Spyro Reignited Trilogy (2018 Remaster) Review

Whoever art directed this understood that the original Spyro games were about light. The reworked worlds have a storybook warmth the PlayStation hardware could only imply, every one of the hundred plus dragons got a unique design and a voice, and Stewart Copeland's themes were rearranged rather than replaced. It is a genuinely loving restoration of a series that had been badly served for fifteen years.

The execution around it was careless. The disc shipped with only the first game on it and required a large download for the other two, which is a bad look on a collection sold as three games in a box. There were no subtitles at launch on a product aimed squarely at children and at players with hearing loss, and the patch that added them took months. The handling is slightly floatier than the originals, which matters most in the third game's skateboarding and flight challenges. The art deserved better stewardship than it got.