro the Dragon was the original, and for that it's automatically top 3, but what bumps it to top 2 is that it flowed easily, the dialogue was kid-friendly without being cheesy (see YotD) and the gems and dragons were hidden well enough to be a decent challenge even for older players.

Year of the Dragon...well, compared to the others, it was amazing. I loved the layout, the graphics were getting better and better, and it added some more variety to gameplay. On the downside, the dialogue is cheesy, the game as a whole felt shorter than the above 2, even if it had more in it than #1, and you can tell Insomniac was beginning to run out of ideas.

The 2 seasons games are only above the LoS because they at least kept the friendly style of the originals, as well as a still having a fairly open world.

Now we're getting down into it. TEN...what to say about it? <_< Well, it's better than the other 2. It didn't scrap the death pits, like DotD, and it certainly wasn't unenjoyable, but it had a lot of problems. The big one was the linearity. This is equivalent to a sin in Spyro game-making, as it takes away half of what was fun about Spyro: exploration, seeing what could be seen, testing the game's boundaries, etc. Another flaw what the overabundance of clones. Pallette-swaps are fine as long as it's in moderation, but that seems to make up 90% of the enemies in ANB and TEN. When it was done in Spyro the dragon, all the enemies at least have different patterns or something to compensate for the "sameyness" of the enemies, but in LoS, it's done lazily, with an almost ctrl-c/ctrl-v for every "new" enemy type. You might as well have not even changed the colors until the final area, where I think they get one new ability, and it gets really boring really quick. The final nails to hammer in are the color and areas. They're dark, depressing, and not very fun to move around. The water is almost all deadly, which doesn't make sense, and every area can be categorized as not a fun place in the lot, then there are the plains (DotD) and the pirate ship areas, the only 2 places where it gets colorful and energetic, and it's let down by the same flaws as always, the enemies having no variety (or not enough) and they're easily beaten by knocking them off from high places (which are found easily, making it not so much an actual fight and more along the lines of sweeping the dust off the top shelf in terms of fun), and that's more fun than trying to fight them normally, which simply takes forever (which, on top of the lack of an infinite breath and the sheer amount of them, make the fights "hard". Not hard in a fun way, either. Hard in a very frustrating, throw your controller across the room way.)

ANB. All the problems of TEN without the amount of fun and even less variety. Read what I said about TEN, and add more hate. <_<

DotD is about the lowest it could get (probably. haven't played Skylanders, not enough interest), which is sad, because it's fairly diverse and relatively open compared to the other 2. The problems are horrible dialogue (I mean cringe-worthy) when Sparx isn't vainly attempting to bring humor into it, a horrible overhaul on the buttons (meaning even if you learned them all from ANB and TEN, screw you, learn new ones in the first few minutes before you get squashed), a pretty poor final boss, and any problems I said in TEN not about linearity or lack of variety.

36IStillLikeSpyro36 · Aug 11, 2012 5:09 PM

Stormy wrote:

. . . ANB was better because I remember . . . slightly fewer monkeys

Concurrent Skies vs Celestial Caves

Stormy · Aug 11, 2012 5:33 PM

I... don't remember what either of those levels were, sorry. It's been way too long so I'm probably not the best judge of this. I just remember being much less frustrated with ANB than TEN.

Clock-la · Aug 11, 2012 8:08 PM

Spyro year of the dragon fun and new friends and awsome new extras big_smile
Spyro 2 fun and new friends
Spyro the dragon fun
Spyro seson of flame my first spyro game :3
Spyro a heros tail fun solid spyro
The eternal night best of tlos loved the gothic looks of things and the ending was a intresting cliff hanger
a new begining a good starter to an ok serries
Spyro adventure, good solid fun smile
Spyro shadow of legicy its fun a good solid game
Spyro enter the dragonfly lazy but tbh i never came across much issue other than the ungodly loading times
Spyro seson of ice was ok but i found the fact i could not tell witch fairys i had freed was a pain

Spyro dotd awful game have way to much to say about it.

Paranoia · Aug 11, 2012 8:17 PM

I'm in the same boat as Stormy on this one. Maybe there were technically less monkeys in TEN (though I remember quite a few gauntlets in the pirate ship levels), but by the time I got a few hours in, it just became really tedious since hitting monkeys was all I had been doing for the past two games. It just didn't appeal to me. I legitimately remember enjoying A New Beginning though, if only a little. It was a change of pace, and some of the level designs were beautiful (the plains level in particular was one of my favorites). To be fair though, I haven't played either game in a few years, so my judgement comes from playing them when they first came out.

Nobololol wrote:

Gateway To Glimmer is best without a question. I like the level designs and challenges. Also it feels more.connected than Year Of The Dragon.

I think that's what I liked best about Spyro 2. The levels were fluid, and not as chopped up by the challenge portals. Don't get me wrong, I loved the challenges in YotD, especially the skateboarding ones since they kept me coming back to try and beat my course records. Not to mention, Ripto was just a comedic villain. I loved how Spyro and Ripto were both small, and wouldn't stop making fun of each other about it. There's a certain charm about the first 3 games that I haven't seen in many other games, except maybe a little in Ratchet and Clank. Maybe I just love Insomniac Games.

Gekoncze · Aug 12, 2012 9:07 AM

1) Spyro year of the dragon
2) Spyro gateway to glimmer
3) Spyro the dragon
4) TLOS Eternal night
5) TLOS Dawn of The Dragon
6) Spyro enter the dragonfly

Latias fan · Aug 13, 2012 8:03 PM

Spyro Year of the dragon- Excellent game.

Spyro Riptos rage-Also good game

Spyro the Dragon-Also a good game

Spyros enter the dragonfly. Long load times and texture pop ins. Also the story was so gimped.

Spyro dawn of the dragon- Only-the-dead-can-know-peace-from-this-evil.jpg.jpeg

Clock-la · Aug 13, 2012 8:12 PM

Dotd was a case of bad fan fiction...gone bad.

Hamish171 · Sep 22, 2012 3:28 PM

1. Spyro 3: Year of the dragon
2. Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer
3. Spyro: A heroes tail
4. Spyro The Dragon
5. Spyro: A new beginning
6. Spyro Enter the dragonfly
Reasons:
Spyro 3- Very fun. Fantastic lvels. Brilliant plot and character development. Humour. brilliant minigames.
Spyro 2- Very fun. Brilliant hub worlds. Pretty good plot and character development. brilliant minigames. DOUBLE JUMP smile
Spyro heroes tail- Pretty fun. Free roaming. Nice plot and character development. puzzles were cool. Too many gems. SPARX TALKS yikes
Spyro 1- Fun. Pretty good levels. Nice plot and character development. no minigames sad . too much gems.
spyro a new beggining.- OK
IM TO TIRED

The Mad Thatter · Sep 22, 2012 4:20 PM

1) Year of the Dragon. Fabulous game: light-hearted, great idea, funny, brilliant levels, not to mention AWESOME music.
Now it gets a bit fuzzy. I've not played Gateway to Glimmer for years, but I do remember it as a brilliant game. Spyro the Dragon is also good, though YOTD and GTG are both far better and developed in my opinion. The less said about Enter the Dragonfly the better.
I also think that A Hero's Tail was actually really good, though it got quite a bit of stick. I thought it did an excellent job of maintaining the don't-take-it-too-seriously attitude of the originals whilst not trying to completely copy it like ETD did.
Then comes the Legend of Spyro trilogy. Out of those three, I think The Eternal Night is the best, just because it has a very dark and interesting plot, not to mention being satisfyingly difficult. A New Beginning was also a very good game though, and a good way of remaking it from a serious angle (have to mention that Sparx was hilarious in both of them). Dawn of the Dragon, however, was an almighty let down. The characterisation just flew out of the window. Both ANB and TEN managed to be reasonably realistic, with fairly good personalities to the characters, but DOTD just screwed it all up, absolutely driving Spyro and Cynder's relationship into the ground. I never liked Cynder much, apart from when she was evil, but DOTD really made a pig's ear of her personality indefinitely, not building up the bond between Spyro and Cynder at all. It didn't exactly help that Cynder's voice actress was so dreadful, either. Anyway, the end of that game nearly made me vomit; the writing was nowhere near as good as it was in the others. Not to mention the fact that they absolutely crucified Sparx.

Well, that's my opinion, anyway.

Bzzit · Jan 19, 2013 1:15 AM

Spyro year of the dragon - despite some of the later sections feeling a tad rushed, perfection imo
Spyro 2: gateway to glimmer- Amazing, best villain in the series, awesome boss fights
Spyro the dragon- Nostalgic and very good soundtrack and atmosphere
Spyro Adventure- My favourite for gba, loved the feel and levels
Spyro season of flame- improved over ice in many ways
Spyro a heroes Tail- pretty good but not on par with the originals
Spyro Fusion- Fun to play with my best friend who had crash fusion :3
Spyro Season of Ice- quite annoying at times but nice original feel
LOS new beginning- Very short but it was decent at the time
Spyro Enter the Dragonfly- liked it as a kid, I now see it flaws
Spyro shadow legacy- remember it being frustrating, gimmicky and annoying sad
I kinda lost interest in the new rebooted games when i was 12 so i never played the newest releases

Twingo · Jan 21, 2013 7:02 PM

Dawn of the Dragon
Spyro the Dragon
A New Beginning
Ripto's Rage
A Hero's Tail
Enter the Dragonfly
The Eternal Night
Year of the Dragon

Kinda hard to make a list, as I like all the games haha

ontels · Jan 21, 2013 9:38 PM

Why did you think DotD was better than StD?

EricChristianOlsenFanatic · Jan 21, 2013 11:20 PM

I would of ranked The Eternal Night before A New Beginning if not for several things I hated about Eternal Night, first the bosses ticked me off, except for the Assassin and Skurvywing, second I hate the Elemental Trials, so tedious and boring, third the Death Hounds, don't get me started on those things, and finally I hated the totems that the commanders throw in the Pirate and Well of Souls levels, such a frustrating item to destroy while enemies are gang banging you.

Twingo · Jan 22, 2013 12:20 AM

ontels wrote:

Why did you think DotD was better than StD?

I guess I just liked the gameplay better, and it was also more story based.
It also kinda depends on what I'm feeling. Spyro the Dragon is good if you want easier, more relaxed gameplay. Dawn of the Dragon is more button mashy and stuff.

I would of ranked The Eternal Night before A New Beginning if not for several things I hated about Eternal Night, first the bosses ticked me off, except for the Assassin and Skurvywing, second I hate the Elemental Trials, so tedious and boring, third the Death Hounds, don't get me started on those things, and finally I hated the totems that the commanders throw in the Pirate and Well of Souls levels, such a frustrating item to destroy while enemies are gang banging you.

Yeah, TEN was pretty frustrating at times haha

EricChristianOlsenFanatic · Jan 22, 2013 12:37 AM

Also TEN made me hate the Chronicler, he is my least favorite character in the Legend Series next to Gaul.

36IStillLikeSpyro36 · Jan 22, 2013 1:44 AM

hm. might i ask why?

EricChristianOlsenFanatic · Jan 22, 2013 3:23 PM

Honestly I don't like how the Chronicler had Spyro doing the pointless task of going to the Grove to find some stupid tree only for the tree to attack him, and then he gets captured by Pirates who of course took Cynder, then he sends Spyro on a wild goose chase through the Trials only for Spyro to learn "Oh don't go save Cynder or the others, stay here with me and be a wimp". Plus why show Spyro the visions if it's just gonna end badly?

ontels · Jan 22, 2013 6:20 PM

Afflict wrote:

ontels wrote:
Why did you think DotD was better than StD?
I guess I just liked the gameplay better, and it was also more story based.
It also kinda depends on what I'm feeling. Spyro the Dragon is good if you want easier, more relaxed gameplay. Dawn of the Dragon is more button mashy and stuff.
I would of ranked The Eternal Night before A New Beginning if not for several things I hated about Eternal Night, first the bosses ticked me off, except for the Assassin and Skurvywing, second I hate the Elemental Trials, so tedious and boring, third the Death Hounds, don't get me started on those things, and finally I hated the totems that the commanders throw in the Pirate and Well of Souls levels, such a frustrating item to destroy while enemies are gang banging you.
Yeah, TEN was pretty frustrating at times haha

You actually enjoy mindless button mashing?

Twingo · Jan 22, 2013 7:50 PM

You actually enjoy mindless button mashing?

Well yeah tongue

#1 Aug 11, 2012 6:32 AM

Rank your favorite Spyro games

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