Reviewed:November 4, 2008
Reviewed by: Mahamari Tsukitaka

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Tantalus

Released: October 21, 2008
Genre: Action
Players: 1

6
7
7
6
6.5

Supported Features:

The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon starts with Spyro and his former adversary and fellow dragon Cynder regaining consciousness after a long time gap between the two games. They are joined by Spyro’s brother Sparx and their guide Hunter, and in spite of any bad blood between them from previous games, the two dragons must now team up on a quest to stop the Dark Master from destroying the Dragon World.

As a rare purple dragon, Spyro is able to switch among four different elements in his breath and strike attacks: Fire, Ice, Earth, and Electricity. Meanwhile, Cynder, as a dragon touched by darkness, gets another four elements: Wind, Poison, Shadow, and Fear. The developers, however, unfortunately didn’t quite capture this opportunity to add variety and interest to the gameplay, since the two dragons play almost identically. True, sometimes one particular dragon’s ability is better suited for a given situation, but I was disappointed to find that, for the most part, Spyro and Cynder are virtually just palette swaps of one another. This means that character swapping loses some of its potential fun factor, since all it really ends up doing is allowing for health and breath meter recovery of the swapped out dragon.

Swapping dragons is also somewhat confusing, mostly because of the way the screen and controls are laid out. By default, the R shoulder button cycles the active element, while the L shoulder button switches between characters—but because Spyro is displayed on the left side of the upper screen, and Cynder is displayed on the right side of the screen, I constantly felt like pressing the R button instead of the L button to switch to Cynder when I needed to switch out Spyro. Usually, this isn’t a problem, but it can become an issue during combat.

Fighting in Dawn of the Dragon during the platform stages mostly involves executing a number of melee combos performed by pressing the attack button along with D-pad directions. I found the controls somewhat unresponsive when compared to the smoothness of other melee-oriented sidescrollers (such as the more recent Castlevania games), but they’re not awful, either. The variety of attacks available is definitely a plus, especially as particular attack combinations are more effective against some kinds of enemies, thus injecting an element of fighting game strategy into melee. As a brawler aficionado, I liked this aspect of the game and just wished that the controls were less stiff so that actions would chain a bit more tightly. In the end, it’s not that well executed, but at least the idea is there.

In any case, besides ordinary melee, both dragons can also use elemental strikes and breath attacks. This is where character and element swapping become tricky: while having a selection of four elements is an opportunity for added gameplay depth, in practice, it’s difficult to take advantage of Dawn of the Dragon’s system because each enemy is usually resistant or immune to most elements, and a creature’s vulnerability needs to be recognized quickly without wasting too much of your dragon’s breath meter in trial and error.

The upper screen (which lists all available elements) displays the enemy’s resistances and immunities, but given the large number of small icons scattered across the screen, it’s unfortunately not that easy to quickly reference and swap elements. Moreover, cycling through your element choices takes time, and combined with the confusing setup of the element and character swapping buttons, picking out the right element on the spot just isn’t as simple or quick as it should be, especially in an action game in which reaction time is important.

Nevertheless, with only one enemy, combat is relatively painless. Since the dragons can’t seem to effectively attack multiple enemies at once, though, matters are complicated if two or more enemies are on the screen. The enemies usually have different vulnerabilities (which means more clunky element switching on the fly), and because attacks seem to target just one enemy at a time without an easy way to choose your target, even when more than one enemies occupy roughly the same space, combat quickly becomes a pain fest for Spyro (or Cynder) when there’s multiple baddies on the screen. Luckily, this doesn’t happen overly often.

Despite these foibles, it can’t be said that Spyro’s developers didn’t try to spice things up with Dawn of the Dragon. The platform levels are interspersed with flying levels reminiscent of aerial areas in Star Fox or Mario 64, providing a bit of variety in perspective and gameplay. D-pad navigation on these levels works intuitively and much more smoothly than the platform controls, requiring you to avoid obstacles like stone columns, arches, and enemies on the screen, while the active dragon follows a set path through the level.

While flying, Spyro and Cynder can only attack enemies using stylus-targeted breath attacks, which is sometimes problematic because their breath meters are so limited, and it’s easy to miss a target when you’re on the move. Furthermore, performing barrel rolls to dodge projectiles also inexplicably depletes the breath meter, making it even more difficult to ration out attack power when enemies are thick. Fortunately, switching out a dragon allows the inactive character to recover both health and breath, forcing you to focus on resource management more so than any other kind of task. All in all, it’s a passable flight experience and a welcome break from the pure platform segments of the game, but it can also be a chore. It also makes you wonder why Spyro and Cinder don’t just fly through the platform sequences, saving you all the jumping trouble.

Then, on top of platform and flying levels, there are also the shooter-style boss levels, in which the player faces off against an enormous boss creature and must target specific areas of the boss while dodging attacks by flying around a very limited area. While these boss fights are appropriately challenging compared to the other aspects of the game and add more diversity to the gameplay, they are agonizing because of several reasons. Dodging is extremely difficult because it’s nearly impossible to tell which areas of the screen are actually safe, particularly because it’s difficult to make out which boss motions are in the foreground and what will actually hit you.

Moreover, the dragons seem to have very poor mobility and fly very slowly in a small screen that never seems to show enough of the boss to attack effectively while still allowing for maneuverability; and, again, the breath meter is limiting in terms of how many times you can attack in a short time span, and it’s easy to miss when you’re using a 2D interface to fight a 3D creature that can cover vulnerabilities in a dimension you can’t reach. Taken as a whole, the boss fights were a bit of a mess to deal with, especially on the small DS screen.

In summary, Dawn of the Dragon takes a step in the right direction of providing an interesting platform action game by mixing different game elements and providing a variety of possible actions and attack combinations, but overall, the experience is marred by a myriad of small problems—like stiff controls, imprecise targeting, and a somewhat confusing interface layout—that altogether make this an okay game rather than a great one.

The 3D character models are smoothly animated, and the breath and attack effects all have their unique visuals. Perhaps they don’t pop out from the small DS screen as well as good 2D sprites usually do, but they’re easy enough to make out.

The colorfully painted and expressive cartoon cut scene illustrations, however, are a highlight of the game’s graphics department. These still shots are beautifully done and help bring the cast of characters to life. Similarly, the menu and interface graphics are easy to read, yet aesthetically designed to match the fantasy theme of the game.

The dialogue in the game is voiced over by big names such as Elijah Wood (as Spyro), Christina Ricci (as Cynder), Gary Oldman (as father figure Ignitus), and Mark Hamill (as Malefor, the Dark Master), and it’s not bad. The voice actors certainly add to the game characters’ believability and enhance the game experience significantly.