N-Philes

Spyro: Shadow Legacy

Posted November 24th 2005 by Ben Wood.

After beginning his platforming career seven years ago, Spyro has finally flown his way onto the Nintendo DS with the release of Spyro Shadow Legacy. Unfortunately even selling over 17 million games doesn't cut Spyro any slack as once again our loveable purple dragon hero faces the task of setting things right. Summer has ended, all of Spyro's friends have left and a wave of dark magic has tossed all the land's inhabitants into a strange dimension know as the Shadow Realm. Can you guess who is the only one able to cross freely between the Shadow Realm and reality? Unless you've been huffing airplane glue while reading this article, you've probably nailed it.

The game centers around two simple elements: defeating shadow creatures to save all of the natives that were swallowed by the evil magic and running errands for them once they are safe. Apparently the developers used up all their brain power coming up with such creative ideas because each of the game's eleven areas are almost exactly the same, not to mention the enemies themselves all being slight variations of the same four or five creatures. In another burst of unbridled gameplay innovation, Spyro eventually learns important skills needed to complete the adventure from the Dragon Elders he saves.

Unfortunately all the Dragon Elders in the world can't make up for the most frustrating part of the game: not having any idea of where you're supposed to go. The designers were aiming to create an open, non-linear adventure, letting the player freely explore the largest island featured in the game. It's too bad that the player quickly discovers that Spryo doesn't have the necessary skills to defeat all the creatures in all the open areas. As it turns out, he can't collect more than one key, life-healing butterfly or magic-replenishing mushroom until he purchases the upgrades from a family of merchant bears you must stumble across and save. Trial and error, not clever level design, leads the player to the correct areas.

To the developer's credit, Shadow Legacy tries something new by throwing RPG elements into the mix. As you defeat monsters and animals in both realms, Spyro gains experience. Every time he levels up, he can visit the Dragon Elders to upgrade any two of his skills, be it a physical attack, fire, ice, defense, jumping, etc... Throughout the adventure, he learns five sacred magic spells (which are free, unlike skills those ungrateful, filthy merchant bears make you pay for) to help him on his way. Honestly, aside from the teleporting, all of these spells are used in specific areas and are used so infrequently that they add nothing to the game. Thanks, Dragon Elders!

The best aspect of the magical spells are in the execution. By drawing symbols, the player can complete a spell while moving or attacking creatures using the DS' buttons. The touch screen displays Spyro's item inventory, overworld map, health, magic, and experience information, as well as which level of upgrades you have for Spyro's skills. The information is divided into "pages", which can be accessed by tapping the menu on the right side. Important information, like health, should be available on every one of the bottom pages, but isn't. The problem here is that it's difficult to use anything on the bottom screen using a finger. Often, you need to grab the stylus to accurately select teleport sites and correctly draw the magic symbols. This is awkward and interrupts what little flow the game has.

Control in Spyro Shadow Legacy is slow and aggravating, but thankfully holding the R-button helps to speed things up. Before getting the ability to glide, jumping from platform to platform is a nightmare with Spyro usually falling to his screaming death unfairly and being sent back to the beginning. Once his jump skill is upgraded, platforming is pretty smooth sailing.

Furthermore, the game definitely does not take advantage of the DS' graphical capabilities. Throughout most of the game, low-quality polygonal characters and enemies appear on top of uninteresting and static 2D backgrounds that have a hand-drawn feel. At least the areas, which range from snowy mountaintops to fiery lava caves, look colorful and distinct. During the game's boss battles, the overhead perspective changes to get closer to the action. Here, the game takes on a more traditional 3D look, and gives both Spyro and the boss much more detail. Unfortunately, there are only three bosses in the entire game, and they are all fought the same way.

It's not a shocker that a game with limited attacks, few unique enemies and ugly, flea-ridden swindler bears would have boring and repetitive sounds. However, Shadow Legacy's music somewhat redeems the game; the tunes are lively and are always appropriate for the areas in the game. Still, the Shadow Realm has only one music theme throughout the game, which is a bit of a drawback, but it helps to convey the mystery and eerie quality that the graphics fail to accomplish.

This game gets an N-Philes score of D.

There are many problems with Shadow Legacy that don't do justice to the Spyro franchise. Fans of the Spyro series might get a kick out of seeing popular franchise characters like Hunter, Bianca, and Zoe, but a lack of variety, lackluster visuals, poor control, rudimentary RPG elements and a very short game length make for an underwhelming experience. Shadow Legacy makes some limited use of the dual screens, but doesn't offer anything already seen in other titles. The game does have a few strong points like the boss battles and music, but it isn't enough to warrant attention from adventure, platform, or RPG aficionados.

Posted in: Reviews

Comments (0) | Permalink | Digg | Reddit