The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
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The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night | ||||||||||||||||||
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"Ugh. And just when it started to resemble something truly magical!" - the Spyro fandom, circa 2007
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The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night is an action, adventure game developed by Krome Studios, it was made for both the PlayStation 2 and Wii, with the GBA and DS version being developed by Amaze Entertainment. It is the sequel to The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, and is the second/penultimate installment of The Legend of Spyro Trilogy.
Story
After the events of the first game Cinder has decided to leave due to her feeling guilty for what she did in the previous adventure, little does she know that Gaul, the leader of the Apes has plans to recapture her by invading the dragon's temple. Spyro, who has lost his elemental powers due to his inactivity now has to regain them and get Cinder back before she gets captured by Gaul.
Good Qualities
PS2 and Wii versions
- The graphics are passable and the in-game cut-scenes look fantastic.
- Great soundtrack, especially the song in the credits.
- The voice acting is great.
- Funny moments here and there, mainly by Sparx.
- There are dragon feathers that act as collectibles.
- The Dragon Time ability is a neat addition and can make the combat a bit more forgiven then the previous game.
- The breaths have more virility than in the previous game.
- Although pointless, but Spyro's fury power is now cinematic, acting like a cutscene.
- Great story, despite ending being a cliff hanger.
- Beating the game unlocks 5 challenges that you can play and if you beat those, you unlock Dark Spyro.
- You can unlock Dark Spyro and switch between him and normal Spyro any time once you do.
- The GBA version is better.
- Some people might actually like this game, despite it's flaws.
DS version
- Decent 3D graphics overall.
- There is a new mechanic of finish your opponent (can't be executed against the bosses) by using the touch panel after you throw him to the air, if you succeed, you earn more experience points so this is pretty useful on the long term.
- There aren't too many enemies to fight (probably due to the hardware limitations) so it is more comfortable to play unlike the console versions.
- Unlike the predecessor the upgrades are more cheaper and by this you can get all of them before you finish the game.
- Despite of being easy to defeat there are new and exclusive bosses for this version.
- Passable music for DS standards.
- It has new and exclusive levels.
- The save system is now automatic, it only activates when you get into a new area though.
Bad Qualities
PS2 and Wii versions
- When compare to The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, this game has a much more bleak coloring that is darker.
- Unbalanced and cheap difficulty that is even worse than in the previous game, sometimes you fight a gang of enemies with no way to heal, and enemies can sometimes even stun-lock the players with no way to avoid it; you fight enemies in three up to four groups at a time, sometimes, up to ten enemies will gang up, making it very lackluster.
- On that topic, sometimes there can be so many enemies that they can also cover the players' view, making it harder to see Spyro and were he is.
- Sometimes, enemies will not flinch to Spyro's attacks and will hit back hard, making the battles evem more tedious then previously.
- Checkpoints are very unforgivable, sometimes if you lose a life, you have to redo a battle segment all over again and even in a previous segment of a level.
- Spyro's invincibility frames has been drastically reduce and as such, enemies can combo Spyro.
- Most enemies are reskins of the enemies from the previous game with nearly the exact same attacks.
- Despite the step up selection of bosses from the previous game, all of them are underwhelming, reason is, not only do some of then get re-fought, but all of them (with the exception of Skabb and Gaul), are reskins from the previous game with the exact same attacks, much like the enemies.
- There is a numerous amounts of glitches.
- Sometimes, the cutscenes appear as if it's drawn on a map, while cool on paper (pun not intended) but it can sometimes make it hard to see what's happening.
- Levels drag on much longer, one example is the third level of the game, Pirate Fleet. It takes up to 2 hours to complete.
- Spyro's double jump has been nerfed, as Spyro has less time to perform a double jump after performing a jump.
- Very tedious platforming sections, one example is in the Ancient Groove, where jellyfish move too fast unless you use Dragon Time.
- On that topic, if you fall during that segment, you would think that its a bottomless pit, but actually, it's solid ground. Because of this, you get an animation of Spyro being defeated. This means you have to wait 10 seconds every time you fall.
- Before the last two bosses, you must fight a huge wave of enemies on a singular platform, this is quite tedious due to the mentions in #2, what makes it worse is that if the player loses, they have to start the whole enemy rush all over again.
- The ending is a massive cliffhanger. Though it was resolved by the next game.
- Despite the fact the fact that the enemies are hard, they are SUPER predictable and easy to beat once you figure out a very OBVIOUS pattern. The only reason the enemies are hard to beat is because of the strong attacks and the fact that they respawn too fast.
DS version
- Repetitive gameplay.
- Althrough more useful than his predecessor, there is only one chain melee attack and it can't be chained on the air.
- Now the puzzle sections are mandatory instead of being optional, which it makes the gameplay even more repetitive.
- There are times where the camera is a pain because it doesn't allow you to see the enviroment or even control it.
- Like the console versions the bosses are underwhelming because of their pattern attacks that makes them easy to defeat.
- The Dragon's fury attacks are lame, instead of just pushing a button when the fury gauge is full you have to play first a simon says type minigame in order to make it, not to mention that all of them are nerfed compared to the rest of the versions and even his predecessor.
- Most of the enemies are recycled from the previous game and they are still easy to defeat and avoid once you level up all your elemental attacks.
- There is no collectables like in the console versions, so you don't have any reason to replay the game aside from a couple of puzzles you unlock.
- Because of this you can beat this version in less than 2 hours as it is way too short and easy.
Reception
The game received "mixed" to Possitive reviews on all platforms except the Game Boy Advance version, which received "favorable" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[3][4][5][6]