Spyro: Reignited Trilogy

A fun and sometimes very challenging game.

Gameplay is focused on collecting everything in every level, with some basic environmental puzzles and simple combat to keep things interesting. The remake seems to stay true to its occasionally outdated old-school roots, which means difficulty swings widely between cool and casual to punishingly difficult. If you're a completionist then get ready to sweat: there are time-based precision challenges. Most are fair and can be beat with a lot of practice, but a few really made me question my life choices.

Spyro is spunky and endearing. He moves fast and fights fast, though controls can occasionally feel clunky. There's not much of a story to these games, but it's told in a lighthearted Saturday-morning-cartoon tone that doesn't take itself seriously and welcomes you to glide into its happy-go-lucky world. It's a pleasure to visit.

The three games offer, for the most part, exactly the same gameplay, just more levels. But each also adds something to the previous one in terms of mechanics and things to do, culminating in the last game, which lets you play a whole bunch of additional characters, each with their own mini-games.

The remake is pretty but very poorly optimized on PC. The colorful models and goofy animations are all delightful, but 4K resolutions may cause stuttering even on a high-end GPU. Stick to 1080p if you are even thinking of pushing the graphical settings up. You definitely want to favor FPS over resolution for this one! Load screens also seem unnecessarily long, even on an SSD.