Skylanders, and any of the "toys to life" series games, have gotten a reputation as a money sink with sometimes nominal returns for what you were buying. Disney Infinity and Skylanders Trap Team were exceptionally brutal. It makes sense to be hesitent with the latest entry. But Vicarious Visions came through and came through big.
Normally to complete a skylanders game and access all the bonus areas during missions you need to go find another 5-9 figures depending on the entry. This one you only need two (a sea vehicle and a land vehicle). These also aren't even necessary and in some levels there are two different paths: one for the sea.air vehicle once you procure it, one to be done on foot or with the provided land vehicle. So you are adding completely new ways to get through levels with the addition of the vehicles and not just some simple side area/game like most other TTL (toys to life) games.
Adventure packs and Battle packs decent extra content in the first couple of entries but still seem to leave something to be desired. Here, for just a few more dollars then what you would pay for the figures inside, the Sea Racing pack (and eventually the Sky and Land) includes a pair of race tracks, 4 challanges, 4 new racers when the challanges are completed, a racing "circuit" like in the Mario Cart games, special missions, as well as all the standard content for the figures themselves. It was to the point where I'm actually SHOCKED how far the money is being stretched. It's to the point the content is about as good as any DLC you might get for other video games, with the added caveat that the figures will be usable in later entries in the series.
Many of the overpowered and underwhelming charaters from Trap Team have been rebalanced with both damage and utility (stuns, KBs, etc) to where you won't feel like you bought the "wrong guy" on this one. So feel free to pull some of the characters that have been collecting dust off the shelf and throw them into your team (I tend to pull one character from each element at a time and use them when they are in a prefered zone). They may very well surprise you.
For those who are thinking "Why buy any of the new characters outside of the racing packs" there is still stuff for the completionists. While the most bang for your buck in found in grabbing the minimal needed figures, there is extra tidbits and missions for every style of collector. When entering the town, there is a special mission area that will ask for a vehicle of a particular element. These missions are very much not needed for the completion of the game, but reward those who purchased a vehicle of each element. For those who grab every new character including the repurposed older characters, you will be treated to assignements which require those characters to take out bad guys with certain moves, complete certain levels (for a second time if already completed) or any number of special assignments. And for every Supercharger combo, there is a challange similar to the old Heroic missions in the first two games (sans the individual bonus, but of course you get Portal Master rank which helps everyone.
Speaking of portal master rank, it is possible to get the max rank without purchasing ANY of items for the game, but as you would assume, it is just alot more monotanous as you would be redoing the same mission over and over to gain "star dust" (I think that's what it was called) . Again, this is set up to let people who don't want to spend too much cash on it managable and rewarding, but you get good returns for your money spent on additional figures, in particular the racing packs.
Soul Gems, Hats, Upgrades, Legendary Treasures are NO LONGER in a set location. Instead, an item of that magnitude is in those set locations. What you get is random. You may get one of the 20 Soul Gems. you may get one of the 200+ hats. You may just get a skystones card for the mini-game (which is also much improved). While this may sound like a pain to some, this is a major improvement. As you get new characters, playing the old content then yields new rewards. The game is reinvigorated everytime you go get a new figure. Between new rewards, special assignements, supercharger challanges, and a new playstyle and levels to gain, this game does right by letting you really appreciate any new characters you have, or any old characters that you want to pull out and have some more fun with.
There are a few minor glitches (sometimes soundbytes get stuck) and the the game did freeze on me once. I imagine a patch will be comiong out at some point to fix these issues. The other complaint I have is a few characters didn't make the art transition that well (older terrafin figs for one). They look out of place like they are from Spyro's Adventure and got lost and wound up in this game. Somewhat forgivable considering the plethra of figures they had to bring in, but at the same time, hopefully they learned their lesson and pump the breaks on newer characters coming into the series much in the way they did with this one. It's too much of a back log. I also feel the swappers are gonna get fused at some point and will stop working if switch around.
I highly recommend this game to everyone even if you've never touched Skylanders and are an adult. This is going to be the new gold standard of what TTL games should be, not layered cost money grabs or super expensive mincraft experiences. This game yields almost as much bang for your buck as some of the more expansive RPG games (Dragon Age, Witcher, Assassin's Creed etc) with the bonus of being able to take that money spent forward with you into later entries. There is no need to talk yourself out of this one.
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