Spyro: Season of Ice

The Good
Well, it's Spyro. If you enjoyed him on the Playstation, you should have fun with the game. They did manage to get the basic formula right.

The Bad
First, while the isometric viewpoint usually works, it is difficult to tell, when jumping south, how high your destination platform is. This has a unfortunate tendency to result in "plummeting to my death" moments. (The easiest way to fix this would be to have visually distinct designs for each height, which was done in some levels, but not others.)

Secondly, and this is the biggest flaw in the game, the hard versions of the flight levels are much more difficult than the game in general, and are required in order to finish the game. Quite frankly, a collectathon that's too difficult for most people to complete, let alone 100% on, is not a game I can recommend. (The easiest way to fix this would be to drop the number of fairies needed to face the final boss from 99 to 95. There's still the "Dragonfly X" mode to give a reason to recover all the fairies.)

The Bottom Line
If you're skilled enough to complete the hard flight levels without throwing the cart at a wall, the rest of the game will be boring to you. If the regular game holds challenge for you, the hard flight levels will vary in difficulty from nearly impossible to beyond impossible.

The Good
The graphics across the game are pleasant and rich with many colourful characters and objects. Music tunes come in good variety, but are pretty short and repetitive. The pace of the game is well broken up by many things to smash and ignite, chasing giggling thieves, levels where you glide into the horizon, insect mazes with Sparx and all those lovely gems to gather.

The limitations for the GBA are well compensated by the isometric angle that builds up the 3D environment (albeit the cliffs and shores are grid-shaped instead of realistically curved). The voices are improvised by vocal mumblings just to keep the dialogue interesting. Finally Dragonfly X is a fun little reward for winning the game 100%.

The Bad
While the core of the gameplay seems to work, making jumps can be fidgety particularly when trying to elevate yourself to a higher platform and making stops while you glide. With this isometric angle, it's hard to tell what exact altitude you are when Spyro is in midair. And the view of the surrounding area is so limited, there isn't a way to view an area map unlike the second GBA game. The goal of the game isn't very intriguing. All these fetch quests for fairies are more boring than babysitting dragon hatchlings. And the boss encounters are as straightforward as defeating a boss in an early 90s FPS. The game is limited in that you can only play as Spyro and Sparx. Being able to play as Hunter, Bianca and Zoe would have made for more interesting mini-games.

The most nagging issues throughout the game are the storyline and encounters. The plot is just about a silly rhynoc causing what was otherwise an unnecessary heap of trouble for the player to solve. They could have put a race of ice dragons as troublemakers for a change. As for encounters, every character you meet always seems to mistake a fairy for a popsicle stick or a lucky charm and such like. They couldn't even tell the sun from the moon. This is like treating the player as dumb.

The Bottom Line
Much of the elements that appeared in the PSX trilogy, this game has them all well emulated in such a small compact portable system. While not as good as the main 3D series, this little spinoff can bring some worthwhile fun when there's nothing better to do. I consider this one a guilty pleasure. While this wasn't popular enough to warrant a DS port, it might have worked better on two screens with a larger resolution and other additions. Anyway, this game gets a pass, nothing too praiseworthy or lacklustre.