Why am I reviewing a PS2 game in 2025? Because I only just got around to playing it. What do you want from me?
I loved the Spyro trilogy as a kid, playing the originals on PS1, and going on to ‘Enter the Dragonfly’ on PS2. EtD was a definite drop in quality, and might have been the reason I didn’t bother with any more titles that followed, though I do remember thinking it was ok. I do have a memory of trying one of the ‘Legend of Spyro’ titles that changed Spyro into a brawler and tried to have a kind of high fantasy feel about it, and I really didn’t like it. It tried to take something fun and make it too serious. Somehow ‘A Hero’s Tail’ slipped by me. I must have assumed it was more like the Legend style, with its dark box art and everyone looking gritty… as gritty as a cute cartoon penguin can be anyway.
It’s only recently I realised that this game was a continuation of the type of gameplay the trilogy and EtD had, so I thought it was worth a try.
With the ReIgnited trilogy being a solid and enjoyable remaster of the original trilogy, I was up for revisiting Spyro’s world and continuing adventures. This does exclude Legends and Skylanders, as they are definitely reboots or alternate universe type things. I replayed EtD, and though I might give it a more in depth coverage at some point, the short of it was that it was an ambitious attempt to carry on the Spyro tradition that was put into stores before it was finished.
But I’m covering AHT here as this is my first time with it. So after that lengthy preamble, let’s get into it.
3/5
The game opens with Gnasty Gnorc and his troops up to something, apparently attacking the Dragon Realms again. A badass red dragon swoops in and traps him in a cave.
So that’s the story set up.
But it isn’t actually. There I was thinking that it was going to be another dragons vs gnorcs conflict like in the original, but it is explained to us that the dragon we just saw lock up Gnasty is actually a rogue elder named Red. Gnasty and his minions actually work for him. I’m glad they told us that, because it wasn’t clear from the cutscene.
Anyway, that is pretty much all the story we get. Red wants to take over the Dragon Realms I guess, and Gnasty is his right hand man. I’m not sure why locking him up helps the cause, but that’s what we are presented with.
The Professor and Moneybags now live in the Dragon Realms too for some reason, but that’s fine. Except that Moneybags is some strange eastern European bazaar owner instead of an uppity, miserly snob. Who knows why.
He isn’t the only character who is a departure from the ones we know and love, but he is probably the most obvious and jarring. Sparx can speak clear English now, in between buzzes, and somehow comes off as a bit whiny “Maybe you’ll appreciate me more now”. Maybe it’s just me, but Sparx in previous games seemed to be the kind of sidekick that was more clued up than the hero. But here, it’s like he is desperate for approval.
Spyro himself seems to have regressed to his Spyro 1 persona. In ‘Gateway to Glimmer’ (or ‘Ripto’s Rage’) and ‘Year of the Dragon’, he was cocky and sarcastic, but he had heart about him. He was young, eager, and a bit naive in the original, and it felt like he had grown up a bit in the sequels. He had a bit of edge, but was still a hero. AHT Spyro tries to be sarcastic but seems to lack the heart that the previous games had. A lot of his comments seem to indicate a complete indifference to his mission and the lore of the world. His attitude can rub off on you as a player, and you wonder why you should care too. He doesn’t feel like a progression of the character, or even quite the same character at all, unless like I said, he is as he was in Spyro 1.
But these characters are the tip of the iceberg. In playing the game my feeling is very much that ‘A Hero’s Tail’ has all the ingredients of a Spyro game, but everything is not-quite-right.
The first thing players will notice is the controls. Spyro does not handle as well as he used to. I often found myself falling from ledges when trying to make minor adjustments to line up a jump. The active camera mode is useless, so I have had to leave it on passive and manually adjust it to see where I am going. Spyro’s charge feels slower and less powerful, though in practice it hits just as hard. However, for an inexplicable and inexcusable reason, the buttons for charge and flame have been swapped. Luckily, playing on an emulator means I was able to swap them back (as I believe every player wishes they could), but there is little to be done about the rest of the control issues.
Spyro also does not know how to glide at the beginning of the game. In fact, he has forgotten a lot of his abilities from other games. You do learn do glide and headbash quite quickly though, but their controls are unnecessarily changed to be more awkward too.
Rather than any jump being able to turn into a glide by holding X, Spyro must now double jump, then hold X and a direction to glide. If you don’t hold the direction, he will drop. This is more clunky than it needs to be. Why change something that isn’t broken?
The headbash, which used to be jump followed by triangle, is now double jump then square. You can’t headbash from a single jump, and sometimes the combination of the double jump with Spyro’s strange floatiness makes it tricky to land your bashes where you meant them.
With the mix-up of how jumps and the charge button work, Spyro can no longer do satisfying jump and charge combos while maintaining momentum. I often like to go into a charge straight from a glide but sometimes was instead headslamming into oblivion.
The game would be remarkably improved if it is just had Spyro handle the way he always had been prior to this title. Even down to small odd details like Spyro not automatically gliding from the top of whirlwinds, the game just does not behave like you would expect it to.
The game also attempts to dispense with the classic portals to other worlds, with one world as a main hub. Rather it seemed to have an idea of making all the worlds connect in one map, but then probably gave up on that for hardware restraint reasons, and snuck portals and teleporters in anyway. There’s even a bizarre travel method involving a giant hamster ball. Though at first this seems fun, it ends up requiring lots of backtracking. The game then ends up having a similar set up of multiple main hub areas that branch off to the other levels, marked by a Moneybags depot.
So we begin with a nerfed Spyro in an undercooked story instructed to vaguely stop Red by destroying the dark gems that are littering the world. The previous Spyro games were collectathons, with a clear goal of e.g. free the frozen dragons, collect orbs/eggs/dragonflies. In AHT, there are collectibles, but they don’t seem as important as before.
Dragon eggs have been stolen by thieves – which seems to be an entirely separate problem to Red’s invasion – so Spyro has to get them back. Completing coloured sets rewards the player with things like concept art and alternate playable characters/skins. Nanny tells you that you get a reward for every ten eggs you find, but that is slightly misleading. You get nothing for numbers, just full sets of colours.
Gems, the Dragon Realms currency, return but this time there is not a set amount in each area, so no counting the totals towards completion. Gems are apparently infinite, and every respawning enemy drops them. Because of this, it doesn’t feel necessary to break every chest and collect them all (because it isn’t). It makes you less inclined to explore every corner to make sure you got everything. Moneybags has a shop where you can buy upgrades for Spyro using the gems. He also has a number of remote shops that charge extra for delivery fees. The remote shops also function as teleporters, allowing Spyro to visit any previously unlocked shop. This costs 100 gems a go though. If you intend to spend big, it might be cheaper to teleport to the main shop, buy everything you want at the non-inflated rate, then either run or teleport back to where you came from.
The final collectible, and most valuable, are light gems. You are introduced to them through a cringeworthy cutscene where the game seems to mock the cliche of collecting things to progress and just throws out some random ideas of what you could gather until settling on these. They are used to power the Professor’s inventions so that you can open up new areas to explore.
Dark gems are not a collectible, but instead are sprouting up around the world corrupting the landscape. Destroying them all is necessary to allow Spyro to confront bosses, but also opens up passages that either let him progress through an area or find secrets.
Most of the eggs and light gems are found laying about in the levels, but some are given as rewards for challenges.
The previous games gave Spyro all sorts of interesting and varied tasks to complete to earn orbs or dragonflies etc, whether it be winning a hockey match, smashing targets, protecting crops, or piloting UFOs. In AHT, the challenges are generally a turret mini game, or a short spell playing as another character. These challenges frustratingly must be completed twice. First for the egg, and second in a more challenging version, for the actually useful light gem.
The first players are likely to encounter are those of Blink the Mole, a new character that Spyro befriends. He goes underground to hunt for treasure using his different abilities and gadgets. These segments would be fine if it weren’t for the repetition. There is no reason for making players do the same mission twice, when the prizes could have both been present in the level. I also felt that despite having more abilities, Blink was a poor man’s Agent 9. Wielding a lazer gun and bombs, Blink deals with dark gems in mines and caves. He can cling to and bounce off some surfaces, and dig certain walls to open new rooms. He would be a fine addition to add something different to the play, but he isn’t particularly endearing, and as it is with all of the challenges, repeating the levels feels like a forced way to add extra playtime to a fairly short game.
Sparx’ playable sections are worse. His stages in Spyro 3 were a highlight, and his challenges in AHT play off of his ability to shoot I-don’t-know-what from his face. This time though it is an on-rails shooter with Sparx flying into the screen and the camera directly behind him. This angle makes it quite difficult to see what you are shooting at as Sparx blocks the view. It also suffers from an issue where Sparx can be quite easily defeated when swarmed, or when boulders fall from the cieling. The boulders are particularly troublesome as there is no warning of where they are coming from, and being hit by one often bounces you into another.
While he is Spyro’s companion and protector in the normal levels, he still is less useful than in the original trilogy. He is slow to eat butterflies, and sometimes seems to ignore them when he definitely needs them, and there is no bonus for eating more than necessary. He can however be upgraded to take an extra hit.
Hunter is a breath of fresh air. He is a lot more like his old self from the other games, though maybe a bit less bumbling. He is a better rendition than the one in ReIgnited, both visually and in behaviour. He carries a bow and arrow, and has the agility you’d expect from a non-winged character who teaches Spyro how to glide in other games. I’m not sure why the reason for taking control of him was that he insisted that Spyro would not fit in a gap that he could though. Firstly, Hunter is a lot bigger, and secondly, there was no small gap.
Another oddity is that Speedways are now taken on by Sgt. Byrd. I don’t mind this at all, and it adds the feature of using his rocket launchers to blast targets while flying through obstacles.
There is a cameo from Bentley, though he is not playable, and actually behaves very out of character. And aside from not having an angry face, he is barely indistinguishable from the yeti enemies that appear in some levels.
Characters you might expect or hope to return like Elora and Bianca are nowhere to be seen. The characters that we do see break the fourth wall too often, and break immersion by reminding you this is a video game with tired tropes, not a fantasy journey to get lost in.
With any of the playable characters, make sure that you check their ‘Help’ guides in game. It is very useful to know that Sparx can speed up and slow down, and that Byrd can drop bombs for example.
But as previously mentioned Gnasty Gnorc returns as a villain. His appearance is a mixed bag. He seems like a different character somewhat. In Spyro 1 he was the powerful threat who defeated every dragon except Spyro. In this one he is a henchman, who has an overinflated idea of himself and is played as a whiny buffoon. He does however actually put up a half decent fight rather than be mainly a chase scene. The boss battle isn’t difficult by any means, but it is more fitting to the character than in Spyro 1. A very strange, and again inexplicable, inclusion is that bosses will complain about being defeated after every few hits, but then continue fighting until they really are defeated.
Difficulty ramps up once you get to the second home hub. Perhaps it is due to getting used to the controls at this stage, or maybe that you feel that the tutorial missions are over, but after the first boss, the game improves.
Overall, like I said, this has all of the ingredients of a Spyro game, but they just haven’t been mixed right. Somehow it doesn’t have the same charm as the originals, whether that is the clunky revamped controls, the characters not having the same heart, the collectathon aspect being all but removed, the lack of friendly locals in every world, the repetitive challenges that dare to ask if you want to play them a third time for fun, the lack of urgency in the plot, or the unbaked villain. I know it is a game for kids, but it feels too childish. The others felt more ‘for the family’.
It is a strange beast. Perhaps the final entry in the original Spyro’s story before reboots, fizzling out instead of ending on a high. I would absolutely believe a Spyro Reignited 2 could take the potential of ‘Enter the Dragonfly’ and ‘A Hero’s Tail’ and make them into something wonderful, but as they stand, they are hard to recommend, unless you really need another fix of the little purple dragon and have played the trilogy to death.
So in summary:
Pros:
Follows on from the classic Spyro games continuity.
Visually looks like it fits the series with a soundtrack that works.
Has a place as a part of the series, not any attempt at a reboot.
More polished and full than ‘Enter the Dragonfly’
Good for Spyro fans who need an extra hit after the originals.
Great idea to have a dragon as the main enemy.
No lives system, which makes up for the con of dying to bad controls too often.
Attempts to include more challenging platforming to the series.
Open world maps are an interesting experiment.
Inclusion of different breath for variation in puzzles.
Spyro can now grab ledges that he just misses and pull himself up.
Love the creepy atmospheric sound of the dark gems.
Cons:
The revised controls are terrible.
Some of the challenging platforming has more to do with the awkward controls and camera than the actual level design.
No dodge roll, which could be useful with the numerous ranged weapon enemies.
Some characters feel off.
The story is somehow both next to non-existent and also nonsensical. (Though Spyro stories have never been much deeper than ‘Stop the villain’)
Repeating challenges is monotonous.
Unsatisfying collectathon.
Sparx challenges are terrible.
Should use more interesting and varied tasks as to win eggs or light gems instead of repeating the same ones twice. Chest keys should also be challenge prizes too instead of paid for, so there can be a set specific amount of gems in the game.
Putting gems in the locked chests feels like a waste of a key that was paid for with gems.
Some one-hit kill swamps look like normal walkable mud. Instead of allowing Sparx’ protection you drown immediately.
Too many insta-kill lava pools that should just knock off a Sparx hit point.
Too much backtracking replaces the well designed looped worlds with portals from older games.
Doesn’t often offer shortcuts after tricky platforming sections have been beaten. An area in Red’s HQ seems to be impossible to backtrack through without spending gems on teleportation.
The maps don’t show exits.
I prefer the games that have no enemies in the hub, though that may not really work with this attempt at a more open world.
The 100% completion reward was not worth it.
Feels like the developers only played the original Spyro game and saw pictures of characters from the other games without any information about them, before creating a cynical cash grab while the character was still popular.
