The first Spyro is easily my favorite of the original trilogy. I've fully completed all three at least three times each by now. I love the first one because it's easy to just turn off your brain and play. It's a great way to unwind. The third game's the one I've probably completed the most but it's also the one I have the least desire to go back and 100% ever again. There's several very frustrating mini games in it that keep me from wanting to play it again and is the reasons why I prefer the first game if I just want some old school collectathon fun. Unfortunately I haven't had a working Ripto's Rage since I was a teen so that's the one I'm the least familiar with now, but I do remember it being less frustrating than the third game. In fact I'm almost certain I've completed it to 100% at least a few times because it was rather easy to do aside from a few particular places.
As for the Legend Of Spyro trilogy. It's pretty decent. The first game is short and pretty harmless. I've beaten it several times before. The second game I've only played once and have no desire to touch it again. Something went very wrong with that game's gameplay in particular. The jumping controls are damn near unresponsive at times. I remember missing jumps so many times because Spyro would not go into a glide for reasons I could not fathom. It seems that because they wanted this game to be on the Wii they also screwed up the PS2 version in the process. The other problems is with the battles themselves. They up the difficulty in all the wrong places. I found myself constantly getting stun locked to death. Where I could go back and replay the first game and find it to be pretty harmless, once I beat the second game I never wanted to touch it again.
The third game is easily my favorite of the trilogy. It's by no means great, not even slightly, but I love the free flight, even if it's very limited, and the much more open world levels are a plus. Also, the music can be really damn awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1Bd9cwYthI
I have a lot of fond memories playing the third game with my brother. It's obvious that the game was very limited by budget and time, but I still enjoy it for what it is.
As for Skylanders? I'm unabashedly a fan of the Skylanders series. Yes, they could and should have given Spyro himself a much, much better design. At least the design actually fits his dark alt pretty well and in the 3DS games Dark Spyro is pretty OP with his own moveset different from the default Spyro, though on the consoles he's only a recolor which is kind of a shame.
Easily the biggest reason why I like Skylanders is because of their awesome dragon characters.
I actually kind of prefer collecting original characters like these rather than established ones in Lego Dimensions and Disney Infinity, and Skylanders is the only series that is (mostly) doing this right now outside of its ties to Spyro and the Skymiibo characters that showed up in the last game.
It's honestly really disappointing that gamers tend to shun Skylanders out of all the Toys To Life genre the most just because they got Spyro himself so wrong. A decent redesign and I think Skylanders wouldn't have the baggage that it does with the gaming community that Lego, Disney, and Nintendo don't suffer from. There's a lot of really cool entirely original characters in this series that get overlooked because Spyro himself was redesigned so poorly.
I think if they ever give Spyro his own game again, a lot of the hate for Skylanders will disappear entirely. He's had almost no presence in the series for two games now, with him only an offshoot figure in the last game, and no figure at all in the current game. And while I do enjoy Skylanders, I'd love for Spyro to get his own game again, especially because now I think they could implement a free flight mechanic that isn't hindered by hardware. An old school Spyro game where you can fly literally anywhere has been a childhood dream of mine since, well, I was a child!
As for the other games between the transition to the Legend trilogy? I haven't played a ton of them but the few I did weren't that great. Season Of Ice was just okay. Enter The Dragonfly could have at least been decent if it hadn't been rushed out the door. I couldn't stand a Hero's Tail simply because they went and made all the characters obnoxious and exceedingly unlikable. I haven't actually played that one in a looong time though so maybe if I went back and played it now I would enjoy it a little bit more.
I've always heard that the Shadow Legacy is actually pretty decent but I've had zero desire to pick it up and play it. For those of you who have played it, is it really any good?
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. Love the Spyro games and it should be fun covering the Dragons Adventures 
