Spyro’s most recent adventure, Spyro the Dragon: Enter the Dragonfly, comes from a new development team that’s trying to both capture the magic of past Spyro games and deliver it for the first time to GameCube owners. For all intents and purposes, the team succeeded entirely: Enter the Dragonfly plays just like previous Spyro games and features the same stylized, colorful environments and characters from past adventures.

Yet by trying so hard to capture the magic of the past, the game fails to deliver anything substantially new. This may be fine for GameCube owners who’ve never played a Spyro game, but for anyone who has, Enter the Dragonfly is a bit disappointing. And with a framerate that keeps you from enjoying what the game does offer, it’s hard to believe Spyro will make a return anytime soon to a next-gen console near you.

Gameplay
Enter the Dragonfly continues the classic platforming elements we all grew up with, whether playing Mario, Spyro or another franchise that leans heavily on item-collecting and jumping. Using the thumbstick, gamers move Spyro through 25 large 3D levels to collect crystals, eliminate enemies and free one Dragon sensei after another from their frozen-in-ice state.

Naturally, freeing these senseis involves defrosting their ice blocks with your fire breath, but as you progress through the game, you’ll collect special gems that can activate new breaths, including bubble, electricity and ice. Each breath serves a unique purpose, whether it’s using electricity to break the lock on a new sublevel or using bubbles to capture one of the 10 dragonflies in each level.

Dragonfly-catching is an essential element of both the story and gameplay, as the dragonflies help you restore order to your world. Unfortunately, catching them is as much an exercise in patience as it is one of skill. For some reason, the dragonflies try their hardest to evade you, even though once you capture them it becomes apparent that Spyro and each dragonfly are good friends. What’s more, capturing them inside a bubble seems a bit hit-and-miss; in many cases you’ll capture one from half a screen away, but blowing bubbles while running directly below them doesn’t do any good.

Collecting crystals is a bit less complex – you just run over them – and with 600 to 900 “points” worth scattered throughout the game, there’s definitely incentive to return to a level once you have new powers. But the big draw of Spyro the Dragon: Enter the Dragonfly is the minigames. This franchise is known for its addictive minigames, and Enter the Dragonfly continues that tradition with ease. Flying competitions are back, as are games in which you need to incinerate a given number of objects before time runs out. But Spyro has added some new minigames to his repertoire, including driving tanks, flying planes, piloting UFOs and even playing music.

Graphics
Enter the Dragonfly certainly has level variety galore, with tropical islands, Japanese dojos, frozen worlds and straight-outta-Iowa farms all illustrated with cute, colorful flair. The game also has some creative character designs, with cartoony Ninjas, dragons and comrades all exhibiting smooth, rounded bodies and clever animations.

Unfortunately, you’ll only see about half of those graphical touches because the game repeatedly drops frame after frame. With the exception of Obi-Wan on the Xbox, Enter the Dragonfly has the worst framerate of any game I’ve played. Couple that with an occasionally awkward camera angle, and all the time the developers put into characters and environments (swaying wheat, reflective ice, realistically dissipating fire) is essentially lost.

Sound
Spyro is a child, and this game is geared toward children, so it should come as no surprise that most of the voices in the game sound almost like kids recorded the dialogue. It’s all tastefully done, mind you, and never to the point of Teletubbies-esque blabber. In fact, the voices help immerse you in the game – until the framerate (or the lack thereof) kicks in.

The soundtrack is equally well done, with a calming effect not unlike the soundtrack for the SNES classic Pilotwings. In the world of techno-friendly game soundtracks, Enter the Dragonfly is a refreshing, calming change. And given the frustration some gamers will have while trying to capture dragonflies, the soundtrack’s soothing qualities are a blessing in disguise.

Replayability
With its focus on collecting gems and revisiting sublevels, Enter the Dragonfly ranks pretty high in the replayability category – presuming you’re a fan of the series. If you’re not, collecting hundreds upon hundreds of crystals in each level can get old and might seem like a cheap tactic to extend gameplay hours.

The minigames are an entirely different story and will certainly keep you playing. True, it’s a sad commentary on the game if its minigames keep you coming back rather than the game itself, but it says something about the quality of the minigames. I played one minigame alone for an hour, actually, and only stopped because I knew I had to make my way through the rest of the game. If the game had any multiplayer modes, these minigames could actually increase its replayability ten-fold.

In the end, Spyro the Dragon: Enter the Dragonfly delivers an entertaining experience that gives unfamiliar players a nice introduction to Spyro’s world. Unfortunately, the horrid framerate and lack of any significant update, except for the new breaths and occasional ability to climb, make the game feel more like a step sideways than a step forward. With a flurry of new platform franchises headed to next-gen consoles in 2003, Enter the Dragonfly will likely make a quick exit from gamers’ shelves and minds.

See more screens on the Spyro the Dragon: Enter the Dragonfly media page