The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon

by ACTIVISION

Product Features

• Fly at anytime - Players can now fly at any time with Spyro and Cynder
• Co-op Play - Players have the option of completing the game as either Spyro or Cynder, giving them more freedom to explore Spyro¿s world in completely new ways

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0018YDKB8
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches ; 1 pounds
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: October 21, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (255 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,144 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #66 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Adventure
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PlayStation2

Three long years have passed since Spyro and Cynder were trapped in the crystal, since then Malefor has unleashed his evil onto the world. In this third chapter of the epic Legend of Spyro trilogy, Spyro must fulfill his destiny and face the Dark Master. As evil spreads over the world, Spyro and Cynder must discover new abilities and unlock their true powers to defeat Malefor and stop him from destroying the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A huge step downwards for Spyro, March 15, 2003

By 

Lisa Shea "medieval swordfighting enthusiast" - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly (Video Game)

I've been a huge fan of Spyro the Dragon for many years. This is the first release of Spyro for the PS2, and is made by a new company.

I had heard many poor reviews about Spyro in the hands of this new company. It was made by Universal Interactive instead of Insomniac, who wrote the old Spyro games. I still have my older Spyro games so I played them side by side to see just what the difference was.

First, yes the graphics are better. I would hope so! The other games are from 2000 and before, and were for the Playstation (not the PS2). So in this new version the baskets, for example, are very pretty with their weave and decoration. The water ripples when Spyro runs through it, the grasses in the water wave. Even so, curved surfaces aren't as smooth and clean as in other current games, such as FFX and Kingdom Hearts.

Graphics do not make a game, though, and we found the new Spyro gameplay to be ... sluggish. In the other Spyros you feel like you have an energetic kitten on your hands, one that jumps and springs and moves quickly. In this new Spyro, it's more like a baby elephant lumbering along. The sounds don't seem to match up well with screen actions, either. There are often delays between when an action occurs and the sound kicks in.

Even worse, though, are the serious coding errors evident. I'm a programmer by profession so I know it can be tough to make a game perfect. However, this game didn't seem to get even simple testing done before it was released! There were NUMEROUS problems with drawing glitches on the screen, causing giant polygons to block our view. And when we tried to play through the display problems, it crashed. Repeatedly.

I really wanted the game to work well. The plot of 'the dragonflies have been stolen' seemed fun. You got to have bubble breath to capture them, and lightning breath for other tasks. There were the usual gem collecting and fun enemies. But with the sluggy gameplay and the continual crashes, it becomes very tiring very quickly. Rent this one first to see if your love of Spyro is enough to overcome those obstacles.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What happend?? This is a mess!, November 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly (Video Game)

I own the first 3 Spyros & love them to bits.. this is like a beta-version of a platform game! RENT THIS GAME FIRST.. that is a warning, you will spend way too much money if you buy this. I am still shocked at the low quality & GLARING software bugs in this Spyro game.. I really am just stunned.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars They tried..., November 19, 2002

By 

Bob Manson (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly (Video Game)

sorta.

The quick summary is "unfinished, rather buggy and far too short". Especially compared to the first three, which I loved.

I 100% completed the game in about 8 hours, and I'm not a particularly good player. Given that the game has very little replay value... it's just not worth the money. It'd probably be OK as a rental. (I find myself saying that a lot lately--maybe I should take the hint?)

The in-game camera isn't so hot. It's a lot better than most, but it occasionally got stuck (trying to control Spyro "by remote control 30 feet away" isn't much fun) and had this occasional tendency to spin around in a full circle.

The framerate takes a serious hit when there are a lot of active monsters or dragonflies on the level. One level in particular (Cloud 9, which is mostly wide-open space) had really bad problems, and the game even froze a few times while I was playing that level. This level also revealed some very painful clipping issues (trying to make a long glide to some hidden gems required repeating ~1/2 the level time after time, as I kept hitting some invisible thing or other and falling...)

Speaking of which, there's a serious lack of "Zoe" in-level save points. There are usually two, one about 1/3 of the way into the level and the other about 1/2. So, if you screw up on the last half of the level... yep, you get to repeat at least 1/2 the level. This makes exploring the levels no fun at all, since if you fall off somewhere you have to start way back at the middle.

The controls seem awkward and caused a lot of frustration. Spyro can't recover from touching something while he's flying (as I recall he could start flying again in the previous games unless he ran smack right into an object) and using the hover button also totally kills his ability to fly. Hover also seems to kill 99.9% of his forward momentum--a big change from the previous games, and I regularly missed jumps by undershooting.

The monsters are incredibly wimpy. I never got killed by any of them (heck, I may never have even gotten hit by any of them). Except for the boss, of course; he wasn't horribly hard, but I think missiles that follow you around is almost bordering on cheating (and he could fire faster than Spyro could recover from a stun, so depending on exactly where you were when you were hit it would be certain death).

I didn't run into any truly serious bugs but I'm sure there are several, as I saw a plethora of minor problems. That, the framerate issues, lack of in-game movies (there's exactly one besides the intro and ending movies and it's _totally_ out of place), and the shortness of the game basically scream "it wasn't anywhere near finished but we shipped it anyway".

There's several minigames, most of which are fun to play (and some are quite creative), but I found only a couple of them were worth playing more than once. The races were surprisingly easy compared to the first three games, not a huge problem but again disappointing.

The level portals aren't named, and they look identical for the most part. Annoying as all get out--especially if you want to go back to a particular minigame or sublevel.

Let's see, something nice to say... I thought the graphics were pretty good, and the in-game voices were fine... of what we heard of them, as there was very little interaction with other characters in the game. (Moneybags makes a single token appearance, Zoe has one thing to say, and ditto for the other characters. Hunter shows up 3-4 times I think, the most of any of the other characters.)

I'll give it two stars because I actually bothered to finish it, but it really wasn't that good and certainly wasn't worth the money. I suggest renting it instead.

2115|R18CVOSYGJHCD4;2115|R1Z8KAWWJC8JBU;2115|R36ZA07ME86HX4;