It's been twenty years since Spyro the Dragon first made his appearance on the PlayStation in 1998, Spyro the Dragon was a huge success with positive scores and reviews having both young and old enjoying the game a lot and selling 5 million copies worldwide. Two more games would be released after by Insomniac Games improving the graphics, gameplay and challenges for both Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage and Spyro: Year of the Dragon which were bigger successes in the franchise and fans were wanting more from the purple dragon.
Just like Crash Bandicoot twenty years later after the original releases, Spyro gets the remastered treatment with the Reignited Trilogy on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Toys for Bob have really done a great job on getting the game as accurate as the original games when it comes to gameplay, graphics, visuals and animation. If you've played all three games before the story is more or less straight forward, if you haven't each game has a story where the first game Spyro ventures through the dragon kingdom to rescue the other dragons from a spell placed by Gnasty Gnorc. In Spyro 2 you are transported to the fantasy realm of Avalar to help the residents in stopping a warlock named Ripto; And in Spyro: Year of the Dragon he travels to the Forgotten Worlds after 150 magical dragon eggs are stolen from the land of the dragons by an evil sorceress.
Gameplay controls are very much straight forward you'll notice that the controls for the first game feel slightly different from both Spyro 2 and Year of the Dragon, yet all three games are enjoyable from start to finish. All three games have a ton of collecting from gems, dragon statues, dragon eggs, orbs and talismans. The difficulty is perfect its not too easy or too hard at the same time there is a variety of challenges and bosses added on top. The controls might feel a little stiff when playing other characters in Year of the Dragon they did however manage to fix the control issues when playing as Agent 9 in third-person mode when it comes to aiming at enemies.
The graphics and visuals are the biggest highlights on all three games when comparing both the original games with the Unreal Engine 4 there is a massive difference from the layout designs to the character animations. The first Spyro game really shines out the most from the Reignited Trilogy from the Home Worlds to the stage levels same goes when rescuing the dragons, each one has a different design and personality makes you wonder if another Spyro game could be developed sometime in the future, even the voice actors from the original games make a return including Tom Kenny as Spyro. Stewart Copeland returns once again to composing the soundtrack, giving it a remastered treatment, you do have the option to switch back and forth with the Reignited and Original soundtrack.
For the price you are paying for the Reignited Trilogy is worth the trip and nostalgia, I was quite surprised how enjoyable all three games were when comparing the originals and the Reignited Trilogy. As I've already mentioned in this review the first game really shines out the most out of the three games and collecting everything can take you at least 40 hours or more depending on how much you want to get out of the Reignited Trilogy including trophy support.