Spyro: Shadow Legacy has the unique distinction of having the worst title screen I've seen in the past two decades. The title screen in question features a picture of Spyro stretched vertically across the DS' two screens. The picture is split in the middle, so that each screen features an equal amount of the image - much like folding a piece of paper in half. But the developers apparently forgot that the screens are not located directly on top of each other, with a small gap located between the two screens.
Imagine what would happen if a picture were to be ripped into two equal parts, with the top part placed a half-inch or so above the bottom chunk. Wouldn't that look a bit odd? That's exactly what happened with Spyro's title screen. By forgetting to compensate for the gap between the two screens, the developers have portrayed Spyro as having an unusually long, crooked neck. Now, normally I wouldn't be so critical of a mere title screen, but with Spyro: Shadow Legacy, it's merely an omen of things to come.
Once in the actual game, things don't look so bad. Backgrounds are pre-rendered with polygonal characters placed on top of these images, much like the older Resident Evil games. Spyro himself is fluidly animated, and that's where the problems begin. Though Spyro moves smoothly, the pre-rendered backgrounds don't. Moving left, down, up or right means the background image has to scroll, and it does so in a choppy, uneven manner. Simply put, this juxtaposition between Spyro's movements and those of his environment just doesn't look right, and is at best distracting, at worst, headache-inducing.
The stuttering only gets worse Spyro encounters a more than a large group of enemies. When more than five or six characters appear on screen, the resulting slowdown causes Spyro's movements to become choppy and erratic, making combat all the much more difficult.
Combat also highlights a major flaw in the control scheme, as one of the attack buttons (X) doubles as the context-sensitive action button. This can lead to some frustrating situations, as attempting to attack enemies near context-sensitive locations will instead trigger that action. That means if an enemy is located near an exit, there's a decent chance pressing the X button will result in Spyro leaving the area instead of attacking the foe.
Moving on, the angular, static camera angles of Spyro's environments are another source of constant frustration. Enemies are often obscured behind objects, and if being attacked by unseen enemies wasn't annoying enough, it's even worse when Spyro is tasked with defeating all the enemies in the area and the player can't find that last one.
The camera angles also make it difficult to properly judge the distance between objects, which makes jumping from platform to platform that much harder. Things get exponentially worse if that jumping involves platforms that are higher or lower than the previous one.
Meanwhile, collision detection problems mean that once Spyro finally manages to get to that top platform, getting back isn't always as easy as jumping straight down from the highest platform. Sure, it may look like Spyro can make the jump, but if there's an inky void between the platform and the ground, the chances are pretty high he'll somehow fall into the gap.
As far as gameplay goes, the entire game can be summed by the following formula: Enter a new area, defeat all the enemies, perform the same sidequests offered in the last area, go back to the Dragon Temple to receive new abilities, proceed to the next area. It's simple, it's tedious, and the lack of variety means this gets awfully repetitive. The in-game map is also nigh-useless, the lack of detail giving the player only has a general idea of where they are and no idea of how to get where they're going.
Also confusing is the spell system, which requires players to draw certain shapes on the touch screen. Prior to this game, I had no idea that the mystical properties of drawing a triangle included the ability to teleport. I was likewise amazed to learn that drawing the equal symbol would allow Spyro to move specific objects with his mind. There seems to be no correlation between the shapes and their effects, which results in the entire magic system feeling tacked on for the sake of using the second screen for more than just a menu. While this problem isn't just limited to Spyro, at least other titles, such as Pac-Pix, make an attempt to justify their use of the touch screen.
If this all wasn't enough, Spyro: Shadow Legacy suffers from multiple, random game-ending glitches. And I'm not talking "load up your old save" glitches, I'm talking "restart the entire game from the beginning" glitches. At one point the game let me into an area before I was powerful enough to defeat the enemies, but then it wouldn't let me leave until I had cleared the area of said foes. As I couldn't leave, and as I didn't have the spell necessary to destroy the enemies' magical shields, my only option was to restart the entire game. At another point, the game refused to acknowledge that I had collected all the objects required to proceed to the next area. With the player only able to save in one slot over and over again, the only option here was, yet again, to restart the whole game from the beginning.
I think it's fair to say expectations for Spyro: Shadow Legacy weren't necessarily high. Even so, the game still manages to disappoint. Nearly every aspect of the game is flawed in some way, rendering the final product essentially unplayable. Perhaps if the game wasn't riddled with game-ending glitches, I would be a bit more forgiving. But in a game already filled to the brink with troubling gameplay issues, having to do it all over again because of poor coding is the last straw. Please, please avoid Spyro: Shadow Legacy - especially if you're one of the many who treasure those fond memories of Spyro's earlier PlayStation outings.
19th December 2005
